Former FMLN Rebel Poised to Take Presidency in El Salvador

El Salvador is in the calm between the storms in its latest presidential elections.

The clear leader in the race is Salvador Sanchez Ceren of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). Like President Jose Mujica of Uruguay, also a left-leaning political who has made waves recently with the legalization of cannabis in his country, Sanchez is a former rebel guerilla.

He is also the current Vice President, and in the first round of balloting, he came up just short of the needed 50 percent (at around 48.9) to avoid a runoff election. In a second round of votes on March 9, he will be facing San Salvador Mayor Norman Quijano. Quijano took nearly 39 percent of the vote in initial polls.

The outcome hinges on both candidates being able to pick up supporters of former President Antonio Saca, who ran with the UNITY party. Numbers suggest that Sanchez needs only a narrow margin of former Saca voters, but the numbers could pan out differently.

In fact, one private poll conducted by the firm Mitofsky ahead of the February election even had Quijano holding a slim lead (35.5 percent ahead of 31.8). The poll had a margin of error of 3.1 percent, making the count a statistical toss-up.

A more recent poll by the Universidad Centroamericana put Sanchez on top by 46.8 percent to Quijano's 32.8 percent. The UNITY party had another 14.7 percent for the runoff candidates to try to win over. This might take some interesting wordsmithing, as the candidacy of UNITY's Saca was challenged in the early stage of the election campaign (he was a former president seeking a second term, a consecutive of which would be clearly illegal in El Salvador).

The race will be watched closely, with great participation, in the United States. According to El Pais in Spain, 42 percent of Salvadorans live outside the country, and 93 percent of that group lives in North America.