Morales, of the minuscule National Convergence Front (FCN), is running for office in the midst of the greatest political crisis in the country’s recent history and has successfully portrayed himself as an outsider.

However, his critics have warned that most of his party members are right-wing army veterans and that given the country’s recent history of authoritarian military regimes Guatemala could be heading for a repeat episode.

Morales won 23.99 per cent of the vote, while the second place was a tight race between National Unity of Hope (UNE) candidate Sandra Torres, with 19.75 per cent and Manuel Baldizón, of the Renewed Democratic Liberty party (LIDER) with 19.38 per cent. Since none of the candidates secured more than 50 per cent of the vote, Morales and Torres will face off on 25 October 2015.

Baldizón, a right-wing populist who promised to re-instate the death penalty and impose a flat tax, had been leading the polls for over a year. But five months before the elections, revelations that former President Otto Pérez Molina and his former vice president, Roxana Baldetti, were involved in a massive customs fraud network known as La Línea (The Line), sparked off a nationwide wave of protests and led to widespread disaffection with the political system.

The scandal was uncovered by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN–supported investigatory body.

As a result of the scandal, President Pérez Molina was impeached in Congress and forced to step down on 1 September 2015. Both Baldetti and Pérez Molina have been charged with customs fraud, illicit association and bribery and are currently under preventive detention awaiting trial.

Six weeks after the La Línea scandal broke out, CICIG uncovered the so-called “Money Laundering and Politics” scandal, tainting Baldizón’s running mate, Edgar Barquín. A former president of Guatemala’s central bank, Barquín is accused of involvement in laundering US$937 million from drug trafficking activities, resources that were later pumped into the LIDER and GANA parties’ campaign coffers in the 2011 Presidential election.

According to CICIG, 25 per cent of the money fuelling Guatemalan politics comes from criminal organisations, mainly drug trafficking. Over the past three decades, says CICIG, organised crime has used money and violence to infiltrate political parties, while wealthy businesses have privately funded candidates and political parties in exchange for lucrative public works contracts and other political favours.

The scandal fuelled voters’ rejection of the political system. While Baldizón’s popularity plummeted, Morales, whose campaign slogan is “neither corrupt nor a thief” began to rise steadily. “Jimmy hasn’t got a tainted past. Personally, I feel I can trust him,” says 33-year-old student, Ruby Hernández.

Baldizón’s refusal to take part in televised public debates with other candidates as well as a recording leaked to the press a week before the elections in which he urged his mayoral candidates to mortgage their properties and cars to shuttle voters to the polls and said his party would use votes to “kick his opponents’ asses” exacerbated voters’ anger.

The last poll, published by Prensa Libre 48 hours before the elections, revealed a dramatic shift: 25 per cent of those surveyed said they would vote for Morales, who had displaced Baldizón as the frontrunner in the race.

A rotten system

Prior to the elections, Víctor Báez Mosqueira, General Secretary of the ITUC Regional Organisation for the Americas (TUCA), warned that “the people of Guatemala must not be subjected to a continuation of the same rotten system with only cosmetic changes at the top.” As a matter of fact, Guatemala is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a trade unionist.

As Guatemala heads for the faceoff between Morales and Torres, the two finalists have come under greater scrutiny.

Torres is the ex-wife of former president Álvaro Colom (2007-2011). As first lady, she was in charge of implementing the government’s social welfare programs, which gave her an important following in rural areas. However, she lacks popularity in urban areas and the business elite does not trust her.

Morales describes himself as a “Christian nationalist” and at times his discourse veers towards the far-right. He denies that genocide was perpetrated against Guatemala’s indigenous population during the armed conflict and he advocates re-instating the death penalty.

“Guatemalans have a skin-deep sense of nationalism. They think it’s about putting a little flag on your car. He’s exploiting that, talking about nationalism when people are unaware of the implications behind that word such as Hitler, Franco or Mussolini’s regime,” explains semiologist Ramiro MacDonald to Equal Times.

Since the FCN lacks a coherent set of policy proposals, Guatemala’s conservative business elite appears eager to fill that void, creating a military-business alliance that looks startlingly similar to Pérez Molina’s Patriotic Party.

“The party is like an empty shell. Since Morales doesn’t have a shadow cabinet behind him, the business elite will try to fill that void; it’s a similar alliance to the one that was made with Pérez Molina”, explains Sandino Asturias, director of the Center for Guatemalan Studies (CEG), to Equal Times.

There is still much debate on whether Guatemala’s political crisis could trigger a “Central American spring”.