Ex-rebels poised to take El Salvador presidency

Ex-rebels poised to take El Salvador presidency

El Salvador stages a presidential election on Sunday that could see former leftist rebels complete their political takeover, 17 years after the end of a civil war in the crime-plagued Central American country.

Mauricio Funes, a 49-year-old former TV journalist, is favorite to win the vote six weeks after his radical Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) claimed victory in the country's parliamentary elections.

The head of European Union election observers, Luis Yanez Barnuevo, warned this week of growing tension in the highly polarized country ahead of the poll.
And the result will likely impact relations with the United States, which backed a repressive military government during the 1980-1992 war in which more than 70,000 people died.

Funes says El Salvador will remain a staunch US ally if he wins. But the opposition, including governing conservative party candidate 44-year-old Rodrigo Avila, claims the country would become a satellite of Venezuela and other populist leftist forces in the region.

El Salvador last weekend welcomed its last returning soldiers from Iraq, where it once had 6,000 troops, and its economy depends heavily on the money sent home by some 2.5 million US-based Salvadorans.

A Funes victory would put another Latin American country on the political left, joining the others from Brazil to Bolivia.

The FMLN is the former coalition of Marxist guerrillas that battled the government during the civil war, and Funes is its first presidential candidate never to have been an armed combatant.

Victory would also overturn 20 years of domination by the right-wing National Republican Alliance (ARENA) of President Elias Antonio Saca Gonzalez.
Funes had a strong lead in early polls, but the gap between him and Avila has narrowed in recent weeks.

Tens of thousands of Salvadorans attended election rallies on both sides in the tightly-fought campaign.

The war, poverty, and a string of natural disasters -- including Hurricane Mitch in 1998 -- have left their mark on one of the most violent countries in the Americas, notorious for "maras" street gangs.

Some 35 percent of the 5.7 million population live in poverty, according to the UN Development Program, and the country has an average of 11 to 12 murders daily, according to police figures.

The European Parliament has urged authorities to give "reliable" results on Sunday night. Meanwhile, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal still needs to iron out problems in the 17-year-old vote-counting system.

Some 2,000 local and international monitors are to observe the poll to elect a president and vice-president for five-year terms. There are 4.3 million eligible voters.

Source: Macau Daily Times 14/3/2009

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