AlQa'dah 23, 1436, September 07, 2015, SPA -- Voting ended Sunday in Guatemala, in a general election to pick the next president of the troubled Central American nation, along with other positions, dpa reported. Polling stations were open for 11 hours until 6 pm (0000 GMT) for 7.5 million registered voters to cast their ballots. The first preliminary results were expected four hours later. Opinion polls anticipated that none of the 14 candidates would get more than half the votes, which would make a runoff necessary on October 25. Otto Perez Molina, who became president in 2012, resigned Wednesday after being charged with corruption and stripped of his immunity as president. He was to remain in detention until at least Tuesday. His former vice president Roxana Baldetti has been in prison since last month over the wide-ranging corruption case. Alejandro Maldonado, who succeeded Baldetti, has been appointed to lead the country until the new president takes office in January. Conservative Manuel Baldizon, who lost the runoff against retired general Perez Molina in 2011, was regarded as the front-runner in the election. He was likely to face either comedian Jimmy Morales, a centrist outsider, or former first lady Sandra Torres, a social democrat, in a potential final ballot. Guatemalan voters were also electing 158 legislators, 338 mayors and 20 members of the Central American Parliament on Sunday.
