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ALVARO COLOM DEFIES MOST POLLS TO WIN GUATEMALA PRESIDENCY.

Article Excerpt
Guatemala has elected a new president, center-leftist Alvaro Colom. Voters gave the third-time candidate a roughly 52%-47% edge over right-wing Gen. Otto Perez Molina. The election went off fairly smoothly, according to observers, a relief after a campaign rife with assassinations and violence (see NotiCen, 2007-08-30). There were 20,000 international observers and 30,000 police on duty throughout the country on election day, Nov. 4. The margin of victory was comfortable, but turnout was light, barely 35% of eligible voters turned out. Colom had been running ahead in the polls prior to the runoff, but most surveys turned against him during the second-round campaign. Those who believed most of the polls, including Perez Molina, got an unexpected outcome.

Colom's election is something of a reversal for a Guatemalan electorate that has tended to vote for right-wingers in recent times, counterintuitive behavior for a country beset by dictatorship and civil war for most of the 20th century. Colom's Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE) is a social-democrat party. He is the first of that stripe to win the presidency in recent history.

After 1954, when the last progressive government--that of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman (1951-1954)--was brought down by a US-engineered coup, military dictatorships ruled for 32 consecutive years (1954-1986). From 1986, rightist civilian governments were elected, dominated for the most part by the powerful military until the civil war ended with the signing of the Peace Accords of December 1996.

Is the country governable?

Colom takes over a country so violent that it is not clear to all observers that he will be able to govern. He was elected by only about 18% of the 5.9 million voters, because, say analysts, so many stayed home in fear of a continuation of the attacks during the campaign.

Colom and Perez accused each other of receiving support from organized crime and of harboring the perpetrators of the mayhem within their parties. Said Daniel Wilkinson, deputy director for the Americas division of Human Rights Watch (HRW),...