GUATEMALA: Second round of voting to be held in Guatemalan elections

A second round of voting will be held on November 4 in Guatemala after a close first-round of vote. A Guatemalan former general will face a center-left businessman in a presidential election runoff in November after a close first-round vote, results showed on Monday (September 10). Alvaro Colom narrowly led ex-Gen. Otto Perez Molina with votes from 84 percent of polling stations counted. None of the candidates earned more than half the votes in Sunday's election, so a second round of voting will be held on Nov. 4. Colom won 28 percent compared to 24 percent for Perez Molina, who promises to use the army against rampant crime. Guatemala, a crossroads for Colombian cocaine on its way to the United States, has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with almost 6,000 people killed in the country of 13 million last year. The election campaign was tainted by the worst political violence since the end of the civil war in 1996, with drug gangs and political rivals killing 50 people in the campaign. But balloting was peaceful. Only minor scuffles were reported as Guatemalans voted in jungles dotted with Mayan pyramids, in towns nestled under volcanoes and in the bustling capital. The President of the European Union mission of observers, Emilio Menendez Del Valle, said that his deputies did not encounter any irregularities in the election. "Our observers, a group of eight deputies, have had no evidences of irregularities, besides minor incidents with no mayor importance." Supporters shouting "Otto, Otto," set off fireworks at his Patriotic Party headquarters and punched the air as early results showed Perez Molina leading. But celebrations were premature as the soft-spoken Colom overtook the military man. The silver-haired Perez Molina, 56, vows a "strong fist" against crime and corruption. Critics fear a return to heavy-handed rule if the former head of army intelligence wins power. He promises to send soldiers to patrol the streets and to declare states of emergency in areas overrun by drug traffickers and tattooed street gang members known as "mareros," who have beheaded rivals and shot children. Some opinion polls have given Perez Molina a good chance of winning a second round, but much will depend on his ability to pick up votes that went to Sunday's third-placed candidate, Alejandro Giammattei. Perez Molina commanded troops in the El Quiche department in the 1980s, when many Mayan Indian civilians were massacred in the country's civil war, but he has not been prosecuted for any atrocities. The former soldier says he is a political moderate and points to his role as a peace negotiator in talks that ended the civil war against leftist rebels under a 1996 peace deal. Perez Molina said that he was certain that he would win in the second round. "We are certain that if we are above three points or three points down, in the second round we are completely sure that we'll double that lead if that were to happen," said Perez Molina. Colom promises to fight poverty if elected. His National Unity for Hope party has struggled to rid its ranks of drug gangs and organized crime groups. He said things were going as planned. "We will lead with the eight points we had predicted, we are not encountering problems with our percentages. We are going up and the others are going down. We would have to wait for the results in Huehuetenango, San Marcos, Quiche," Colom said. After a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected government of President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, the military ruled Guatemala almost without interruption until 1986. A U.N.-backed report blamed the army for 85 percent of the war-era killings. Many of the victims were civilian Mayan peasants slaughtered in their mountain villages on suspicion of sympathizing with the guerrillas. The country is awash with guns left over from the war era and street violence is commonplace. An inept justice system leaves most crimes unsolved. Nobel peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu, a defender of Mayan Indian rights, was in sixth place in the election on 3 percent of the vote. She had wrapped up her electoral campaign early, complaining of a lack of money.

ITN Source | September 10, 2007

Tags:. .prosecuted. .poverty. .narrowly. .homicide. .besides