Voting in Guatemala’s presidential election ended on Sunday, following a tumultuous campaign that saw two leading candidates barred from running and the top electoral crimes prosecutor flee the corruption-weary country.
Just after 6:00 pm (0000 GMT), the Electoral Supreme Court (TSE) announced the close of polls that — with a few isolated exceptions — went smoothly.
Former first lady and opinion poll front-runner Sandra Torres, a 63-year-old businesswoman, said after casting her ballot that she was “optimistic, we’ve worked hard … I’ll be the first woman president.”
But her closest rival, Alejandro Giammattei, a doctor from the conservative VAMOS party, denounced an “irregular” electoral process after several candidates were excluded from the race.
Voting had opened at 7:00 am with a crowded field of 19 candidates vying to succeed unpopular outgoing president Jimmy Morales.
He had called on Guatemalans to turn out in droves to vote but when he did so, he was accosted by a young man who blasted him for being “the worst president in Guatemala’s history.”
Morales, sporting a Guatemala football jersey, kept his calm, replying: “May God bless you, my friend.”
TSE president Julio Solorzano said incidents had been reported in at least four departments.
In San Jorge, a town in the eastern Zacapa department where drug traffickers are particularly active, voting had to be suspended due to death threats made against electoral authorities, Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart said.
Solorzano, though, had earlier said he was confident there would be fewer problems in this election than the last one in 2015, where voting was suspended in eight towns due to disturbances and the burning of ballots.
Eight million Guatemalans were eligible to vote and some 40,000 police were on duty for the election, with the military deployed to guard “critical points” including prisons.
Separately, police arrested former general Luis Mendoza in the town of Salama after he’d cast his ballot on Sunday.
He is accused of participating in massacres of indigenous people during Guatemala’s civil war from 1960 to 1996.
