Alejandro Giammattei elected new Guatemalan president

Ex-prison chief Alejandro Giammattei has been elected president of Guatemala, the Electoral Tribunal has declared.

With preliminary results from over 95% of the polling stations counted on Sunday night, the electoral tribunal declared Giammattei the winner with almost 59% of the vote, ahead of his centre-left rival, former first lady Sandra Torres, on 41%.

“It will be an immense honour to be president of this country that I love so much,” Giammattei told a crowd of cheering supporters at a news conference in Guatemala City. “We will rebuild Guatemala. I have no words to say how grateful I am.”

Ex-first lady Torres was running for the third time, while Giammattei was making his fourth attempt.

Guatemalans cited insecurity as their main concern, followed by unemployment, high living costs and corruption.

The president is elected for a single four-year term. Current President Jimmy Morales cannot stand for a second term.

The 63-year-old candidate stood for the right-wing Vamos (Let's Go) party and this is his fourth attempt at becoming president. Each time, he has run for a different party.

The next president takes office in January. By then Guatemala may be bogged down in the accord reached at the behest of Donald Trump which aims to turn the troubled Central American country into a buffer zone to stem migration.

Yielding to the threat of a raft of economic sanctions from Trump, outgoing Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales agreed to make his country a so-called safe third country for migrants, despite its high levels of poverty and violence.

Giammattei, a surgeon and veteran public sector bureaucrat who had failed in three previous bids to secure the presidency, has called the accord “bad news”, saying Guatemala was not ready to cope with a potential jump in asylum seekers.

He has also promised to build "a wall of prosperity" to keep Guatemalans from migrating to the US. In order to lessen the disparity between the rich and the poor, he wants to attract more foreign investment to Guatemala by strengthening the protections granted to private property.