Violence-torn Guatemala goes to the polls

A woman laughs during a break from sowing carrots in Chimaltenango, Guatemala, on Saturday, the day before presidential elections. PHOTO: AP

Guatemala went to the polls yesterday in presidential elections that pit a former general who wants the army to fight crime, against a social democrat who has vowed to battle endemic poverty.

About 50 politicians and sympathizers have been killed in the campaigning for the presidential, legislative and municipal elections, in some of the worst violence since the country's civil war ended over a decade ago.

Social-Democrat Alvaro Colom led a voter intention poll on Friday almost 8 percent ahead of retired army general Otto Perez Molina. Earlier surveys showed the two candidates in a virtual tie, with other candidates well behind.

In any case both were expected to fall well short of the 50 percent needed to win outright and avert a Nov. 4 run-off election.

Friday's survey showed Colom taking 34 percent of the vote to 26 percent for his right-wing rival. But Perez Molina has in recent weeks rapidly gained ground with his pledge to use "a hard fist" against street gangs, drug dealers and other criminals.

The issue of violence is a crucial one in a country in which 6,000 murders were reported last year, and where Organization of American States officials say 22 of those killed in the campaign violence were candidates.

But the brutal 36-year civil war that claimed as many as 200,000 lives was also on the minds of many in this impoverished Central American country.

"Let us not return to an era of blood and terror," Colom said in his final campaign rally. Some supporters saw this as a jab at his closest rival, whose credentials include stints in the 1990s at the head of military intelligence and a disbanded elite army corps blamed for executions of political opponents.

There have also been allegations Perez Molina was behind a suspicious power outage during the 1995 elections that brought former president Alvaro Arzu to power.

Perez Molina, 56, who signed the 1996 peace accords ending the civil war, retired from the army in 2000 and later won a congressional seat.

The issue of violence figured prominently in both frontrunners' campaigns, but Colom, also 56, focused primarily on the need to clean up the police force and the judiciary.

He pledges as well to tackle poverty, which mostly affects indigenous people who make up 60 percent of the country's 13 million population.

Colomn, an industrial engineer and businessman-turned-politician, is on his third bid for the presidency. In 2003 he was defeated in a run-off by conservative Oscar Berger.

His critics claim the uncharismatic Colom lacks the strong hand needed to battle the ills that plague Guatemala.

The other 12 candidates trail far behind, most of them garnering only single digit support, including indigenous activist and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu.