Second round runoff likely in Guatemala vote

GUATEMALA CITY, Sep 10 (Reuters) Guatemala's presidential election was headed for a runoff between a right-wing former general and a center-left candidate after neither garnered enough votes to win outright, an exit poll showed.

Moderate left businessman Alvaro Colom was ahead of former Gen. Otto Perez Molina, who wants the army on the streets to clamp down on crime in the Central American nation that has one of the world's highest murder rates.

But Colom was well short of 50 per cent support needed for a first-round victory, so a Nov. 4 second round between the pair loomed.

The online exit poll by El Periodico, one of the country's major newspapers, gave Colom 36 per cent of the vote, with Perez Molina trailing at 29 per cent.

The election campaign was marred by the worst political violence since the end of a civil war in 1996, as drug gangs and political rivals killed 50 people during the campaign.

But balloting was peaceful, with only minor incidents as Guatemalans voted in jungles dotted with Mayan pyramids, in towns nestling under volcanoes and in the bustling capital.

Partial results from about 10 per cent of polling booths in Guatemala City and surrounding area showed no clear tendency.

In opinion polls before Sunday's vote, the two top contenders were running neck and neck after Perez Molina, a head of military intelligence during the 1960-1996 civil war, gained on front-runner Colom.

Perez Molina had capitalized on the violence with his ''strong fist'' message against crime and corruption. He may pick up more support in the second round if conservative voters who backed other candidates cast ballots for him.

In a sign of how split Guatemalans are, Daniel and Angelika Perez, who have been married for 50 years, voted for different candidates.

''I am going to vote for Perez Molina because there is a lot of crime and he's a military man and is trained to give us security,'' said Angelika, 71, a retired teacher.

''Trained to kill people,'' interrupted Daniel, 73, a retired civil servant who supported Colom.

INDIGENOUS WOMEN In the mountain Mayan village of San Juan Sacatepequez, 30 km from the capital, indigenous women in traditional bright-colored dresses voted, children dangling on their backs in slings.

''There's an awful lot of poverty. Whoever wins, I just want them to make things better,'' said resident Maria Emiliana Noj de Boror.

Guatemala, a crossroads for Colombian cocaine moving though Central America on its way to the United States, has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with almost 6,000 people killed in the country of 13 million last year. An inept justice system leaves most crimes unsolved.

A supporter of the death penalty, Perez Molina also wants to declare a state of emergency in areas overrun by drug traffickers and tattooed street gang members, blamed for a wave of grisly killings.

Colom, a soft-spoken former deputy economy minister, says voting for Perez Molina would be a step backward into the dark days of the civil war that killed close to 250,000 people.

A UN-backed report blamed the army for 85 per cent of the war-era killings. Many were civilian Mayan peasants.

Alejandro Giammattei, the ruling party candidate of President Oscar Berger's conservative GANA coalition, had been running third in polls.

Much of the bloodshed has come from powerful drug barons trying to force their candidates into office. Guatemalans also voted on Sunday for a new Congress and local officials.

In the eastern part of the country, several suspected drug dealers are running for public office. Other killings have been rivals shooting each other. None of the cases has been solved.

Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu was also one of the candidates, aiming to become Latin America's first indigenous female president, but she trailed badly in polls.

REUTERS JT AS0945