General elections were held in

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by H ...

on 7 March 1982.

Dieter Nohlen Dieter Nohlen (born 6 November 1939) is a German academic and political scientist. He currently holds the position of Emeritus Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. An expe ...

(2005) ''Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I'', p323

Ángel Aníbal Guevara Ángel Aníbal Guevara Rodríguez () is a Guatemalan soldier and politician. He was born in La Democracia, Escuintla in 1924. Having served as defense minister in the previous administration, Guevara was victorious in the 7 March 1982 presi ...

, hand-picked successor of previous president

Romeo Lucas García Romeo Montague () is the male protagonist of William Shakespeare's tragedy ''Romeo and Juliet''. The son of Lord Montague and his wife, Lady Montague, he secretly loves and marries Juliet, a member of the rival House of Capulet, through a priest ...

, was declared the winner of the presidential election and was scheduled to take office on 1 July. However, the elections were widely denounced as fraudulent by elements on both sides of the political spectrum and an

army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

-led

coup d'état A coup d'état (; French for 'stroke of state'), also known as a coup or overthrow, is a seizure and removal of a government and its powers. Typically, it is an illegal seizure of power by a political faction, politician, cult, rebel group, m ...

on 23 March instead installed the three-man

junta Junta may refer to: Government and military * Junta (governing body) (from Spanish), the name of various historical and current governments and governing institutions, including civil ones ** Military junta, one form of junta, government led by ...

of General

Efraín Ríos Montt José Efraín Ríos Montt (; 16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as ''de facto'' President of Guatemala in 1982–83. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods i ...

, General Horacio Maldonado Schaad, and Colonel

Francisco Luis Gordillo Martínez Francisco is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the masculine given name ''Franciscus''. Nicknames In Spanish, people with the name Francisco are sometimes nicknamed "Paco". San Francisco de Asís was known as ''Pater Comunitatis'' (father of ...

. Voter turnout was 45.83% in the presidential election.

Results

President

Ángel Aníbal Guevara was the candidate of the Popular Democratic Front, an alliance of the

Institutional Democratic Party The Institutional Democratic Party ( es, Partido Institucional Democrático, PID) was a Guatemalan pro-government political party active during the 1970s. The PID was formed in 1963 by Enrique Peralta Azurdia after he had seized power in a coup. ...

, the Revolutionary Party and the

National Unity Front The National Unity Front ( Spanish: ''Frente de Unidad Nacional'') is a political party in Bolivia. It was founded in late 2003 by Samuel Jorge Doria Medina Auza, who had broken with the Revolutionary Left Movement earlier that year. It has 3 ...

. Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre was the candidate of the National Opposition Union, an alliance of

Guatemalan Christian Democracy Guatemalan Christian Democracy (, DCG) was a political party in Guatemala. A moderate, reformist and anti-Communist party, it was a member of Centrist Democrat International, Christian Democrat International.Peter Calvert (2004) ''A Political an ...

and the National Renewal Party.

Congress

Of the nine seats won by the National Opposition Union, seven were taken by Guatemalan Christian Democracy and two by the National Renewal Party.

References

Bibliography

*Villagrán Kramer, Francisco. Biografía política de Guatemala: años de guerra y años de paz. FLACSO-Guatemala, 2004. *Political handbook of the world 1982. New York, 1983. {{Guatemalan elections Elections in Guatemala 1982 in Guatemala

Presidential elections in Guatemala Annulled elections Election and referendum articles with incomplete results