By Ricardo Barrientos*

Source: Guatemala’s Ministerio de Desarrollo Social (MIDES)

Around the world, increasing numbers of voters are electing rulers with authoritarian, anti-democratic, or even, openly dictatorial profiles. Disenchantment with democracy is on the rise, while respect for basic freedoms, inclusion, equality, and progressive thinking – or, just thinking – is on the decline. When Bernardo Arévalo took office in January of 2024, after a legal battle to defend the previous year’s electoral results, Guatemala appeared a notable exception in the global slide towards authoritarianism. Recognized as a politician highly committed to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, Arévalo emerged as a beacon for democracy and freedom in Central America and beyond.

Arévalo’s campaign was simple: be honest and fight corruption. This proved to be a highly effective electoral offer, as voters were tired after several administrations plagued with corruption scandals, and the ominous capture of important public institutions, most notably the General Attorney’s Office. After more than half of his four-year presidential term, Arévalo has carried through on that promise. He and most of this cabinet are perceived as honest, and corruption is not understood to be a problem within the Executive branch. Arévalo is also highly praised internationally, in contrast to his predecessors and some of his current regional neighbors. His administration has proved highly sagacious in managing international and diplomatic relations, achieving the best possible results with such challenging topics as dealing with the Trump administration in the US.

Arévalo’s time in office would appear to be an outstanding success, deserving of applause by the Guatemalan people. Well, not quite.

A survey conducted in May of 2026 shows that citizen support for Arévalo has plummeted. Only around 37 percent of Guatemalans approve of his government, putting him among the six worst rated presidents in Latin America. His popularity is well below several of the least democratic presidents, like Nayib Bukele of El Salvador or Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who enjoy high levels of citizen support. The reason is simple: since the beginning of his tenure, the Arévalo administration has suffered severe difficulties managing the budget, most notably, public investment in infrastructure.

With four ministerial changes in just two years and the lowest rate of budgetary execution among all ministries, the Ministry of Communications, Infrastructure, and Housing is surely a particular nightmare for the president. It continues to suffer from deeply rooted structures of corruption, contractors linked to organized crime and campaign financing for rival parties, compounded by a lack of technical experts within Arévalo’s own party, Movimiento Semilla, capable of assuming high-profile ministerial positions. This chaotic situation is reflected in roads that are in very bad condition and no construction of new ones. Understandably, Guatemalans become angry when poorly maintained roads aren’t improved, and not even a kilometer of new road has been built.

Arévalo’s administration has also proven extremely weak when dealing with Congress. Since 2024, the only way the Executive branch has managed to get the legislation it needed approved is by increasing the money for what congressional members and mayors most want: fully flexible budget allocations to local governments, especially through so-called “extraordinary” transfers to local development councils. In 2024 this tactic seemed to work, as the Arevalo administration finally got its budget expansion approved, followed by extensions and modifications of the 2025 and 2026 budgets. But this “solution” for Congress to pass legislation worked only for those bills that Congress members, mayors, and the Executive all wanted. It did not work for other measures to protect children and youth, or to regulate the use of water, among many others.

Of course, the tactic of “buying” the will of Congress is never sustainable over the long term. Arévalo’s team discovered that the appetite of congressional members and mayors for extraordinary transfers to local development councils proved insatiable: in 2026 extraordinary transfers rose to around US $1,420 million, or more than 18 times what they were in 2022. However, the actual execution of this huge increase through transfers is very low. In 2025, execution was only 59 percent of what was allocated. And as of July 2026, it stands at 16 percent, while the rest of the budget’s execution averages around 42 percent. Among the reasons is technical incompetence. But the most worrisome is that Congress has been passing exceptions to the Organic Budget Law, allowing non-executed allocations to be carried over to the next year. This effectively allows mayors and congressmembers to accumulate and finally execute them all in 2027, when general elections will be held. It will also likely be too tempting for mayors and congressional representatives not to divert these funds to their own re-election campaigns.

Thus, due to the Arévalo administration’s weakness when dealing with Congress and its inability to deliver public investment works through Central Government ministries, it has not only transferred huge amounts of money, but a large share of political power to mayors and Congress. And, if the general perception is that Arévalo and his ministers are honest, that perception is surely not the same with regard to mayors and members of Congress: they belong to the “old politics”; many have been accused of corruption and of having links to organized crime, which is why such colloquial terms as “narco-mayor” or “narco-deputy” continue to be widely used.

President Arévalo is highly praised for his honesty and recognized internationally as a true democrat. But most Guatemalans reject him for not being an effective ruler in delivering the needed public investment in goods and services. The worst possible outcome of this mess is that Guatemalans approve of honesty and democracy, while also believing that they are not enough to achieve the necessary results. As is happening around the world, many Guatemalans have become convinced that not only are democracy and honesty not enough, but that they prefer less democratic and less honest rulers in exchange for more effectiveness in delivering real products and results. This is perhaps the most probable outcome in Guatemala for the upcoming 2027 election: if mayors and members of Congress manage to execute the accumulated budget through their local development councils, this will show that, they, local narco-politicians and practitioners of the “old politics,” are in fact more reliable for delivering the public goods and services, such as roads, that people desperately need. In the wake of a new electoral cycle, Guatemalans could be applying to President Arévalo the old saying, “Street lamp, darkness at home.”

* Ricardo Barrientos is the executive director of the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (ICEFI).