Guatemala’s comedian-president fights the corruption-fighters
As the country’s scandals multiply, opposition hardens to the investigators who are uncovering them
BEFORE he ran to be president of Guatemala two years ago, Jimmy Morales pretended to be a presidential candidate in a television sitcom called “Moralejas” (“Cautionary Tales”). Neto, the bumbling office-seeker, clad in a white suit, red bandanna and cowboy hat, decides that after telling “a boatload of lies” he will withdraw from the race. He offers the remaining (fictional) candidates some parting wisdom: “Haven’t you realised that people aren’t dumb? That people see how you go to sleep poor and wake up rich?”
In the real-life election of 2015 Mr Morales levelled the same sort of accusations at his rivals. It came soon after the country’s president, Otto Pérez Molina, and vice-president, Roxana Baldetti, were arrested on corruption charges. Running as an outsider with no connection to the discredited political class, Mr Morales won 67% of the vote in a run-off that October.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "If you elect a clown, expect a circus"
From the September 2nd 2017 edition
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