Salvador's leftists try for first Presidential win

SALVADOR: El Salvador's former guerrillas are poised to take over the country, 17 years after peace accords ended the country's bloody civil war.

But this revolution is a democratic one, led by a charismatic television journalist named Mauricio Funes who has brought new hope to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, a guerrilla group turned political party.

Polls ahead of Sunday's six-party election indicate the Front, known as the FMLN, will increase its 32-seat delegation in the 84-member legislature while keeping the capital and winning most of the 262 mayors' races. Sunday's key contest pits former guerrilla Violeta Menjivar against physician Norman Quijano of the conservative, governing Arena party in the capital, where voters wearing party colors began lining up well before polls opened.

The true test will come on March 15, when Funes is favored to become the first FMLN president since El Salvador's 1992 peace accords ended a civil war that killed 75,000 people.

San Salvador, Wednesday, AP