Guatemala Army Casts Shadow Over Vote : Military Backs Election but Seems Unwilling to Share Power

Guatemalans will vote Sunday for a civilian president in an effort to break 30 years of military domination of politics that began with a CIA-inspired coup in 1954.

The military leaders, discredited internationally for massive human rights abuses and nationally for virtually wrecking the economy, are backing the elections, and most observers expect them to be unusually fair.

But while the military people seem more than willing to wash their hands of the tarnished presidency and the sick economy, Guatemalan and foreign political analysts say the generals are not likely to relinquish real power.

“The democratic opening and clean constitutional elections are a strategy of the military,” a Guatemalan political observer said, asking not to be identified by name for security reasons. “There is an opening now because it is in the interest of the military. The same is true for the United States.”

James A. Baker III, the secretary of the treasury who visited here last summer, and U.S. Ambassador Alberto Piedra have made it clear to Guatemalan authorities that Washington would like to see a civilian president.

Aid Tied to Election

The Reagan Administration requested a two-year, $90.9-million military and economic aid package for Guatemala, and Congress approved it on the condition that a civilian president be elected and inaugurated.

The civilian president must request the aid, and President Reagan must certify human rights improvements in the country--a process that undoubtedly will lead to highly politicized debate in Washington.

Eight civilians are on the ballot in Sunday’s election, ranging from the so-called godfather of Guatemala’s ultraright, Mario Sandoval Alarcon, to Social Democrat Mario Solorzano Martinez, who returned from exile in Costa Rica, where he fled after his party’s founder was killed by security forces in 1979.

The front-runner in the race is Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, 43, a Christian Democrat running a populist-style campaign that has voters calling him by his first name.

Most political polls say the runner-up will be Jorge Carpio Nicolle of the center-right Union of the National Center. Carpio, 52, a neophyte in political campaigns, is the owner of one of the largest newspapers in the country, El Grafico.

Also to be elected are 100 members of the Legislative Assembly and about 300 mayors.

Neutrality Pledged

Both the U.S. Embassy and the Guatemalan military have pledged neutrality in the presidential race, and political observers say the two appear to have stayed out of the campaign.

Carpio’s conservative politics are believed to be slightly more in line with the Reagan Administration’s, particularly with regard to Nicaragua. Cerezo, on the other hand, supports the Guatemalan army’s position of neutrality in Central America.

Guatemalan voters, accustomed to fraudulent elections and military coups, view the elections with a mixture of mild hope and cynicism.

Maria Vasquez de Colop, 45, who sells clothing in downtown Guatemala City, said she plans to give elections “one more try,” by voting for the candidate who promises the least, because the ones who promise the most never deliver.

“It could be that there is a change with a civilian, but almost all of them are the same, and they probably would work the same as the military,” Vasquez said.

Economy a Big Issue

While the campaigns have focused heavily on personalities rather than issues, the economy is clearly in the forefront of people’s thoughts.

“What worries us is that thousands and thousands of us are without work,” Maria Vasquez said. “We aren’t asking for anything free, just for work.”

Guatemala’s economy is in worse condition than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s, owing largely to mismanagement and corruption by the three military regimes that have ruled since 1978.

About half of the work force is unemployed or working at marginal jobs, and inflation is running between 30% and 50% in a country accustomed to single-digit inflation since the 1970s.

The currency, which for 50 years was stable at one quetzal to the U.S. dollar, has weakened to about three to the dollar because of capital flight, speculation and government printing of money to pay a $3.5-billion foreign debt.

Export Prices Falling

The prices of Guatemala’s main exports, coffee, cotton and beef, have been falling. In the year ahead, the government can expect to pay out 60% of the dollars it earns from exports to make payments on the debt.

The new civilian president will have to deal with this problem, and with an elite private sector that has resisted any new taxes, possible street demonstrations over prices if it attempts to cut government subsidies, and newly legalized unions of public employees likely to push for higher wages. The minimum wage now ranges from about 50 cents a day for unskilled workers to about $1.30 a day.

Military governments have controlled politics here since rightist army officers supported by the CIA overthrew President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. Another civilian, Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro, was elected in 1966, but he was forced to relinquish much of his power to the army.

The civilian president elected this time will inherit the government from Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores, who came to power as the result of the coup, in August, 1983, that overthrew Gen. Efrain Rios Montt. Rios Montt had overthrown Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia in March, 1982.

Military Sway Expected

Political observers say they believe that the military will continue to exercise its control through the minister of defense, who by law must be a high-ranking officer, through the 900,000-strong army-run civil self-defense patrols, and through intergovernmental coordinating committees in each of the provinces. These committees, which have been run by the military, coordinate all government activities, from education to public works.

None of the candidates appears to be interested or willing to prosecute the military for past human rights abuses, as President Raul Alfonsin is attempting to do in Argentina.

Human rights groups have not been allowed to work openly in Guatemala, and figures on abuses are hard to pin down. Between 30,000 and 50,000 people have been killed or have disappeared here since 1978, most of them, it is believed, at the hands of security forces.

The Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States estimates that people disappeared last year at the rate of 80 a month, and the disappearances continue. On one day this week, two kidnapings were mentioned in the local press.

About 150 members of the Mutual Support Group, a semi-clandestine organization of relatives of the disappeared, locked themselves in the Guatemala City cathedral on Thursday to demand an investigation of human rights violations. Two of the group’s leaders were killed last April.