- Title: Guatemala: Campaigns In The RUN Up To Presidential Election
- Date: 7th November 1999
- Summary: The ruling-party candidate, trailing in Guatemala's first presidential campaign since a civil war ended, urged voters on October 30 to turn their backs on violence and embrace a party of peace and prosperity. "Who can show this group, this great PAN team to win elections if we have won the mayor's office four times," Oscar Berger of the right-of-centre Party for the National Advancement (PAN) told thousands of people waving flags at his last rally in the capital before the November 7 election. Vice presidential candidate Arabella Castro, a 42-year-old former president of Congress and minister of education, urged people at the rally to show their confidence in the party that exchanged "bullets for pencils for our children. " Berger's declining popularity has been attributed to Portillo's populist law-and-order campaign and growing disenchantment among the poor with a party regarded as elitist and inefficient. Guatemala's opposition candidate, whom polls say is likely to win the election, on October 31 portrayed himself as a man of the people who will fight poverty and bring national reconciliation. "The confrontation of classes has separated Guatemala," Alfonso Portillo of the rightist Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), told thousands of supporters during his last rally in the capital before next weekend's election. Speaking before some 10,000 supporters gathered in the capital's main square, Portillo accused the governing PAN of exacerbating a "class confrontation" by governing in favour of the country's rich and of ignoring the needs for justice, education and health services of millions of Guatemalans mired in poverty.
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- Location: GUATEMALA CITY
- Reuters ID: LDL0012BV19BV
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3
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- Copyright Holder: Reuters Archive
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