Leftist Win Marks Landmark Election in El Salvador. Election Guide.
Salvadorian voters handed former TV Journalist Mauricio FUNES, of the leftwing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a narrow victory in El Salvador's presidential election last Sunday. FUNES's win with some 51.32 percent of the vote marks an end to two decades of rule by the rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), whose candidate, former National Police Chief Rodrigo AVILA, came short of victory with 48.68 percent of the vote. ARENA candidates have won every previous presidential election since 1989. FUNES's FMLN was a Marxist guerrilla group that fought the Salvadorian government for more than a decade until a 1992 peace accord that ended the country's bloody civil war and converted the armed revolutionary group into a legal political party. A significant player in El Salvador's democratic politics ever since, the FMLN remained in ARENA's shadow until January of this year, when it beat ARENA for the first time in its history in the country's legislative elections, winning a plurality of seats in the country's legislature but coming short of an absolute majority of votes needed to govern independently. FUNES's victory on Sunday now adds El Salvador to the growing list of Latin American countries to have elected leftwing governments in recent years.
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