Here's part of today's story on Perez's inauguration fromthe AFP.
The CentralAmerican country has on average 18 murders a day, six times the world average,and has seen large swaths of its territory penetrated by drug cartels usingGuatemala as a transit point on their smuggling routes out of South America.
18 murders per day works out to be 6,570 murders. That's alittle higher than the 6,498 that the PNC reported for 2009 (thehighest on record) and much higher than what it reported for 2010 (5,960) and2011 (5,681). That was a little disheartening. If one uses 2010's murders, itis 16.3 per day and if you use 2011's murders, it is 15.6. Not great, but 18 to16.3 to 15.6 tells a little different story.
But then a few paragraphs later, they write that Perez
has vowed to showresults in his first six months in office, and to cut in half the murder rate —currently one of the world’s highest at 38 per 100,000 inhabitants — by the endof his term.
38 per 100,000 looks like 2011's murder rate based upon5,681 murders and a population of 14.7 million.
I guess we should be happy that at least one of thestatistics that they cite is current. However, it's still disappointing thatthey can't realize that the two numbers that they use (per and and per 100,000)are inconsistent.
Now if they would only ask the general why reducing thecountry's murder rate from 43 per 100,000 (the year before Colom took power) to38.6 per 100,000 (Colom's last year in office) is evidence of an increasing andout of control crime situation, why is he promising to cut the murder rate inhalf? By his and the Guatemalan media's standards, that would just mean thecountry is even worse off than when he took office, right?
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