Guatemala's election ends in peace with retired general taking lead
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Xinhua, September 12, 2011
Former general Otto Perez Molina led the field of 10 candidates in Guatemala's presidential election which ended in peace on Sunday.
With 5 percent of the vote counted, Otto Perez, a retired general from the right-wing Patriot Party, had 37 percent of votes, according to official results.
The 60-year-old Perez has promised to crack down with an "iron fist" on the uncontrolled surge of violence due to rampant drug trafficking groups which plunged Guatemala into one of the world's most violent nations.
Before, a number of exit polls made by private companies put Perez ahead with between 42 percent and 44 percent of the vote, followed by businessman Manuel Baldizon with 26 percent and Eduardo Suger with 13 percent.
The former general, when casting his vote mid-morning at a local school Sunday in the capital of Guatemalan City, said he remained hopeful to secure over 50 percent of votes needed to avoid a second round.
"We won't rule out that we can win in the first round, we continue to believe that the Guatemalans want to end the election in the first round," Perez told local press outside the election center.
Perez, who was beaten by President Alvaro Colom in 2007, is expected to be the first retired military leader to become president since 1996.
More than 2,500 polling stations were set up across the Central American country for about 7.3 million eligible voters. If Perez fails to get 50 percent of the ballots, he will face Baldizon in the second round on Nov. 6.
Jose Octavio Bordon, head of the observers of the Organization of American States (OAS), praised the peaceful outcome of the day which many civil groups had feared to fall into violence as tension had erupted over the potential return to a military leader.
"From all what we have been able to observe, the election developed under normality and peace with complete transparency. There has been an important demonstration of support with long lines of voters who waited patiently for a very long time," Bordon said.
He said the OAS had "not learned of any situation of violence" from any of the organization's team of 86 international election observers, part of some 10,000 observers deployed at election centers across the country by local and foreign groups.
The Guatemalan Supreme Electoral Tribunal said in an official report that it had received a number of reports of vote buying and vote coercion and all of them were being investigated.
Guatemala's Arch Bishop Oscar Julio Vian Morales called on all Guatemalans to elect a leader that will help ensure "Guatemala to move forward" while outgoing Colom hoped his social programs will be continued.
"All the candidates have said they will maintain the social programs, that is to say, free education and health care, so they will be challenged to keep those programs," said Colom, whose 4-year term ends on Jan. 16 next year.
Some 23,000 police officers were deployed to keep order across the country where half of the total 14 million people are living below the United Nations' extreme poverty standard of less than one U.S. dollar per day.
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