Leftist former rebel wins El Salvador presidency

Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a former commander of leftist guerilla forces, has won last Sunday's presidential election in El Salvador by a razor-thin margin, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said on Thursday.

He inherits leadership of a country beset with widespread poverty and violence from powerful street gangs.

He beat rightist Norman Quijano by less than half a percentage point, said the tribunal.

Sanchez Ceren of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front won 50.11 percent of the votes, compared with 49.98 percent for Quijano of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance party - known as ARENA for its initials in Spanish - the tribunal said as it reported the final count from the runoff election. The first round was February 2.

With about 3 million ballots cast in Sunday's runoff, Ceren won by fewer than 7,000 votes.

"The people, united, will never be defeated," FMLN supporters chanted at the hotel where the tally was held as they awaited the final result. Shortly after the result was declared, Ceren urged his supporters to go home and stay calm.

"This is a very exciting moment, but also a moment of commitment for the FMLN," said Lorena Pena, an FMLN congresswoman. "We will be fully committed with the people."

The tight margin of the final result is a big surprise as the leftist had been favored to win by up to 10 percentage points.

A victory rally has been called for Saturday night in the capital San Salvador.

Sanchez Ceren, 69, is currently vice-president in the government of President Mauricio Funes. In power since 2009, it is the country's first leftist administration and ended two decades of right-wing rule.

But Sanchez Ceren's victory marks the first time Salvadorans have elected a former rebel commander from their 1979-92 civil war as president. He is a former teacher and ex-education minister, who was one of five top guerrilla commanders during the civil war.

The FMLN is the political party that emerged from the guerrilla army of the same name in the war, in which the government was backed by the United States. The FMLN and ARENA were the main protagonists in that conflict.

Military intervention

The final tally in the vote was identical to the preliminary result first announced on Sunday.

However, Quijano has asked for the elections to be nullified on grounds of fraud. The tribunal still has to rule on this.

"They know very well we've defeated them," Quijano told his supporters on Sunday. "Our armed forces are keeping an eye on this fraud."

But on Wednesday, Defense Minister General David Munguia ruled out the prospect of military intervention, saying the army would abide by the result, irrespective of the winner.

Quijano, 67, the mayor of San Salvador, was a law-and-order candidate and staunch anti-communist who campaigned against the country's high crime rate and the notorious mara street gangs behind much of El Salvador's drug dealing and extortion.

Quijano, however, suffered from his links to ex-president Francisco Flores, a former campaign adviser, under scrutiny over a donation of $10 million from Taiwan that went missing during his 1999-2004 administration.

After the civil war, El Salvador found itself facing violence from the street gangs, which control whole neighborhoods and run drug distribution and extortion rackets.

AFP - AP