Guatemalans eye law-and-order, anti-poverty candidates for presidential runoff

from the International Herald Tribune

GUATEMALA CITY: Guatemalans were likely to send Sunday's presidential election to a November runoff between a conservative former general vowing to crack down on crime and a center-left businessman who promises social spending to alleviate desperate poverty.

About 50 candidates, party activists and their family members were killed in the months leading to the election, underscoring public safety issues plaguing the Central American nation.

"I want things to change because there's too much violence and crime in my neighborhood," said Judith Orellana, a 32-year-old nurse, as she lined up before dawn Sunday for a polling station to open in her gang-invested neighborhood outside Guatemala City.

Pre-election polls showed Otto Perez, the hard-line former general, and Alvaro Colom, a three-time presidential contender, running about even, far ahead of other candidates — but short of the majority necessary for a first-round victory. A runoff between the top two finishers would take place Nov. 4.

Nobel Laureate and Mayan activist Rigoberta Menchu, one of 12 other presidential candidates on Sunday's ballot, all but conceded defeat Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press and accused the political establishment of sowing fear of a president from Guatemala's poor Mayan Indian population.

"The indigenous are the largest group and therefore they're afraid that if I arrive (in the presidency) it would be dangerous," said Menchu, who won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights work following Guatemala's brutal civil war that killed 200,000 people, most of them Mayans.

Menchu is the first Mayan woman ever to run for president in this country where 42 percent of the population is descendant from the ancient Mayans. She is polling around 3 percent.

Analysts say security is the most pressing issue at stake in the election.

Guatemala is Central America's most violent country, with more than 5,000 homicides per year. The country of 12 million is also a main corridor for Colombian cocaine heading to the United States, and home to rampant corruption and a culture of violence left over from the 1960-1996 civil war.

"Guatemalans must choose between returning to a past of fear and poverty or a future of hope," Colom said in his last speech before campaigning ended on Friday, alluding to Perez's involvement in the civil war. "My hands are not stained with blood."

Colom worked with civil war refugees in isolated highlands and is an ordained Mayan minister. He proposes increasing social spending to fight poverty and boost employment, and overhauling the judicial system.

Perez has responded to allegations that his human rights record from the war era is stained by demanding his accusers present proof of any wrongdoing. He promises a "firm hand" on crime: hiring more police officers, using the military to fight drug gangs and instituting the death penalty.

Increased security will attract investment, he says — creating badly needed jobs in a country where 51 percent of the population lives on less than US$2 (€1.50) a day.

Some 18,500 policemen and 15,800 soldiers will patrol the streets to prevent violence Sunday, when Guatemalans also will choose 158 national legislators and 332 mayors