AFP
An ex-guerrilla commander is favoured to win an election run-off in El Salvador tomorrow against the capital city’s mayor and inherit the twin tasks of fighting grinding poverty and rampant gang violence.
The small but densely populated central American country of 6mn elected its first leftist government in 2009, and former journalist Mauricio Funes became president.
A moderate, he represented the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which fought US-backed governments in a war that lasted from 1979 to 1992 and left a painful legacy that endures.
The party is now turning to its current vice president, former rebel commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren, 69, to keep the presidency for another five years.
Polls give him an ample margin over San Salvador’s mayor Norman Quijano, 67, of the rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance, or ARENA. It was in power for two decades before being unseated by the rebel army-turned-political party.
The FMLN fell just shy of an outright victory in the first round on February 2: 49% of the votes, when it needed 50% plus one vote.
In any case, that was 10 points more than ARENA.
Now Sanchez Ceren is again favoured heavily. A poll released 10 days ago by Central American University gave him 56.2% of the votes, against 41.8% for Quijano.
Since the first round, Quijano has sought a badly needed boost in public opinion by softening his language against the street gangs, known in Central America as “maras.”
He had earlier pledged an iron-fisted approach. He also accused the FMLN of cutting deals with two main maras.
Quijano is seeking to capitalise on unrest in Venezuela, where there have been almost daily protests against leftist President Nicolas Maduro and his handling of an economy with runaway inflation and a horrific murder rate.
“Here, we are still in time to shine with our own light,” one campaign ad says. “El Salvador will not be another Venezuela,” it adds, with footage of street demos in Venezuela. But Quijano is also saddled with baggage in the shape of his former campaign adviser, ex-president Francisco Flores, who is being probed over what happened to $10mn donated by Taiwan during his 1999-04 government.
ARENA removed Flores from his job two weeks ago but the controversy has hurt Quijano’s campaign.
After the civil war, El Salvador found itself facing violence from the street gangs, which control whole neighbourhoods and run drug distribution and extortion rackets.