A runoff next month will decide who will become Guatemala’s next president, with comedian-turned-politician Jimmy Morales as the race’s front-runner in the Central American nation battling a political crisis.
Guatemala, a country of 15 million, is reeling from a corruption scandal that has prompted the resignation of its president, vice president and more than a dozen Cabinet members, ministers and government officials.
No candidate came close to the 50% plus one needed to lock up the vote in Sunday’s election. Nearly 96% of the votes have been tallied so far.
Morales, 46, had 1.14 million votes, or more than 24%. Businessman Manuel Baldizón, 45, is running neck and neck with former first lady Sandra Torres, 59, with 19.41% and 19.25% of the vote, respectively, according to Guatemala’s electoral tribunal.
Morales will face off with either Baldizón or Torres, whoever ends up ahead once the final tally becomes official. The runoff election will be October 25.
The National Convergence Front’s Morales jumped into the political scene in 2011 with a failed run for mayor of Mixco, a Guatemala City suburb. Baldizón is with the Renewed Democratic Liberty Party, and, Torres, former first lady from 2008 to 2011, is with the National Unity of Hope party. She is divorced from former President Álvaro Colom.
Millions of Guatemalans cast ballots in Sunday’s general election to choose a new president, vice president, 158 members of Congress and 338 mayors. A runoff election for the presidency was widely expected with 14 presidential candidates.
Otto Pérez Molina, 64, submitted his resignation as President on Thursday, two days after the Guatemalan Congress voted in favor of stripping the former military commander of his prosecutorial immunity as head of state. The vote was unanimous, 132-0, and Pérez Molina is now in custody.
Roxana Baldetti, 53, the former vice president, resigned May 8 and is also behind bars. According to the Guatemalan attorney general’s office and a U.N. investigating commission, Pérez Molina, Baldetti and close aides within the administration received bribes in exchange for lowering taxes for companies seeking to import products into Guatemala. Pérez Molina and Baldetti both have categorically denied the accusations.
Alejandro Maldonado, 79, vice president under Pérez Molina, was sworn in as his successor Thursday. He had been vice president since May when he took over after Baldetti’s resignation. Maldonado has asked for the resignation of the entire Cabinet.
Large protests in capital
Guatemala City has been the scene of protests demanding the resignation of the president and vice president since April 16 when authorities made public the alleged corruption scheme. Tens of thousands of people protested August 27 at Constitution Square in the capital in what the Guatemalan media described as the largest demonstration so far this year.
Gabriel Wer, a student at Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala City and a leader of the Justice Now Movement, cast his ballot dressed in black to show his belief that the current political system is dead.
“We’re in mourning because we know the electoral system we have nowadays is not the best; it’s not the one we could have, and it’s not the one we deserve,” Wer told CNN en Español. “We wanted to show in a very visible way that we’re outraged with this situation, with a process that has been corrupted. There are more than 1,400 candidates being investigated who are still running (out of a total of 23,497).”
Álvaro Montenegro, another member of Justice Now, said voters have chosen different ways of protesting corruption.
“Many people called for annulling votes. Others called for leaving ballots blank,” Montenegro said. “Other voters were casting ballots for the small parties, rejecting polls and choosing a candidate that was not among the leaders.”
Sunday’s was Guatemala’s eighth election since the Central American country returned to democracy after a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996.
Altogether, Guatemalan voters were choosing nearly 4,000 elected officials at almost 3,000 polling places. There are 7.5 million registered voters in Guatemala.
