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Former Marxist guerrilla poised for victory in El Salvador

Published:Monday | March 10, 2014 | 12:00 AM
Presidential candidate Salvador Sánchez Cerén, who is also the current vice-president for the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, raises his election ink-stained thumb after casting his ballot in the presidential run-off election in San Salvador, El Salvador, yesterday. - AP

SAN SALVADOR (AP):

A former Marxist guerrilla who has promised to continue the government's popular social programmes is poised to win El Salvador's presidential election run-off yesterday, giving the ruling party a second consecutive term.

Most polls show Salvador Sánchez Cerén, 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 Re-publican 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 Sánchez Cerén, 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 Chávez.