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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS