(12 Sep 2011) SHOTLIST
++16:9++
Guatemala City
1. Police officers in front of polling stations as electoral officials close down the doors
2. Electoral officials overturning bag with ballots inside
3. Various of officials beginning the counting process
4. Ballots being stamped
++16:9++
Guatemala City
5. International observers at a voting station
6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) name unavailable, international observer from the Organisation of American States:
"In many tables and due to, I believe, lack of organisation of the officials in charge, the queues are extremely long and the waiting time sometimes is over 40-45 minutes"
7. Mid of observers at a voting station
8. Presidential candidate for the People''s Party and retired general Otto Perez Molina voting
++4:3++
Flores
9. Presidential candidate for the Lider''s Party, Manuel Baldizon, arriving at polling station
10. Baldizon at the booth
11. Baldizon casting his ballot
++4:3++
Guatemala City
12. Various of presidential candidate and former Peace Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu casting her ballot
STORYLINE
Counting was underway late on Sunday in Guatemala''s presidential election race.
A former military general who softened his image as the "iron fist" to promote social programmes and democracy appeared to be a favourite to control Guatemala''s epidemic crime rates and was the leading candidate heading into the vote.
Voters disappointed in outgoing President Alvaro Colom''s failure to reduce crime have indicated that Otto Perez Molina may be the best person to lead the charge in a nation with one of the highest murder rates in the Western Hemisphere.
Violence is epidemic in this nation of 14.7 (m) million people, and organised crime has overrun many regions. Guatemala has a murder rate of 45 per 100,000, according to a report by the World Bank.
Perez, who lost to Colom in 2007, would be the first former military leader elected president since democracy was restored in the country in 1986, after the military dictatorships of the 1970s and ''80s.
A UN-sponsored truth commission found that 200,000 people were killed in Guatemala''s 36-year civil war, 93 percent of them by state forces and paramilitary groups.
Nonetheless, many credit Perez as having played a key role in the march toward democracy, including negotiating the 1996 peace accords that ended the conflict.
Seventy-five percent of Guatemalans live in poverty, and the indigenous and rural poor who were most hurt by the war are also bearing the brunt of the current violence.
In the most recent polls, Perez had the support of as many as 48 percent of voters, followed by businessmen Manuel Baldizon with 18 and Eduardo Suger with 10 percent. All are right-leaning.
Baldizon, a tycoon-turned-political populist, has promised to employ the death penalty, now rarely used, and to televise executions.
Among a field of 10 candidates, the only leftist running is Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Mayan activist Rigoberta Menchu, who is polling with little more than 2 percent.
Perez needs more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a November runoff. The winner takes office in January.
International observers monitoring the election have only encountered some minor organisation issues so far.
"In many tables and due to, I believe, lack of organisation of the officials in charge the queues are extremely long and the waiting time sometimes is over 40-45 minutes," said one observer on Sunday.
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