Left, Right Parties Claim Win in Salvadoran Presidential Runoff
The parties of both candidates in El Salvador's surprisingly tight presidential runoff clash claimed victory late Sunday.
Pre-election polls had showed ex-guerrilla commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) comfortably ahead of Norman Quijano with the conservative ARENA party.
But with 98 percent of returns tallied, the leftist candidate was leading on a razor's edge: 50.10 percent to 49.90, electoral authorities reported.
"The difference in our favor, rounding a bit, is slightly more than 8,000 votes. The Salvadoran people have made their choice ... and we have a victory to celebrate," said FMLN party chair Medardo Gonzalez.
But his ARENA counterpart was convinced its side had won.
"With the data from the electoral tribunal and our own tallies, of the utmost precision, we can say that we have achieved a victory for the Salvadoran people," ARENA chief Jorge Velado said.
Election officials told both sides to wait for final results.
"This tribunal recommends and orders that no party declare itself winner given such close results," said Supreme Electoral Tribunal president Eugenio Chicas in a TV and radio message.
-- Teacher, rebel, vice president --
Sanchez Ceren, 69, is El Salvador's vice president. A former teacher and ex-education minister, he was one of five top guerrilla commanders during El Salvador's bitter 1979-92 civil war, which pitted the FMLN against the U.S.-backed conservative government.
Conservatives were in power for two decades until 2009, when Salvadorans elected FMLN candidate Mauricio Funes, a former journalist, as their first leftist president.
The FMLN fell just shy of an outright victory in a first round vote last month, and Sanchez Ceren was expected to easily win the run-off vote.
Meanwhile Quijano, 67, the mayor of the capital city San Salvador, is a law and order candidate who campaigned on the country's high crime rate and the notorious "mara" street gangs behind much of El Salvador's drug dealing and extortion.
After the first-round vote, Quijano overhauled his image and talked more about keeping children out of gangs and rehabilitating those already ensnared by them.
Quijano however suffered from his links to ex-president Francisco Flores, a former campaign adviser, under scrutiny over $10 million donated by Taiwan that went missing during his 1999-2004 government.
ARENA removed Flores from his advisory job, but the controversy has damaged Quijano.
- A civil war legacy --
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.
Homicides were running at 14 per day until a truce was reached between the two main gangs in March 2012, which helped to halve the murder rate. But extortion and other crimes persist.
The maras are believed have around 60,000 members, 10,000 of whom are behind bars.
Sanchez Ceren wants to rehabilitate former gang members, but said he would fight those who refuse to give up street life.
Whoever wins and takes office on June 1 will face a shaky economy.
Forty percent of El Salvador's six million people live in poverty, and the country relies heavily on remittances sent by Salvadorans living abroad -- around $4 billion a year, or 16 percent of the country's GDP.
Sanchez Ceren vows to spend more money on social programs which he said he would finance via a "progressive fiscal policy."
"The main thing is to use those funds honestly," he has said.