El Salvador's ex-guerrilla poised to win presidency in runoff election
El Salvador's ex-guerrilla poised to win presidency in runoff election
By Marcos Aleman, The Associated Press March 8, 2014 1:24 AM
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - A former Marxist guerrilla who has promised to continue the government's popular social programs is poised to win El Salvador's presidential election runoff on Sunday, giving the ruling party a second consecutive term.
Most polls show Salvador Sanchez Ceren, 69, of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, with a lead that ranges from 10 to 18 percentage points ahead of San Salvador Mayor Norman Quijano, the candidate of the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as ARENA.
Quijano, 67, campaigned with Cold War references to the country's 12-year civil war, in which the United States backed the Salvadoran government against the FMLN to stop the spread of communism in Latin America. Quijano said Sanchez Ceren, one of the top rebel commanders, would take the Central American country down a communist path and invoked images of Venezuela's late socialist president Hugo Chavez.
"The FMLN proposals are based in giving the country's sovereignty to Venezuela," he said during the campaign.
But analysts say the strategy backfired in the country of 6 million people more concerned with gang violence and a sluggish economy than ghosts of the past.
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http://www.canada.com/news/Salvadors+exguerrilla+poised+presidency+runoff+election/9594344/story.html
