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Ex dictator campagns for comeback Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Guatemalan ex-dictator campaigns for a comeback
11/02/03
WILL WEISSERT
The Associated Press
MORAZAN, Guatemala - The former dictator in the powder-blue suit and white fedora looked uneasy as he took the microphone and faced a small, spirited crowd of supporters.
But just seconds into his 20-minute stump speech, Efrain Rios Montt was yelling and shaking his fist with a fervor reminiscent of his days as an evangelical minister.
"We need to change Guatemala, but the president can't do it," the retired brigadier general bellowed. "The senator, the mayor, the police, they can't do it! The people need to do it! Each one of you, you are Guatemala!"
At 77, the man known across Guatemala as El General is trying to make a comeback via the ballot box - a prospect that has divided his country and made U.S. officials nervous. All polls show him trailing, but Rios Montt is counting on populist rhetoric and hidden support in the countryside to sweep him back into office 21 years after a coup ended his military government.
His 18-month dictatorship came at the height of a 1960-96 civil war that pitted leftist guerrillas against the government and killed 200,000 people.
Washington, his supporter in the Cold War years, now warns that a Rios Montt victory could jeopardize the U.S. relationship with Guatemala. Two dozen opposition candidates in the Nov. 9 presidential, legislative and local elections, almost all opponents of Rios Montt's party, have been murdered.
He stands accused of genocide in Guatemala and before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He is president of Congress, but his term is up in January, and if he loses the presidential election, his immunity from prosecution as an elected official will end.
Montt has accused Washington of meddling in Guatemalan politics, and calls the genocide charges "irresponsible."
Leading the polls is Oscar Berger, the conservative former mayor of Guatemala City, with about 37 percent. Left-leaning Alvaro Colom is 12 points behind. Rios Montt scores about 11 percent.
But the former dictator's supporters say the polls mean little because they don't reach the rural areas where he's strongest. In July, thousands of Rios Montt supporters from around the country descended on Guatemala City, shutting down the capital to protest a court order declaring his presidential candidacy unconstitutional because he had participated in a coup.
A higher court lifted the ban just a few days later.
Dictators and democracy:
As democracy spreads in Latin America, it's not unusual to find ex-dictators hitting the presidential campaign trail. Daniel Ortega toppled Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza and ruled for 11 years but then lost three election bids. Hugo Banzer of Bolivia ran the government as a military dictator from 1971 to 1978, then was democratically elected president in 1997.
As dictator of his Ohio-sized country of 14 million, Rios Montt cut an unusual figure. The preacher in him restricted alcohol sales and gave podium-pounding, evangelical TV addresses every Sunday. As El General he went after civilians suspected of supporting the guerrillas, mounting a scorched-earth campaign in the isolated highlands that reduced hundreds of villages to cinders.
He also built "model villages" for thousands of people left homeless by the war, forced them to join civil patrol units to spy on their neighbors, and rewarded the most helpful with food, clothing and small farms. Today, they are the basis for Rios Montt's rural support.
In a recent interview, Montt said he's the same strong-willed leader Washington supported more than two decades ago.
His opponents say that's what they're afraid of.
"He's a man who talks about obeying the law but tells lies, a man who gives discourses about respecting all Guatemalans but who committed brutal human rights violations ...," said Col. Francisco Gordillo, who helped Rios Montt carry out his coup but was later fired from his government. "Rios likes conflictive government. He likes to pit the poor against the rich and create political chaos."
Rios Montt's running mate, Edin Barrientos, countered that El General's dictatorship had no choice but to take a hard line against guerrilla forces.
"We were at war, and he had to govern," Barrientos said. "I can understand a policy that uses civil patrols to let the people themselves defend their own lives, their own land. That's not a human rights violation, it's a military plan that won the war."
Rios Montt makes no apologies for what he did as dictator. "If you look at my past in a legal light, you see I followed the law," he said. "The law is hard, but the law is the law."
He maintains he's the only candidate who can stand up to big business and fight for the poor.
On a recent Sunday morning, Rios Montt took that message to Morazan, a corn- and mango-growing town 70 miles east of Guatemala City.
Among the roughly 300 supporters who turned out was city worker Jose Buencasa.
"We're not looking for miracles. We just want someone who can improve our country," he said. "He's a strong leader, a president who can impose order."
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