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GUESTS: Karen Musalo, Human Rights Lawyer, Founding Director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, Carlos Gomez, MIGWA Network

Guatemalans will be heading to the polls this Sunday for the Central American nation’s presidential and congressional elections. Fourteen candidates round out the field with hardline former general Otto Perez Molina and Center-Left businessman Alvaro Colom leading the pack. According to a recent newspaper poll, Perez Molina and Colom are running in a statistical dead heat in the polls. Both leading candidates are expected to fall short of the more than fifty percent of the vote needed to avoid a November runoff election. The elections in Guatemala have been marred by the worst outburst of political violence since the end of the 1960-1996 civil war. To date, nearly fifty people have been murdered in the run up to Sunday’s election. Twenty members of Colom’s National Unity for Hope party and at least six members of Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu’s campaign have been killed. Menchu, who is trailing behind in the polls, condemned election related violence by stating that “encouraging violence leads to more violence.”