Mauricio Funes, right, presidential candidate for El Salvador's Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, FMLN, delivers a speech after inscribing his candidacy for his country's 2009 presidential elections. LUIS ROMERO/AP PHOTO From The Miami Herald:
The left-wing candidate in the March presidential election has been leading in polls in a polarizing El Salvador campaign.
SAN SALVADOR -- Sixteen years after failing to seize power in a bloody civil war, the left in El Salvador is closer than ever to achieving its goal through the ballot box, as a jittery nation witnesses a furious and dirty campaign to elect the next president.
All sides contending in the March 15 presidential race, as well as in January's municipal elections, agree that the hostile tone of the two main candidates and their supporters has worsened the polarization endemic to Salvadoran politics.
Mauricio Funes, 49, the candidate of the Frente Farabundo Martà para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), is viewed by detractors as a communist who would throw El Salvador into chaos. His opponent, 44-year-old Rodrigo Avila of the Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA), is viewed by critics as a conservative who would champion the wealthy elite at the expense of the poor.
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