[NYTr] Violence darkens Guatemala election
 
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 19:23:17 -0500 (CDT)


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Reuters via Yahoo - Sep 6, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070906/wl_nm/guatemala_election_dc

Violence darkens Guatemala election

By Mica Rosenberg 

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - In Guatemala's worst political violence
since the end of its civil war, almost 50 people have been killed in
campaigning for this weekend's election, giving an ex-general who
promises to crack down on crime a lift in the race for president.

Much of the bloodshed has come from powerful drug barons trying to
force their candidates into office and political rivals shooting each
other.

Guatemala, still recovering from a 1960-1996 civil war, chooses a new
president and Congress on Sunday. The country is awash with guns and
police are widely viewed as inept.

In one of the most brazen attacks, the 28-year-old son of human rights
activist Amilcar Mendez was killed by gunmen as he left work in
mid-August after he helped his father alert rights groups in Washington
to death threats against candidates.

"Our complaint was the political detonator in my son's murder," said
Mendez, an advisor to the running mate of center-left presidential
candidate Alvaro Colom.

Besides political murders, almost 6,000 people were killed in common
crime last year, many the victims of drug feuds or attacks by tattooed
street gang members.

That gives Guatemala, with a population of 13 million, one of the
highest murder rates in the world, and has propelled tough-talking
former general Otto Perez Molina to the top of opinion polls along with
Colom, who for months was the clear front-runner.

GENERAL RISING

Colom, a bespectacled former deputy economy minister, has promised to
clean up the police and overhaul the justice system. But Perez Molina's
promise of a "strong fist" and to use the military to combat crime is
gaining support.

"The police do nothing, but the gangs are afraid of the army," said
Ricardo Rodriguez, a 62-year old carpenter from the rural El Quiche
region who had to shut down his business when armed robbers stole
$1,500. "What people want is security."

The two main candidates were tied on about 32 percent of support each
in a poll in the Prensa Libre newspaper on Wednesday.

Neither of them is expected to win more than 50 percent of the vote on
Sunday, so a run off in November is likely and Perez Molina is tipped
to pick up more votes by then.

Guatemalans' support for the long-mistrusted army underscores just how
desperate the situation has become.

A U.N.-backed report blamed the army for 85 percent of Guatemala's
civil war-era killings and disappearances of almost 250,000 mostly
Mayan people.

Perez Molina commanded troops in El Quiche in the 1980s when some of
the worst massacres of civilians happened but he has not been
prosecuted for any atrocities.

Some 98 percent of Guatemala's murders went unsolved in 2006, as an
inefficient and corrupt justice system made few arrests and even fewer
convictions.

Colom and Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, a human rights
leader who is lagging in the polls, say turning to Perez Molina would
be a mistake because only jobs, a strong economy and honest police can
help Guatemala.

"Guatemala lived for 40 years under a strong fist, and it left the
country poor and violent," Menchu said during a televised debate.

Two activists from Menchu's party were shot dead this week while
distributing leaflets, but most of the victims have been from Colom's
National Unity for Hope party.

"We used to be victims of the war," said Mendez as his wife cried
inconsolably over their son's murder. "Now we are victims of the peace."

 
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