Topic: Alvaro Colom

Álvaro Colom Caballeros (born 15 June 1951) is the President of Guatemala for the 2008–2012 term and leader of the social-democratic National Unity of Hope (UNE).

Colom was born in Guatemala City, the son of Antonio Colom Argueta and Yolanda Caballeros Ferraté, being the fourth of five siblings. His uncle, Manuel Colom, was a mayor of Guatemala City who was killed by the military in 1979 just after the creation of his political party was approved. He is also the father of Antonio Colom Szarata, the bass player of a Guatemalan pop rock band, Viento en Contra. He and his third wife, Sandra Torres, divorced in 2011. After gaining a degree as an industrial engineer at the University of San Carlos (USAC) he became a businessman involved in a variety of businesses, and a government civil servant, including being the founding General Director of the Fondo Nacional para la Paz and Vice Minister of the Economy before turning to politics. Representing the UNE (Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza) in the 2003 presidential elections, he lost to Óscar Berger on December 28, 2003--the closest a left-leaning candidate had come to winning the presidency since democracy was restored in 1985.

He was one of the two candidates to reach the second stage of the 2007 presidential election on September 9, 2007 along with Partido Patriota candidate Otto Pérez Molina. At 10:00 p.m. local time on election night, Colom was declared the newly elected president by over five percentage points, 52.7% to 47.3%, with over 96 percent of polling places counted, becoming Guatemala's first left-leaning president in 53 years.