Guatemalans to face a stark choice

Two men from opposite sides of the political spectrum began an eight-week sprint Monday to persuade Guatemalans that the ballot box can rescue their troubled country.

Alvaro Colom, a former businessman with center-left leanings, finished first in Sunday’s first round of presidential voting, about 5 percentage points ahead of Otto Perez Molina, a former army general, according to nearly complete official results Monday.

Guatemala is a nation threatened by multiple crises, including crime, unemployment and a long-standing exodus of workers to the United States. Sunday’s first round of voting suggested that Guatemala’s 12.7 million citizens are sharply divided about how to make things right here. They have until Nov. 4 to decide whether the country needs a strongman who will crack down on organized crime or a man of compassion who will lead a regime of tolerance and social justice.

“Here in Guatemala, if you leave your house, only God knows if you’re going to come back alive,” said Eduardo Perez, a restaurant owner in the city of Antigua who voted for Perez Molina. “The general will bring us security.”

In the small town of San Juan Suchitepequez, north of Guatemala City, big-city crime is a relatively distant worry. But unemployment is a fact of daily life. In the nearby hillsides, clandestine workshops produce fireworks and offer precious jobs. Many parents send their children to work in them, despite the obvious dangers.

“We’re hoping for a change, for more work and more jobs,” said Jose Emilio Xolix, a father of two and a shoe-factory worker who voted with his wife and two daughters in San Juan Suchitepequez. “I like the proposals Colom has made.”

On Sunday, Colom carried rural and Maya voters such as Xolix, who were swayed by his anti-poverty plan. Colom’s “Program for Government,” bound in a green book (the color of his Unity for Hope party), was an oft-used prop at his campaign rallies.

Colom defeated Perez Molina of the conservative Patriot Party in 18 of Guatemala’s 21 provincial departments. In some rural, predominantly Maya communities in western Guatemala, Colom outpolled Perez Molina by more than 2 to 1.

In central Guatemala City, however, Perez Molina came close to winning two votes for each one cast for Colom. Perez Molina handily carried the remainder of the capital city and did better among “ladinos,” as people of European and mixed descent are known here, according to official results and exit polls.

Perez Molina targeted urban voters with his promise to wield a “firm hand” against delinquents. His experience as the onetime head of Guatemala’s feared military intelligence unit lent credence to the idea that the organized crime groups will fear him.

“People are desperate,” said Victor Galvez, a political analyst here. “Rich, poor, middle class: They’re all suffering from this violence. They say, ‘This man has the guts for this fight.’ ”

The anti-crime message saved Perez Molina’s campaign, Galvez said. So did a series of spectacular killings that refocused attention on violence, including the drug-related assassination in February of three visiting Salvadoran legislators.

In January, Colom held a 20-percentage-point lead in the polls. By Sunday, that lead had almost evaporated.

“The small margin will make it difficult for Colom to form alliances and pull in [the] political parties” that lost out in the vote, said Francisco Garcia, an analyst at the Central American Institute for Political Studies here. There were 14 candidates on the ballot.

The largest pool of votes is in the hands of the right-wing Grand National Alliance and Guatemalan Republican Front parties, which finished third and fourth. They are likely to back Perez Molina, Garcia said.

But Perez Molina faces challenges too: Are Guatemalans willing to elect a general, even a retired one, to run their country little more than a decade after the end of one of the most brutal military dictatorships in Latin American history?

Perez Molina rose through the ranks of the army during the long war against leftist rebels that left tens of thousands of peasants dead. A new book implicates him in the 1998 killing of Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi, a leading human rights activist who had chronicled human rights abuses during the dictatorships.

Patriot Party strategists said Monday that they would launch a campaign to remind voters of Perez Molina’s credentials as a military reformist. Among other things, in 1993 the then-general opposed President Jorge Serrano Elias’ move to shut down Congress.

But many Guatemalans fear that the former general could trample the country’s fragile democracy.

“Half the things he’s proposed doing, he can’t do, because it’s not 1982 anymore” said Galvez, referring to the years of military dictatorship. “People are expecting drastic and quick solutions. . . . But you just can’t declare a state of siege to fix the crime problem.”

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hector.tobar@latimes.com

Special correspondent Alex Renderos contributed to this report.