Ex-general Perez Molina wins Guatemala elections

Source: BBC

Former army general Otto Perez Molina has won the presidential run-off in Guatemala, electoral officials said.

With almost all ballots counted, the election tribunal said Mr Perez Molina won 55% of the vote, while his rival, Manuel Baldizon, garnered only 45%.

Mr Perez Molina will become the first former military figure to rule since the civil war ended in the 1990s.

Both candidates had promised to fight violent crime and the presence of Mexican drug gangs in the country.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15594159

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This guy was in charge of military intelligence during the civil war. I´m sure he had nothing to do with the death squads and that stuff. But he promised to take Guatemala to the World Cup.

I suspect there are a lot of people in Guatemala, especially among the indigenous minority, who either are too scared to vote at all(out of fear that the military would do horrible things to them)or feel obligated to vote for the right-wing candidates just to keep the military and their bosses in the Spanish-descent fascist elite from getting violent retribution against them, as those factions did in their bloodsoaked coup in 1954.

Memories of terror last a long time.

This is a society clearly struggling with some kind of societal PTSD. The violence is insane, especially unsolved murders of women (see the documentary "Killer's Paradise"). Guatemala is in really sad shape. Well, I guess it's a few more years before I go there. I won't go with right-wing monsters in power.

Candidates ranging from harsh right wing to rabid right wing, compulsory voting, and public announcements that anyone who couldn't prove that he or she had voted would be considered a guerrilla supporter.

That was the "democracy" that the Reagan administration lauded.