Centre-leftist Alvaro Colom has won Guatemala's presidential election after a bloody campaign in which he opposed military intervention to control the country's crime wave.
Mr Colom, a textile businessman, beat Gen Otto Perez Molina, the former head of army intelligence, by 5.4 percentage points with more than 95 per cent of votes counted.
The Central American country has been plagued by violent drug cartels and street gangs and has one of the world's highest murder rates.
But voters with memories of atrocities under military rule, rejected Gen Molina's plans to send more soldiers onto the streets, boost the use of capital punishment and emergency powers to fight crime.
"It is a 'no' to Guatemala's tragic history," Mr Colom (56) said, adding Guatemala will only cut crime by attacking poverty and removing corrupt police and judges.
Mr Colom, on his third bid to win the presidency, had accused Gen Molina of seeking to take Guatemala back to the dark days of the Cold War when the military carried out brutal counter-insurgency tactics.
"We have had a strong hand for 50 years, and it caused more than 250,000 victims in a dirty war," he said.
The outgoing government of President Oscar Berger stabilised the economy but failed to reduce the wide gap between the rich and poor in Guatemala and violent crime surged.
The election campaign was marred by violence, with more than 50 political party activists or candidates for Congress or local elections killed.
Mr Colom is due to be sworn in on January 14th, becoming the first leftist president since the end of the country's civil war in 1996.