Guatemala's New President 2015: Polls Likely to Be Inconclusive After Presidential Crisis
After their president resigned and was arrested, Guatemalans have gone to the polls to vote for a new leader.
Maintaining his innocence, former president Otto Pérez Molina is accused of being the mastermind behind a scheme in which businessmen paid bribes to get out of customs charges.
A great number of Guatemalans, as reported in the BBC, feel that amid such political upheaval, voting should have been postponed.
Two of the strongest candidates are Manuel Baldizón, a center to right-leaning business man, and Jimmy Morales, a comedian. As reported by Australian Broadcast News, the 46-year-old Morales has 25 percent of the voters' support, next to Baldizón’s 22.9 percent. In the case that no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, there will be a second round of voting on Oct. 25.
As reported in the New York Times, Baldizón, who finished second in the last presidential race, started his run with the slogan "It's his turn." Protestors chanted back: "It's not your turn."
Morales’ slogan is: “Neither corrupt nor a thief.” In a recent interview the entertainer turned politician said, “My main priority is to fight corruption. If we don’t restore the morality in the government, nothing else can work.”
There is a huge lack of public confidence in the Guatemalan political process right now. To show their frustration, voters have been encouraged to wear black clothes signifying mourning as they cast their votes.
Leonel Sánchez, a middle class private auditor, voiced his cynicism in the Wall Street Journal, saying, “We don’t trust politicians.”
Enrique Godoy, an economist and one time deputy mayor of Guatemala City, expressed his pessimism about the future of his nation’s politics, saying, “All of the candidates are, at different levels, more of the same. The current system is completely exhausted.”
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