Sawt Falasteen - Low turnout and blank ballots mark Guatemala presidential election

About 57 percent of the 9.4 million eligible voters turned out to cast their ballots -- compared with 61 percent in 2019 -- while more than seven percent of votes cast were blank, according to the electoral commission.

Five hours after polls closed, center-left candidate Sandra Torres had 14.95 percent of votes counted, followed by another center-left candidate, Bernardo Arevalo, with 12.28 percent, early results showed.

"It is not the moment to declare victory. We are prudent," Arevalo told a press conference.

Current results suggest a high possibility the election will go to a runoff on August 20, with no single candidate likely to obtain the 50 percent minimum share of votes required to win in the first round.

- Controversy -

Sunday's vote was marred by the exclusion of some candidates as well as a crackdown on the press and accusations of ballot rigging.

Two popular candidates -- Carlos Pineda and Thelma Cabrera -- had their candidacies invalidated by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, in decisions their supporters have claimed amount to political sidelining.

Torres and centrist candidate Edmond Mulet both accused the ruling party of buying votes.

"We have complaints they are buying votes" with the distribution of food, Torres said after voting at a school in the capital, Guatemala City.

Mulet said his camp had received reports "about some kind of threats" as well as candidates offering money to voters.

Voters clashed with police and military in San Jose del Golfo, 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Guatemala City, amid allegations the mayor unlawfully brought people from other districts to vote for outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei's ruling party. Voting in the town was suspended.

In San Martin Zapotitlan, police fired tear gas at demonstrators making the same allegation as they burned ballot papers at a voting center in the town. Eleven people were arrested, police chief Edgar Moran said.

Giammattei himself is term-limited, and did not run in the election.

- 'Always the same thing' -

Also up for election were 160 members of Congress, 340 mayors and 20 delegates to the Central American Parliament.

But many voters had already lost faith that the elections would bring about substantial changes.

"We woke up very early to vote. We vote with enthusiasm -- and afterward, the presidents, it's always the same thing," voter Maria Chajon told AFP, sounding resigned.

Nevertheless, the 53-year-old was one of the first in line at a polling station in San Juan Sacatepequez, a mostly Indigenous town about 20 kilometers west of the capital.

"All the institutions of the state, including the electoral process, are manipulated by groups in power linked to corruption and the traditional oligarchy," said Edie Cux, director of the local branch of Transparency International, a German NGO that tracks perceptions of corruption.

Under the conservative Giammattei, several former prosecutors from the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, a UN-backed entity closed by the government in 2019, have been arrested or forced into exile.

This month, the founder of a newspaper critical of the government was sentenced to six years in prison on money laundering charges, a move decried by press freedom groups.

According to the Prensa Libre poll, distrust in the electoral tribunal is high.

"There are no options to improve the country, they are the same as always. The law allows me to vote null and that is what I am going to do," lawyer Manuel Morales, 58, told AFP before casting his vote on the outskirts of the capital.

D.Qudsi--SF-PST