Former army general leads Guatemala election poll
Wed, 1 Jun 2011 16:46 GMT
* Otto Perez Molina was senior figure during civil war
* First-round vote for president will be held in September
GUATEMALA CITY, June 1 (Reuters) - A former army general calling for a crackdown on drug gangs and crime in Guatemala is favored to win the country's first-round vote for president in September, a new poll showed on Wednesday.
Otto Perez Molina, an ex-head of military intelligence during Guatemala's civil war, led a wide field of early presidential hopefuls with 36.9 percent support, up from 30.4 percent in a poll a month ago.
If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, a run-off will be held in November.
Guatemala, one of the most violent countries in Latin America, is struggling with the encroachment of Mexican drug cartels and Perez Molina backs using the army to fight crime.
Some human rights groups are still wary of the army after security forces were accused of committing massacres during the Central American nation's 1960-1996 civil war.
Guatemala is one of the biggest sugar and coffee exporters in Central America.
Closing the gap on Perez Molina is former first lady Sandra Torres, who divorced her husband President Alvaro Colom to skirt a ban on presidents' relatives running for office. Colom cannot run for re-election.
Torres had 17.6 percent backing in the poll, up 11 percent from the previous survey, which was carried out by Prodatos, a Guatemala-based firm.
A distant third with 6.2 percent was Eduardo Suger, a right-wing academic who founded a private university. More than a fifth of the 1,200 respondents were undecided in the poll that had a 2.8 percentage-point margin of error.
Guatemala's electoral court still has to rule if Torres will be allowed to enter the race. Decades of military dictatorships spurred Guatemala to implement the rule against the president's close family members from taking power.
In Guatemala's last presidential race in 2007, Perez Molina lost to Colom in a second round of voting even though most polls showed him in the lead for much of the campaign. (Reporting by Mike McDonald; Editing by Eric Beech)
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