Businessman wins Guatemala's presidential election

Center-left Colom defeats Pérez Molina

Guatemalans lined up yesterday in Santiago Atitlan, west of Guatemala City, to vote in the presidential runoff. (ESTEBAN FELIX/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

GUATEMALA CITY - Álvaro Colom, a center-left businessman, won Guatemala's presidential election yesterday, in a vote that in many ways was a referendum on this country's fragile democracy.

Colom, 56, defeated former Army General Otto Pérez Molina, a high-ranking officer during Guatemala's years of bloody dictatorship and counterinsurgency warfare in the 1980s.

With 93 percent of the vote tallied, Colom led Pérez Molina 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent. Nearly all of the uncounted votes were in Colom's provincial strongholds.

Across Guatemala, turnout was light for the runoff, after a nasty campaign that centered around the crime and corruption that have made a mockery of Guatemala's democratic institutions under civilian rule.

Political figures across Guatemala appeared on news programs outside nearly empty voting centers throughout the day and begged residents to cast ballots. An electoral watchdog group said polling stations in some parts of the country had not registered a single vote three hours after opening at 7 a.m. As the day progressed, it seemed that this election might be defined by the people who did not vote as much as by those who did.

"It's like we're going back to the bad times," said Wilfredo Quezada, a laborer in this poverty-racked capital. "I don't like all this dirty campaigning. Why bother to vote?"

Colom and Pérez Molina emerged as front-runners after a first round of voting Sept. 9 that was preceded by a stunning wave of violence in which at least 50 political workers and candidates were killed.

Colom, of the National Unity for Hope party, promised to expand social programs, building on his legacy as leader of a rural development program after the 1960-96 civil war. Pérez Molina countered with pledges to bring order to Guatemala by using the military to rule with an "iron fist."

The country has one of Latin America's highest murder rates and is plagued by violent drug-trafficking cartels.

Victor Galvez, a political analyst here, said the result showed that Guatemalans rejected Pérez Molina's rightist solutions to their country's problems.

"It's a message that people don't want to return to the military past," he said. "In the end, the firm hand turned against Pérez Molina."

Colom, a former industrial engineer with a long government resume, sought to make Guatemala's poverty the focal point of his campaign.

"I voted against injustice, with the poor," said Max Pérez, a 34-year-old painter in the colonial city of Antigua.

"I voted for these people who live in misery, for the people who are hungry. I voted for the engineer Álvaro Colom."

Colom struggled in the face of repeated personal attacks, many linked to corruption charges dating from his run for the president in 2003. Pérez Molina led in most preelection polls.

A slew of anonymous fliers and e-mails accused Colom of a variety of mortal sins, including links to drug cartels.

Material from The Washington Post was used in this report.