BOGOTA: Guatemalans started voting on Sunday in a cliffhanger presidential election, amid uncertainty over how the vote will influence the country’s relations with the United States.
The second election round pits the two winners of the June 16 first round, left-leaning former first lady Sandra Torres, 63, and right-winger Alejandro Giammattei, 63, against each other.
Torres took 25.5 per cent of the vote, against nearly 14 per cent for Giammattei, in the first round.
But opinion polls indicate that Giammattei has now increased his support and could succeed President Jimmy Morales, whom the constitution bars from seeking re-election.
Neither candidate has aroused great enthusiasm in the Central American country of 17 million residents, as both of them are familiar faces linked to high-level scandals.
Torres, who failed in her two previous bids to become president, is under investigation for alleged campaign finance violations.
She divorced then-president Alvaro Colom in 2011 to be able to run, as the constitution bars sitting presidents’ spouses from succeeding them.
Giammattei, who failed in four previous bids for the presidency, headed Guatemala’s penitentiary system from 2005 to 2007. He was jailed and then exonerated after a police operation at a prison led to the deaths of seven inmates while he was at the helm.
Neither candidate is believed to want to reverse Morales’ decision to expel the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which helped to launch a massive anti-corruption drive and brought down then-president Otto Perez Molina in 2015.
The CICIG also started investigating the campaign financing of Morales, who has accused the commission of getting involved in politics and announced he will not renew its mandate when it expires in September.
The country’s next president will also face the thorny issue of how to handle an agreement on stemming illegal migration through Guatemala to the US, which Morales approved in July under pressure from President Donald Trump.
Both Torres and Giammattei have criticised the agreement, which forces Guatemala — tens of thousands of whose own citizens leave annually for the US — to host migrants from Honduras and El Salvador. But a failure to implement the deal would again expose Guatemala to the threat of US sanctions, analysts said.— dpa
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