Guatemala's Minor Parties

Last month we took a look at some of the major parties in Guatemala. Out of the twenty-six parties legally registered to run in September, seven political parties captured over five per cent of the presidential or legislative vote in the 2007 election and I basically characterized as major political parties. It's not a perfect schema, but it's a start.

Minor parties, then, are those that participated in the last election but captured less than five per cent of the vote. We have four minor parties using that simple cutoff and two of the four are Guatemala's equivalent to El Salvador's ARENA and FMLN.

First, there is the National Advancement Party (PAN), the country's oldest party founded in 1989. Alvaro Arzu, formerly of the PAN and now of the Unionist Party, was president of the country during the signing of the historic peace accords.

The PAN had hoped to be El Salvador’s ARENA – a party to represents the country’s capitalist class. However, the PAN failed in that regard and its failure is one reason why so many political parties exist today as wealthy businessmen either found their own political party or throw their support behind one of the many existing parties. In the 2007 election, just about every vice presidential candidate was a wealthy businessman.

Juan Gutierrez is this year's PAN presidential candidate, but he has not been doing well in the polls. Gutierrez came in at 1.1% in May's Prensa Libre poll. There’s not much going on there. The PAN did have three members reelected to congress in 2007. However, it has been down to two congressmen since June 2010.

Then there’s the Democratic Union (UD) which was founded in 1993. It had one deputy, Edwin Armando Martínez Herrera, reelected in 2007.

After three-plus decades of war (about fifteen as a single entity), the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit (URNG) was officially inscribed as a political party in 1998 and competed for the first time in 1999. It had two members elected to congress in 2007, including one from the national list and one from Huehuetenango. 

In 2011, the URNG is competing as part of the Frente Amplio. They are supporting Nobel-laureate Rigoberta Menchu for president. Menchu is the leader of the Winaq party, one of the groups comprising the Frente. She performed poorly in 2007 (3%) and is likely to perform poorly again this year (polling at a steady 1.5%). Given the poor resources with which the Guatemalan left has to work with, Menchu is now connecting to Guatemalans by riding public buses.

While the Frente Amplio wasn’t going to make much of a splash in the presidential election anyway, I don’t find Menchu’s selection that inspiring. I don't know that she brings anyone new to the party. Menchu, however, said she was going to be a presidential candidate this year and if the Frente Amplio didn’t select her, Winaq probably would not have participated in the leftist alliance. At a minimum, her candidacy will get the Frente a good amount of national and international media coverage, the lack of which the left has complained about in the past.

Finally, the National Change Union (UCN) counts four members of congress after having five elected in 2007. The UCN is going with Mario Estrada for the presidency. However, he’s only polling at about 2% of the vote. After former president Alfonso Portillo’s acquittal, Estrada offered him a place within the UCN in the upcoming election. That surely would have helped Estrada and the UCN’s campaign had Portillo accepted.

Of the four, the URNG probably has the best chance to break out in 2011 - but by that I mean doubling its seat total to four or maybe even five.