Guatemala elects ex-general as president

A retired top military man who has vowed to get tough on organised crime won Guatemala’s presidential second-round, run-off elections on Sunday by a comfortable margin.

Otto Pérez Molina was in the lead with 54.5 per cent after more than 90 per cent of the votes were counted. Manuel Baldizón, his 40-year-old rival, was trailing with 45.5 per cent.

Guatemala’s electoral tribunal declared Mr Pérez Molina the winner late on Sunday.

Mr Pérez Molina’s victory comes as Guatemalan authorities fight to rid the Central American country of organised crime – seen as its biggest challenge.

In recent years, Mexican drug cartels, under pressure from domestic security forces, have migrated towards Guatemala as an alternative staging post for taking illegal drugs into the US market.

Their incursion across the border to Guatemala has tested the country’s institutions to the limit, with many analysts now arguing that organised crime is dragging Central America’s largest economy to the brink of becoming a failed state.

Guatemala’s murder rate is one of the worst in the hemisphere and higher even than during the civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996.

Mr Pérez Molina, a 60-year-old silver-haired former general, has offered Guatemalans hope in the form of what he calls an “iron fist” policy. In particular, he has pledged to boost the state’s security apparatus with 2,500 more soldiers and 10,000 new police recruits.

The departing and relatively left-inclined President Alvaro Colom told the FT this year that Guatemala was fighting sophisticated and well-armed groups with equipment that, in some cases, dated from World War II.

He also said that the state’s security forces had suffered a brutal downsizing since the country’s peace accords in 1996.

While Mr Pérez Molina is committed to increasing security, human-rights organisations are concerned that his presidency could lead to a serious deterioration in rights.

Guatemala’s president-elect has been accused of having participated in some of the country’s worst atrocities during the 36-year civil war in which more than 200,000 died.

Mr Pérez Molina has denied any wrongdoing.

One of the biggest challenges Guatemala’s president-elect faces in other respects is to increase total tax income, which is equivalent to just 11 per cent of gross domestic product, one of the lowest in the region.

Mr Pérez Molina has pledged to increase the take to at least 14 per cent of GDP.