Guatemala is Central America’s most violent country and is also one of the region’s poorest. But which is more important: eradicating crime or wiping out poverty? That’s the tough question that voters in the country would have to answer when they head towards the polling stations on November 4 to elect their new President in a run-off election.
Sunday’s first round of presidential elections did not yield a clear winner among the 12 candidates fighting for Guatemala’s leadership and the election will now stretch off to a run-off between businessman Alvaro Colom and former general Otto Perez Molina. Colom has a 28.4% to 23.6% lead on the conservative Patriot Party candidate Perez with 98% of the votes counted on Monday.
Both have a different perspective on how to lift Guatemala from the mess that it is in at the moment. Perez emphasizes track down on crime to solve the country’s problem; he promises to hire more police officers, use the military to fight drug gangs and institute the death penalty whereas Colom advocates fighting poverty and creating more jobs as the solution to the nation’s woes; he also proposes an increase in social spending and a revamp of the judicial system.
In Guatemala, 51% of the people live on less than $2 a day. It is one of the 10 poorest nations in Latin America where approximately 7.1 million people live below the poverty line with just over 3.2% of the population unemployed. Decades of civil war have eaten the country from the inside and poverty still remains a huge and difficult obstacle to get past. But the high crime rate in the country too cannot be ignored. Besides being Central America’s most violent nation, Guatemala is also the main channel through which cocaine from Colombia is transported to the USA.
The voters face a tough task when they return to the polls in November this year. They have two strong personalities and two equally important issues. The country is now in the hands of the people: they themselves will decide their own fate.
Image Source: Mayacom
Source: Yahoo News
