A right-wing candidate defeated a former guerrilla leader in El Salvador's presidential elections on Sunday, sinking his plans to take the Central American nation away from US influence.
Election officials said results with most votes counted showed Tony Saca, a media mogul with no experience in office, had won 58 percent of the vote.
PHOTO: AP
Former rebel commander Scha-fik Handal, who had vowed to withdraw Salvadoran troops from Iraq, came in second with 35 percent, the Supreme Electoral Board said.
"El Salvador has shown its democratic vocation and categorically backed the option of freedom and stability. It has chosen to be a safe country," Saca told cheering supporters at party headquarters.
Communist Handal, 73 and gray-bearded, sought to renew diplomatic ties with Cuba and China.
But his violent past as a leader of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, worried many voters, anxious to leave behind a civil war between 1980 and 1992 in which more than 75,000 people died.
The top US diplomat for Latin America, Roger Noriega, had voiced concern about Handal, who told journalists last week he sought relations of "mutual respect, not subordination" with the US.
Conservatives had played on fears that tense relations with Washington would hurt the estimated 2 million Salvadorans living in the US.
The immigrants, who represent about a third of El Salvador's population, send home US$2 billion a year, or 15 percent of Salvadoran gross domestic product.
Handal acknowledged his rival's victory.
"We recognize it but we do not congratulate him, because he did it through fear and a vote with fear is a vote against freedom," he told a news conference.
A second round of polling set for May was rendered invalid because Saca won more than half the votes cast.
War symbolism was strong on Sunday. Handal visited the tomb of Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered by rightists in 1980, in the capital's cathedral.
"This is in memory of Archbishop Romero and all the martyrs and victim of state terrorism in our country," he said after lighting a candle at the tomb.
Many voters were wary of Handal, however, because of his previous use of arms against the traditional ruling class of coffee farmers and businessmen.
"His policy is to support only the lower class and by force if necessary," said Aura del Rivas, a doctor, after casting her vote in a comfortable capital suburb.
Arena, Saca's party, was closely linked in the war to death squads that stalked the country, killing thousands of suspected leftists.
The rightists have fought hard to change their image during their last 15 years in power. Saca, 39, says he is too young to have been involved in atrocities.
At campaign rallies, he lifted his palms to the crowd in a symbolic contention that he is clean of blood and corruption. Francisco Flores, the outgoing president, has been hit by graft scandals.
Arena, the party of business leaders and the landowning oligarchy, champions pro-US policies. El Salvador broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1959 and does not even have full ties with Beijing.
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