Otto Perez Molina, a retired right-wing general who promises an iron hand against Guatemala’s spiraling violence, celebrated victory yesterday after winning a presidential runoff election and calling for unity in the impoverished nation.
“I thank all Guatemalans who trusted in me,” the former general said on local radio Sonora, as he was set to become the first military man to lead Guatemala since the end of army rule 25 years ago.
“I call on all Guatemalans who didn’t vote for Otto Perez to unite to work together for the next four years,” the president-elect said.
Photo: Reuters
Perez won 54.5 percent of the vote against 45.5 percent for populist businessman Manuel Baldizon, according to 96 percent counted by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, just hours after the close.
Although the lush Central American nation, famed for its Mayan ruins, has vast social problems — with more than half the population of 14 million living in poverty — the campaign was dominated by the issue of insecurity and growing drug violence.
Brutal attacks from Mexico’s Zetas drug gang have joined lingering political attacks in the country still struggling to emerge from a 36-year civil war, which ended 15 years ago.
Despite that painful history, the 61-year-old ex-general convinced voters he was best placed to reduce a murder rate of 18 per day, six times the world average.
“We’re going to fight very hard to bring peace, security, work opportunities and rural development,” Perez said on Sunday, four years after narrowly losing to Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom in a runoff.
Perez focused his campaign for the Patriotic Party on creating jobs and cracking down on crime, proposing to use the army against drug traffickers.
Baldizon, a 41-year-old from the Renewed Democratic Liberty party, promised to increase use of the death penalty, including on television.
Experts said the tough stance of both candidates underlined concerns about security, but they criticized the lack of concrete proposals to reduce poverty.
“They talk about it in generalized terms, but they haven’t said how they’ll tackle or reduce it and that’s worrying,” indigenous political analyst Alvaro Pop said.
Perez — who represented the army to sign peace accords in 1996 — has denied accusations that rights abuses took place under his command during the civil war, in which about 200,000 people are believed to have died or gone missing.
Perez will take over from center-left Colom on Jan. 14 next year.
Colom, who is limited to a single term, managed to break a half-century of domination by the hard right, but struggled to reform the Central American nation with limited means and a fragile majority.
His National Unity of Hope party failed to present a candidate because his wife, Sandra Torres — who filed for divorce to try to run for office legally — was disqualified.
About 98 percent of crimes go unpunished in Guatemala, according to the UN, while malnutrition affects 49 percent of minors and 30 percent of the population is illiterate.
The treasury is also bankrupt after right-wing opposition parties blocked government attempts at fiscal reform and the approval of US$500 million in loans.
For the first time, a woman, Roxana Baldetti, is set to become Guatemala’s vice president.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion