Guatemalan President-elect Arvalo discusses effort to keep him from taking office
Nick Schifrin:
Arevalo won in a landslide by appealing to young, urban, and indigenous voters. He wants to tackle corruption and build state institutions to reduce the root causes that have pushed more Guatemalans to migrate than from any other Latin American country.
But the entrenched elites have resisted the people's will. The attorney general's office has raided electoral offices and seized election materials to try and destroy Arevalo's party and prevent his presidency.
The U.S. called those actions an effort to undermine the peaceful transfer of power and is imposing visa restrictions on corrupt actors. Arevalo is a former university professor and an outsider. But his father is former President Juan Jose Arevalo, who gave birth in the 1950s to Guatemala's first Democratic spring after a century of dictatorship.
Bernardo Arévalo's party is called Seed Movement that hopes to grow a new spring for democracy.
President-elect Arevalo, thank you very much. Welcome to the "NewsHour."
You received a resounding mandate in this election, but you have faced a relentless campaign against your party, including another raid on electoral authorities this past Friday. So are you confident that you will in fact be sworn in as president in January, as scheduled?
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