GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) ? Guatemalans anxious for relief from out-of-control crime lined up to vote for a new president on Sunday with the leading candidates promising to crack down on gangs and drug cartels terrorizing the country.
A 60-year-old retired general who heads the right-wing Patriot Party, Otto Perez, is leading in opinion polls after the ruling center-leftist party failed to field a candidate. But he may fall short of the 50 percent of votes plus one needed to avoid a November run-off.
No presidential hopeful in the coffee- and sugar-exporting nation has won in the first round since Guatemala returned to democracy in 1986 after decades of military rule, but Perez says he has a chance to make history.
"We see a significant possibility of winning in the first round but it depends on the will of the Guatemalan people," Perez said as he cast his vote, mobbed by television cameras and supporters, at a school in the country's capital.
Perez's main rival is Manuel Baldizon, a well-off hotel owner and former congressman who sports slicked-back hair and square glasses, and promises handouts to the elderly and poor.
Baldizon, who defected from the ruling National Unity Party in 2008 and created the Renewed Democratic Liberation Party (Lider), voted on the island of Flores in the jungle-covered region of Peten where he was born, near Guatemala's lawless northern border with Mexico.
Campaigning focused on Guatemala's losing battle against street gangs and Mexican drug-trafficking cartels moving South American cocaine up to the United States.
About a dozen people are murdered every day in the country of 14.7 million.
The run-up to the election, which will also select lawmakers and mayors, has been marked by violence with more than 30 political murders since the start of the year, according to the independent human rights ombudsman. One former mayoral candidate is in jail accused of killing two rivals.
Long lines formed at many voting centers in the capital as people rushed to vote in the morning before an expected rainy afternoon, bolstering electoral officials' hopes for a high turnout given a record 7.3 million registered voters.
The first official results are expected around 10 p.m. local time (0400 GMT).
DRUG MONEY FUNDING CAMPAIGNS?
Baldizon, 41, got a boost in the polls in August when President Alvaro Colom's wife, Sandra Torres, was forced to pull out of the race. He has scrambled to pick up her supporters.
Colom is barred from running for re-election and a law from Guatemala's era of military dictatorships bans close relatives from seeking office. Several courts ruled against Torres' bid even after she tearily divorced her husband in a bid to skirt the rules.
Both Perez and Baldizon say they want to increase security spending.
The brutal Zetas cartel from Mexico is accused of massacres and beheadings in rural areas along its lucrative smuggling routes and street gangs wreak havoc in towns and cities.
With the country flush with drug money, observers worry illicit funds flowed into campaign coffers, since this year's election season was the most expensive in Guatemala's history.
Perez wants to hire 10,000 new police and 2,500 soldiers while Baldizon has suggested creating a national guard and supports the death penalty.
But deploying the military to the streets -- a model used by neighboring Mexico against the drug cartels -- has different implications in Guatemala, where the army committed hundreds of atrocities during the 1960-96 civil war.
Perez commanded troops during the war and also served as the head of the military intelligence unit accused of engineering assassinations of political rivals. He denies allegations he was involved in human rights abuses and points to his role signing the 1996 peace accords with leftist guerrillas as proof that he is a pragmatist.
Some voters who still have memories of the war are not convinced.
"Soldiers are not trained to govern," said 75-year-old Eduardo Higueros, also at the crowded voting station.
Higueros said he was concerned that none of the field of 10 presidential candidates said how they would pay to fight crime or improve Guatemala's stretched government finances.
Last month, Standard & Poor's put Guatemala's credit rating on negative watch due to a rising deficit, expected to top 3 percent of gross domestic product next year, and a paltry tax take, among the lowest of all the countries the agency rates.
Colom took on more debt to fund cash and food handouts to the neediest, but critics say he made few structural changes to help more than half the population living in poverty.
"If there is no security there are no jobs because businesses are robbed all the time. The (criminals) kill whoever they want," said 52-year-old merchant David Martinez. "All we want is to work in peace."
($1=7.88 Guatemalan Quetzals)
(Additional reporting by Herbert Hernandez in Guatemala City and Jorge Dan Lopez in Flores; Editing by Vicki Allen)
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