Tensions flared and chaotic protests erupted outside a session of Guatemala’s Congress on Sunday as conservative lawmakers inside dragged their feet on swearing in Bernardo Arévalo, the incoming president.
The hourslong delay ended with the session’s resumption around 6 p.m. local time, but it remained unclear whether Arévalo’s inauguration would go ahead at all, Reuters reported. It had originally been scheduled for 3 p.m. Arévalo insisted on social media that he would be able to take office despite what he called an attempt “to violate democracy with illegal actions, trifles and abuses of power.”
The special session had earlier devolved into a screaming match as leaders bickered over who to send to the inauguration as part of a congressional delegation, according to the Associated Press. The leadership was “packed” with old-guard members of Congress, the wire reported, and the shouting was seen as a deliberate delay tactic.
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Arévalo, a reformist and anti-corruption advocate, was a political outsider when he handily won election in August, a watershed moment for a country long wracked by political scandal. A sociologist and son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected president, the 65-year-old promised after his victory that he and his party, Movimiento Semilla or the Seed Movement, would lead a government “that takes care of all people, despite differences.”
But he has faced strong headwinds in the months leading up to his inauguration, with the Guatemalan attorney general’s office fighting to overturn the election results and the Semilla party having its registration temporarily suspended over unsubstantiated fraud allegations. Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, which in December ordered Congress to “guarantee” Arévalo’s swearing-in, on Sunday morning upheld Semilla’s suspension, blocking his closest allies from congressional leadership positions.
Arévalo has repeatedly denounced the political establishment’s opposition to his administration as a “slow-motion coup d’etat,” according to the AFP, a sentiment echoed by his supporters on Sunday, many of whom began protesting amid the confusion. “This is a coup d’état,” Victoria Tubin, an Indigenous leader and academic, told The New York Times. “The resistance will continue.”
The country’s Indigenous population fell in behind Arévalo after his landslide victory, with many of them going on strike in October to protest the attorney general’s machinations against him. On Sunday, they were among the hundreds of people waiting to celebrate the inauguration in Guatemala City’s historic center.
“We have had mediocre, corrupt, scoundrel governments that do not have the slightest love for their country, and I hope that this government does not fail the people,” Indigenous leader Alida Vicente told the AFP. “There is a lot of enthusiasm, there is a lot of hope from the population.”
Hope turned to confusion, however, as the delay stretched on, with demonstrators marching to Congress, shouting “Get out, coup-plotters!” according to the Post. Some tried to barge past police barricades and get inside the building.
“If they don’t swear him in, we, the people, will swear him in,” Dina Juc, an Indigenous mayor, told the AP.
Arévalo is expected to take office one way or another, Alexander Aizenstatd, a prominent constitutional lawyer, told The Washington Post. “At midnight, he automatically becomes president, by law,” he said.
Samantha Power, the administrator of the Agency for International Development, said in a Sunday tweet that there was “no question” Arévalo was the rightful leader of Guatemala. “We call on all sides to remain calm—and for the Guatemalan Congress to uphold the will of the people,” she said. “The world is watching.”
Power was in Guatemala for the inauguration on Sunday to provide a show of support for Arévalo’s administration. Brian A. Nichols, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, was also in attendance as part of the U.S. delegation. Nichols said earlier this week that the political opposition to Arèvalo was unlikely to recede after he took office.
Other high-profile international figures who’d traveled to Guatemala to watch the ceremony and meet with Arévalo included Spain’s King Felipe VI and the presidents of Chile and Colombia.
Early Monday morning, after a nine-hour delay, Arevalo was finally sworn in as president.
