As Guatemala prepares to elect a new president Sunday, its citizens are fed up with government corruption, on edge about crime and struggling with poverty and malnutrition - all of which drives tens of thousands out of the country each year.
And for many disillusioned voters - especially those who supported three candidates who were blocked from running this year - the leading contenders at the close of campaigning Friday seem like the least likely to drive the needed changes.
“Those with the least chance are the ones who possibly have a different idea of governing,” Quiroa said. But popular candidates who did appear willing to challenge the status quo, like Thelma Cabrera, an Indigenous leader from the Maya Mam, and Carlos Pineda, a conservative populist who cast himself as a renegade, were kept off the ballot by electoral authorities.
Morales appointed Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who has since been sanctioned by the U.S. government and accused of corruption. Not only are its prosecutors no longer pursuing many of the cases they had started, but the Attorney General’s Office has opened cases against its own former anti-corruption prosecutors and some judges who specialized in those cases. More than two dozen, including former anti-corruption prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval, have fled the country.
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