Guatemala elects TV comic

GUATEMALA CITY - Now that former comedian Jimmy Morales has ridden a tide of voter frustration to win Guatemala's presidency, it remained unclear Monday about what political neophyte might do once in office.

So far he's given few clues, beyond hinting at reviving a dormant border dispute with neighboring Belize, or attaching GPS locating devices to teachers to make sure they are in class.

Morales' campaign was heavy on style and light on concrete policy proposals and as landslide vote numbers rolled in on Sunday night, his campaign headquarters looked a lot like a TV variety show, with a band and dancers.

His biggest campaign pledge - like that of nearly all other candidates - was to fight the entrenched corruption that forced the resignation of his predecessor, Otto Perez Molina, but Morales has spoken little about his own party's ties to some of the most conservative sectors of Guatemala's military, which has been struggling to avoid being held accountable for massacres committed during the country's 1960-96 civil war.

"Jimmy Morales has no concrete plans to fight corruption, or anything else, for that matter. He just doesn't have any," said political analyst Renzo Rosal, who thinks the average voter went for Morales because "it's better to have him, than the other gang of thieves."

He predicted that Morales, whose nationalistic National Convergence Front won few seats in Congress, will wind up cobbling together alliances with the very ruling elite that was targeted by mass anticorruption protests this summer.

National Convergence itself was founded by retired army officers, some of whom have been implicated in rights abuses during the 1960-1996 civil war that pitted the army against leftist guerrillas. Former military dictator Efrain Rios Montt is fighting charges of genocide for his role in the conflict, in which 200,000 died.

Morales has sought to distance himself from the officers who founded the party, but one of them, Col. Edgar Ovalle, was a close campaign adviser and will head the party's tiny, 11-member contingent in the 158-seat Congress.

Morales caused alarm in neighboring Belize, which has had a long territorial dispute with Guatemala, when he appeared on a television cooking show and said, "We are on the point of losing Belize."

As he concentrated on chopping a tomato, Morales told host Beatriz Colmenares that Guatemala can still go to international courts where "we can fight for that territory, or at least a part of that territory," though he clearly was speaking only of diplomatic action.

Election officials and international observers said the vote came off without violence.