EL SALVADOR: Presidential candidates close campaigns ahead of second round

Record ID: 346926

  • Title: EL SALVADOR: Presidential candidates close campaigns ahead of second round
  • Date: 3rd March 2014
  • Summary: SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR (FEBRUARY 2, 2014) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF RED FARABUNDO MARTI NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT (FMLN) FLAGS BEING WAVED AT RALLY FMLN SUPPORTER WAVING FLAG MORE OF RALLY SANCHEZ CEREN, OF THE FMLN PARTY WAVING AT CROWD DURING RALLY MORE OF CROWD DURING RALLY (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) SALVADOR SANCHEZ CEREN, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE FOR THE FARABUNDO MARTI
  • Embargoed: 18th March 2014 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: El Salvador
  • Country: El Salvador
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA5QLOYECGW70JA3662QTDDW4IK
  • Story Text: An ex-Marxist guerrilla pledging to expand social programs and a right-wing challenger who promised a crackdown on crime, closed their March second-round presidential campaigns on Sunday (February 2).
    The latest poll indicates Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a top leader of leftist rebels during El Salvador's civil war, would win 55 percent of the vote versus 45 percent for his conservative rival, Norman Quijano.
    Sanchez Ceren, of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), won nearly 49 percent of votes in the first round, just short of 50 percent needed to avoid a run-off.
    In his closing rally in San Salvador, Sanchez Ceren, told his supporters to remain united.
    "If we join our arms we are stronger. If there are more of us, we are stronger and if we are stronger, we can make the transformations this country needs. This country needs jobs. This country needs peace for the family, security. This country needs more education, more health."
    He will now face off on March 9 against Quijano.
    The FMLN became a political party at the end of El Salvador's 12-year civil war in 1992, and it won power in 2009. Sanchez Ceren was vice-president in that government and his campaign was helped by its popular welfare policies, including pensions and free school supplies.
    Sanchez Ceren praised support he gets from unions and social organisations.
    "They (peasant unions and social organisations that support Sanchez Ceren's campaign) are not simply voting companions. They are the strength with which we are going to govern the country. We will be a broad government, of unity," said Sanchez Ceren.
    Quijano, from the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) party, who won almost 39 percent of the vote and wants to deploy the army to fight powerful street gangs.
    He also closed his campaign on Sunday in San Salvador urging his supporters to vote for freedom.
    "From the time of independence 193 years ago, we have never been at so much danger of losing our freedom. Not even during the war. Not even when we suffered from disasters and invasions."
    "The next March 9 election will be between freedom and a dictatorship. We can't lose sight of the ideal inherited by our poor. Freedom will win," he added.
    Sanchez Ceren seems poised to pick up some of the votes that went to a third-party conservative candidate, Antonio Saca, a former president who came third in the first round with 11.4 percent support.
    A Sanchez Ceren presidency might boost the influence of Venezuela's socialist government in the region. Sanchez Ceren has said he will seek to join the South American country's Petrocaribe oil bloc, which provides allies, often leftists, with cheap energy.
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