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PENPIX-Guatemala's presidential candidates

06 Sep 2007 17:47:09 GMT
Source: Reuters

Sept 6 (Reuters) - Guatemala votes for a new president on Sunday with 14 candidates running in the Central American coffee-growing nation that is famous for majestic Mayan ruins but riddled with violence and poverty.

The two leading contenders -- right-wing former general Otto Perez Molina and leftist hopeful Alvaro Colom -- are unlikely to earn the 50 percent support needed to win outright, which will mean a November run-off between them.

Here are short portraits of the leading candidates.

OTTO PEREZ MOLINA

A hardline, silver-haired former general who has come from behind to catch Colom in the latest opinion polls, Perez Molina backs using the army to fight rampant crime caused by drug-smuggling mobs and violent youth gangs.

Perez Molina, 56, the ex-head of army intelligence, has capitalized on the crime crisis to win support. His Patriotic Party's emblem is a clenched fist, symbolizing a firm hand to crush criminals.

Perez Molina commanded troops in the El Quiche department in the 1980s when massacres of civilians happened in the 1960-96 civil war, but he has not been prosecuted for any atrocities.

ALVARO COLOM

A 56-year-old chain smoking businessman, Colom has promised to fight poverty and clean up the police and justice system. His center-left National Unity for Hope party has had 20 members killed since campaigning began last year, and Colom says drug traffickers trying to infiltrate the party are behind most of the murders.

After running textile factories, he moved into politics in the 1990s as deputy economy minister and then as head of a land-for-peace fund that helped resettle refugees and former combatants of the civil war.

Several of Colom's relatives were killed during the war, including his uncle Manuel Colom Argueta, who was also a presidential candidate and prominent leftist. The military assassinated Colom Argueta in 1979.

ALEJANDRO GIAMMATTEI

The official candidate for conservative President Oscar Berger's ruling GANA coalition was chosen to run after a brief stint as head of the country's crumbling prison system that was marked by violence.

A doctor and former fireman who walks with crutches because of multiple sclerosis, Giammattei sent 3,000 troops and police, supported by helicopters, on a raid on Pavon prison last year.

Prisoners had controlled the complex outside the capital for over a decade, living in private houses with luxury goods and running organized crime rings. Seven inmates were killed in what Giammattei says was a shoot out, but the human rights ombudsman's office says police killed them.

RIGOBERTA MENCHU

The Nobel laureate is easily the best known candidate outside Guatemala but is trailing badly in the polls, lacking the campaign funds and political power base needed to become Latin America's first-ever indigenous woman president.

The Mayan rights activist from Guatemala's western highlands won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for defending victims of the civil war.

Her autobiography made her an international symbol of the plight of Guatemala's Mayan Indians, who suffered the brunt of violence during the war and still live in grinding poverty in most parts of the country.

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Last updated:Thu Sep 6 17:47:22 2007