Presidential Hopeful Sandra Torres Pitches Experience as Guatemala Seeks Change

(Reuters) – Sandra Torres is pitching her twenty years as a number one determine in Guatemalan politics as she tries to woo disenchanted voters forward of a presidential runoff on Sunday and keep away from a 3rd straight election loss.

Opinion polls present Torres shedding by double digits to Bernardo Arevalo, a reformist candidate whose rise on an anti-corruption platform has shaken the institution in Central America’s largest nation.

Torres, 67, says her expertise will likely be important to fight a poverty fee of greater than 55%, which has made Guatemala the area’s high supply of migration to the US and one of many world’s worst international locations for baby malnutrition.

“Each 4 years it is the identical. Candidates seem with no expertise,” she stated in a debate on Monday. “Making guarantees is simple however getting issues completed is completely different.”

As first woman to late President Alvaro Colom between 2008 and 2011, Torres championed a welfare program that helped her and her Nationwide Unity of Hope (UNE) occasion set up a robust presence in rural communities.

Torres, who hails from a poor city in Guatemala’s Peten area, has promised to broaden the social security internet if elected.

However whereas her occasion’s final authorities did scale back poverty, Torres’ efforts have additionally drawn criticism for being “clientelistic,” stated Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America research on the Council on Overseas Relations.

“At this time many Guatemalans regard her social applications as probably not geared towards lifting folks out of poverty for good.”

Torres has eyed the presidency since 2011, when she divorced her husband in a failed try and dodge a constitutional ban on shut family of the incumbent president working for the workplace.

In two subsequent presidential bids in 2015 and 2019, she made it by way of to the second spherical however misplaced on the remaining hurdle.

In 2019, she was accused of marketing campaign finance irregularities, which she denied, and spent 4 months in jail. The case was closed in 2022 for lack of proof, however a CID Gallup ballot in July discovered that 54% of respondents thought of Torres “corrupt” and a “liar.” That contrasted sharply with views on Arevalo.

Torres has sought new allies as she seeks to reverse her election losses, analysts stated.

The traditionally center-left determine has moved to the proper on social points – for instance, campaigning to maintain same-sex marriage and abortion unlawful within the conservative nation and selecting an evangelical pastor as her working mate.

Nonetheless, the notion of Torres as being a continuation of the established order might current a problem with establishment-averse voters, of whom almost one in 4 solid spoiled or clean ballots in June’s first-round vote.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Boyle, Enhancing by Rosalba O’Brien)

Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters.