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| Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu trails in the polls. Rodrigo Abd/AP |
Guatemalans to vote for security
National elections on Sunday are shaped by one of the world's highest murder rates.
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the September 7, 2007 edition
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Guatemala City - The campaign slogans and portraits of political candidates that hang over Guatemala's capital offer a glimpse of hopes and expectations ahead of Sunday's elections, in which a president, legislature, and local authorities in over 300 municipalities will be selected.
But the front-page headlines offer a grimmer view: nearly 50 political candidates, leaders, and activists have been killed as of Sept. 3 – turning it into the deadliest election season in recent memory. Two campaign workers in Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu's flagging election effort were murdered Wednesday, a party official said.
The political violence mirrors the insecurity spreading across the country. More than a decade after peace accords brought 36 years of civil war to an end here, Guatemala remains one of the most dangerous countries in the region. The numbers of those murdered has continued to grow since 2000, according to statistics from the National Civil Police, rising to almost 6,000 last year. That is over 10 percent more than the year before.
Unlike other elections in Latin America, Guatemala's has little to do with the leftward shift that has marked races from Nicaragua to Ecuador. In fact, many here see little difference in the leading candidates' ideologies. The central debate about who can make the country safer – from the gang members known as the Mara Salvatrucha, who plague both US cities and Central America, to the drug traffickers shipping cocaine and heroine to the US.
"What Guatemala faces today is the combination of the old unresolved issues of poverty and exclusion, with new threats from drug trafficking," says Anders Kompass, head of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Guatemala. "The killings during the election is not just a struggle between the parties; it is a reflection of the situation that Guatemalans live each day."
A tie for first place
The two front-runners are Alvaro Colom from the center-left National Union of Hope and retired Gen. Otto Perez Molina from the conservative Patriot Party. Mr. Colom has been leading the polls for weeks, but the latest, published Wednesday in the Prensa Libre paper, put the two at a virtual tie: Mr. Perez Molina has 31.8 percent and Colom 31.7 percent. Other candidates include former director of prisons, Alejandro Giammattei, of outgoing President Oscar Berger's Grand National Alliance party, and Rigoberta Menchu, who won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the nation's indigenous, which make up half of the population.
Nearly 6 million Guatemalans are registered to vote Sunday, but to gain the presidency in the first round a candidate must win 50 percent of the popular vote. Most analysts expect a runoff vote Nov. 4.
Violence is not new in a country that suffered more than three decades of civil war and military authoritarian regimes, but residents like Jairo Zacarias say that the threat today is driven by poverty. Mr. Zacarias, a taxi driver, rolls up his window and turns around to lock his back doors as he drives into the crime-riddled historic center of Guatemala City.
He wouldn't have taken such measures before, he says, but a year ago he was assaulted on a public bus. A few days later, a gang put a pistol to his head and took his wallet and shoes. "The last time I was assaulted was six months ago in a bus station," he says. "There is no such thing as security here."
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