On December 28, 2003 a conservative lawyer and businessman won Guatemala's
second presidential election since the end of the country's 36-year civil war. Oscar Berger, a former Guatemala City mayor backed by the country's traditional elite won the presidency with 54 percent of the vote, defeating Alvaro Colom, a centrist politician running as champion of the poor. The victory will likely return Guatemala to the conservative, U.S. friendly rule of the early and mid-1990s.

For many Guatemalans, the election results signal a step forward in the peace-building process. It is a step forward because former dictator General Efrain Ríos Montt was voted off the November ballot. Montt's 18-month tenure between 1982 and 1983 oversaw a counterinsurgency, scorched-earth campaign that killed over 19 000 rural inhabitants in what was the bloodiest stretch of the civil war. In 1999, 3 years after the signing of the peace accords, the FRG won the presidential elections, placing Montt at
the head of the legislature. Backed by the most conservative parts of the army and elements of organized crime, the FRG presided over a new wave of government corruption and attacks on human rights groups. Even the U.S. Government, which supported Montt during the 1980s, spoke publicly against the FRG and Montt's recent candidacy. Now, with FRG defeat at the polls, Montt will lose the criminal immunity he enjoyed as a lawmaker, thereby clearing the way for him to be tried on genocide charges in Guatemala and abroad.

On the one hand, Montt's November defeat moves forward the current peace process. On the other hand, the results of the December run-off election are unlikely to advance the country's democratic development, an issue intricately tied to a long-lasting peace. Indeed, Berger and his right-wing Gana party, seem more inclined to restore power to Guatemala's traditional elite than share it with the country's long-suffering poor. And it can be argued that the unwillingness of Guatemala's elite to share power is what
plunged the country into civil war in the first place.

To be sure, Guatemala has the world's third worst income distribution with a small oligarchy profiting from the country's exports while the majority live in poverty. A lawyer and rancher who owns a string of travel agencies, Berger promises to build a pro-business government to stimulate Guatemala's economy by attracting private investment. He also plans to ameliorate ties with the U.S. by reviving negotiations for a Guatemalan-U.S. free trade agreement, stating at a recent press conference that "if
things with the United States aren't best at the moment, we will do everything we can to ensure they get back to normal". Critics of Berger question whether his interest in the neo-liberal agenda of free trade, privatization and less government regulation has anything to do with helping impoverished Guatemalans - throughout the history of Guatemala, economic powers, whether Guatemalan or international, have demonstrated
little genuine concern for rights and equality.

Berger's opponent, Alvaro Colom, is an engineer and ordained Mayan minister who promised to fight for the marginalized, mainly indigenous, majority. After the election, he conceded defeat but rejected an offer by Berger to take position in the new government.

Forty-seven percent of Guatemala's population of 14 million voted in the December election. During the balloting, the over 1000 Guatemalan and international observers stationed at polls across the country reported almost no violence or incidence of voting fraud.