Salvadorans voted yesterday in a closely-fought election that could see former leftist rebels put an end to 20 years of right-wing leadership.
The result will likely impact relations with the US, which has been a close ally since backing a repressive military government during a 1980 to 1992 civil war in which more than 70,000 died.
Many Salvadorans are seeking change in one of the world’s murder hotspots where the economic crisis is predicted to hit hard, but others are nervous of former Marxist rebels taking charge of the economy at this time.
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.
Funes said El Salvador would remain a staunch US ally if he won. But the opposition, including governing conservative party candidate 44-year-old Rodrigo Avila, said the country would become a satellite of Venezuela and other populist leftist forces in the region.
The US will respect the choice Salvadoran people make in their election, the US State Department’s top diplomat for Latin America, Tom Shannon, said on Friday, after several US lawmakers said that a Funes victory would jeopardize US national security interests in the region.
“We are committed to free and fair elections in El Salvador. And we’ve also made it very clear that we will work with whomever the Salvadoran people elect,” Shannon said.
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.
Both Funes and Avila campaigned in the US ahead of the election.
A Funes victory would put another Latin American country on the political left, joining 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 of Salvadoran President Elias Antonio Saca Gonzalez.
But whatever the final outcome in the presidential poll, no party will have an outright majority in Congress, which will complicate policy implementation.
Funes had a strong lead in early polls, but the gap between him and Avila has narrowed in recent weeks, when tens of thousands of Salvadorans attended election rallies.
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 mara street gangs.
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