Guatemalan Presidential Candidate Denounces Smear Campaign

The presidential candidate for the social democrat National Union of Hope (UNE) Sandra Torres on Sunday accused her opponent Manuel Baldizon, from the right-wing Liberal Renewed Democracy (Lider), of being behind the “smear campaign” against her .

“I know who is behind the smear campaign, and you know it as well,” she told journalists after casting her vote in the capital. “I will be clear: it is the party Lider, which transgresses the Electoral Law, and [its leader] Manuel Baldizon,” she added.

Asked about the electoral reform (LEYPP), she recalled that her party's lawmakers promoted the reform in Congress, and condemned the “perverted alliance between Lider and the Patriotic Party (recently-dismissed President Otto Perez Molina's) in Congress, which stopped the initiative.

She committed herself to make the ratification of the LEYPP a priority if she was elected president.

RELATED: Who Will Succeed Perez Molina as Guatemala's President?

Torres was married to former President Alvaro Colom (2008-2012), a politician known for having increased spending on social programs during his administration. She divorced him in April 2011 so she could run the presidential elections this year – as the Constitution prohibits candidates having familial links with a former president.

Colom criticized in April the appointment of Mario Leal as the party's candidate for vice president, saying Torres chose him for his financial resources. Leal, along with others, accused Colom and Torres in 2009 of being involved in the murder of the lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg. Leal funded the successful electoral campaign of Perez Molina, and served as secretary of Specific Affairs of his Presidency.

Torres’ party, UNE, proposes a total reform of the Guatemalan state, including a tax reform to depend less on public debt, while increasing public spending. During the scandal “La Linea,” she described Molina's government as a return of an “oligarchy-military alliance.”

RELATED: Guatemalans Say Reforms Needed Before Any Future Election

Baldizon's party, on the contrary, has been involved in the scandal with seven lawmakers currently charged by the U.N. Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) with money laundering and corruption.

Furthermore, 22 of his party's lawmakers did not attend the congressional session which would decide whether to lift Perez Molina's immunity. Indeed LIDER lawmakers had allied with the Patriotic Party in Parliament to delay investigations on the president's corruption charges.

Next Tuesday, judge Miguel Angel Galvez will determine whether Perez Molina will face a criminal trial, after listening to the arguments of Molina's defense, and the evidence presented by the CICIG and the Attorney General's Office.