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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS