The polls opened at 11:00 a.m. and are scheduled to close at 6:00 p.m., in an electoral event that brings together 9.3 million Guatemalans. The date has arrived without a clear favorite among the candidates for the Presidency, while the citizens will also renew their Congress and elect their municipal representatives. The day progresses with reports of attacks on electoral officials.
First modification:
The main contenders in the race to replace the current Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei, have already cast their votes at various polling stations throughout Guatemalan territory.
Former first lady Sandra Torres deposited her ballot at the Colegio Verde Valle, east of Guatemala City. Polls prior to the election place Torres at the head of the electoral race, with 21.3% of the citizens’ intention to vote, a percentage that is higher than that of his opponents, but that would not be enough to reach the Presidency in the first round.
The candidate, from the National Unity of Hope party, denounced certain irregularities at the beginning of the electoral process. “We have had information that the government party is giving away food and there are power outages. We are concerned about anomalies,” Torres told local media.
On the other hand, Zury Ríos Sosa, daughter of former coup dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, cast her vote in the historic center of the Guatemalan capital. She invited the population to participate in the election day, in which she seeks to become the next president of the country. “Let’s go out to the voting centers. It is important to exercise our democracy,” said the candidate.
On the other hand, Edmond Mulet, former representative of Guatemala at the United Nations and presidential candidate ranked second in the polls with just over 13% of voting intentions, also charged against the ruling party, accusing it of “using money and power ” to get votes.
“I hope everything goes well. At this time we cannot speculate. Let’s hope that everything happens as normal and that there is no ‘hairy hand’,” Mulet told local media.
Both on the eve of the elections and in the early hours of June 25, incidents have been reported in the municipality of San Juan del Golfo, on the outskirts of the capital. 130 members of the Vote Receiving Boards and the Electoral Board were intercepted by armed men, according to a complaint by the Departmental Electoral Board of Guatemala.
These men would have sprayed electoral officials with gasoline threatening to burn them, which would have caused the immediate resignation of more than a hundred people, according to the report by Andrés Suárez Jaramillo, France 24 correspondent in the country. The event jeopardizes the ability of polling stations to clearly count the ballots cast.
News in development…
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