3,000 Protest Election Bid of Ex-Dictator
About 3,000 Guatemalans dressed in black marched in the capital against the presidential candidacy of a former dictator.
“No to the assassins!” demonstrators shouted, referring to the candidacy of retired Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, who held power for 18 months after a March 1982 coup at the height of the country’s bloody 36-year civil war. He is accused by rights groups of overseeing massacres.
Last week the Constitutional Court, the nation’s highest tribunal, determined that he could run for president with the ruling Guatemalan Republican Front despite a constitutional ban on ex-dictators contesting presidential elections.
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