A dictator’s daughter, a former first lady and a UN diplomat lead the pack of 22 candidates vying for the Guatemalan presidency in elections Sunday that will likely lead to a runoff in August.
AFP takes a look at the frontrunners — all three of whom oppose the legalization of gay marriage and abortion in a staunchly Catholic country.
– Sandra Torres –
Torres, 67, placed second in Guatemala’s last two elections, in 2019 and 2015.
She is the ex-wife of deceased leftist former president Alvaro Colom, arrested for fraud in a case that never went to trial.
Torres herself was detained in 2019 on charges of illicit campaign funding, but the case was dropped last year.
From the same center-left National Unity of Hope party as Colom — the largest in Congress — this is Torres’s fourth shot at the presidency.
She had first sought to run in 2011, divorcing Colom as he was still in office to bypass a constitutional disqualification for close relatives of presidents. Her candidacy was rejected nevertheless.
In her latest campaign, Torres’s focus has been on high levels of violent crime, a major voter concern.
She has praised the tactics of Nayib Bukele of neighboring El Salvador in his controversial “war” on gangs, with mass arrests earning him adoration from crime-weary citizens but sparking concerns over rights violations.
She has promised help for the poor in the form of feeding and educational programs.
Torres, who hails from northern Guatemala, earned a degree in communication science and ran a textile business before entering politics.
In 2002 she divorced her first husband, with whom she has four children, marrying Colom in 2003.
Torres is “a woman of leadership, character and determination,” according to her campaign manager Adim Maldonado.
Congressman Oscar Argueta, a former ally, told AFP Torres was “hard-working and tenacious” but quick to “discard” people once they are no longer useful to her.
– Edmond Mulet –
Lawyer and diplomat Mulet, 72, is running his second presidential campaign. He came third in 2019.
He is a fierce critic of the government of conservative Alejandro Giammattei, on whose watch anti-graft prosecutors and critical journalists have been detained or gone into exile, raising international concern.
“We are slowly sliding into an authoritarian model,” Mulet told AFP this month.
He represents the centrist Cabal party he founded in 2020. It has no seats in parliament.
His platform includes proposals for a universal pension, free medicines, expanded access to the internet, and youth unemployment projects.
Mulet also wants to shrink government and fight corruption.
Unlike Rios and Torres, he is critical of Bukele’s approach to violent crime, a problem he said at a campaign rally Thursday he would tackle with a heightened security deployment “of at least 18 months.”
Born in Guatemala City, Mulet worked as a journalist before embarking on a political career.
In 1992, he was president of Guatemala’s congress, then served as ambassador to the United States and the European Union.
At the United Nations, he was assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations and chief of staff to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
He had also led the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, where he once claimed to have “eradicated extortion, the bandits” though the country remains mired in violence today.
In 1981, Mulet was arrested, but never convicted, for allegedly aiding the illegal fast-tracking of adoptions of children left orphaned by Guatemala’s civil war. He insists his actions were lawful and he meant only to help.
An ally in Mulet’s 2019 campaign — in which he came third — lawmaker Estuardo Rodriguez, told AFP of the candidate: “He is tactful, but his hand does not shake” when action is needed.
Mulet is married and has two children.
– Zury Rios –
It is also the fourth shot at the presidency for Rios, 55.
Her father was dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1982, ruling Guatemala with an iron fist for just over a year until he himself was overthrown.
In 2019, Rios was second in opinion polls but excluded from running due to a constitutional ban on candidates with blood ties to coup leaders. She had been allowed to run in 2015, when she came fifth.
The ban still stands, but is interpreted by Guatemala’s electoral tribunal on a case-by-case basis.
Representing a coalition of two right-wing parties, Rios has vowed to reintroduce the death penalty.
In her final campaign address Thursday, she vowed to put “God at the center” of any government she leads.
Also from the capital, she served as a lawmaker from 1996 to 2012.
She is married to US businessman Gregory Charles Smith, and has a daughter with a former US Congressman.
In 2003, Rios was linked to violent protests, in which a journalist died, to pressure the courts to allow her father to stand as a presidential candidate. He came third.
Rios has “a capacity for work and a deep knowledge of the State,” said lawyer Ricardo Mendez Ruiz, the leader of a right-wing “anti-terrorism” foundation that backs her candidacy.
But former President Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004) describes her as someone driven by “power for power’s sake.”