Guatemala 2011 presidential election

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First round results are basically

Nutjob murderer general (Perez Molina) 36.06
crazy right-wing tycoon-turned insane populist (Manuel Baldizón) 23.37
Swiss-born right-wing academic of some sort educated in US (Eduardo Suger) 16.26
some dude named Mario Estrada who is probably a right-wing crook 8.62
some dude whose fanclub made a saint-like Wikipedia page for him (Harold Caballeros) 6.09
Rigoberta Menchú 3.28

Suger's vote is expected to transfer to Perez Molina, who remains the favourite. For reminders, Perez Molina is the army general who probably had lots of people killed in the 80s and who is currently a tough law and order conservative who wants to use the army to kill the druggies.

Baldizon is a crazy right-wing tycoon turned into a populist who talks about social programs, promises that Guatemala will qualify for the FIFA World Cup, wants executions televised live and so forth. There is a chance he's linked to the cartels. He took most of the left-wing vote, given that in legislative elections the governing left-wing UNE-GANA took 22.6 and his outfit only 8.9.

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People, people, calm down. The incumbent president is actually leftie, and the only reason why there was no strong leftie was because his ex-wife was barred from running because the constitution prevents relatives of the prez from running (divorcing him did not help). So instead of calling the country a "sh**thole", which it probably is, it might also help to look at the situation calmly.

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People, people, calm down. The incumbent president is actually leftie, and the only reason why there was no strong leftie was because his ex-wife was barred from running because the constitution prevents relatives of the prez from running (divorcing him did not help). So instead of calling the country a "sh**thole", which it probably is, it might also help to look at the situation calmly.

So where's the problem ?

I meant that it's terribly easy to call a place a sh**thole because of its politics - I do it all the time - but in reality, it's a bad idea. It shows both terrible hackishness and it's not a good way to analyze and compare electoral politics. If you can't analyze something in politics without resorting to calling things 'sh**tholes' or people 'idiots', then, sadly, you shouldn't be analyzing politics.