Guatemala heads for elections tomorrow

9/5/2015 2:44:40 AM

(MENAFN- The Peninsula)Guatemalan President Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre (centre) receives military honours during a ceremony in Guatemala City yesterday. Guatemala’s Congress swore in vice president Maldonado as head of state on Thursday after his former boss Otto Perez resigned amid corruption allegations.

Guatemala City: Guate-mala’s presidential candidates wrapped up their campaigns yesterday two days ahead of elections at the end of a tumultuous week during which the country’s disgraced leader was jailed after months of unprecedented protests.

Sunday’s elections have been upended by the firestorm that engulfed the administration of conservative president Otto Perez who was finally forced to resign hours before a court hearing on Thursday at which a judge remanded him in custody to face prosecution for corruption.

With Guatemalans increasingly exasperated with politics-as-usual the long-time frontrunner in the presidential race right-wing lawyer Manuel Baldizon has been overtaken by comedian and political outsider Jimmy Morales according to a poll released on Thursday.

Morales who rose to fame playing the role of a naive cowboy who accidentally ends up becoming president has 25 percent support to 22.9 percent for Baldizon and 18.4 percent for former first lady Sandra Torres the poll found.

If no candidate musters more than 50 percent of the vote on Sunday the top two will face each other in a run-off on October 25. The winner will be inaugurated on January 14.

Until then the country is in the hands of newly sworn-in President Alejandro Maldonado who donned the presidential sash on Thursday in a hastily organised ceremony as his former boss appeared in court.

Maldonado a 79-year-old former Constitutional Court judge only became vice president in May after his predecessor in the post Roxana Baldetti resigned over the same scandal that felled Perez.

Prosecutors accuse Perez and Baldetti of masterminding a scheme in which businesses bribed corrupt officials to clear their imports through customs at a fraction of the actual tax rate defrauding the state of millions of dollars.

The bribes amounted to $3.8m between May 2014 and April 2015 including $800000 received by Perez and the same amount by Baldetti prosecutors allege.

AFP

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