http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americ....ap/index.html
Key choice for El Salvador voters
Sunday, March 21, 2004 Posted: 6:01 AM EST (1101 GMT)
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) -- El Salvador's voters face a sharp choice in Sunday's presidential election: the candidate of one of the hemisphere's most pro-U.S. governments or a former Communist Party guerrilla leader.
A conservative broadcast media businessman, 39-year-old Tony Saca, was the clear favorite of the Bush administration, whose officials suggested an opposition victory could affect El Salvador's remarkably warm relations with the United States.
Opposing Saca was 73-year-old Schafik Handal, who led the Communist faction in the five-party rebel coalition that fought military and military-influenced governments for 12 years before signing a peace treaty in 1992.
Despite their differences, they were born within two blocks of one another, both to Palestinian immigrant families from Bethlehem.
Most polls had Saca's Nationalist Republican Alliance, or ARENA, well ahead of Handal's Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, which became a political party after the peace treaty.
One last-minute national poll by the Francisco Gavidia University showed the two men in a tie, with two other candidates attracting just a few percentage points.
If no candidate wins an outright majority, a runoff would be held May 2.
Saca's party has won three straight elections since 1999. The Front has lost two since first taking part in 1994, though it runs the biggest city governments and has the largest share of legislative seats.
U.S. officials so clearly favored Saca that Otto Reich, the White House special envoy for the Western Hemisphere, gave a group telephone interview last week to local reporters gathered at Saca's party headquarters.
Local newspapers quoted him as saying a Handal victory would be "a radical change."
Handal has vowed to seek good relations with the U.S.
"We could not have the same confidence in an El Salvador led by a person who is obviously an admirer of Fidel Castro and of Hugo Chavez," Reich was quoted as saying, referring to the leaders of Cuba and Venezuela.
Saca's campaign has repeatedly suggested that the United States might restrict family remittances from Salvadorans working there or begin a mass expulsion of them. Handal has called that ridiculous.
Remittances, at some $2 billion a year, are the top source of revenue for this country of 6.5 million, where about half the people officially live in poverty.
Saca has embraced the free-market, pro-U.S. policies of outgoing President Francisco Flores, who adopted the dollar as official currency, negotiated a free-trade deal and sent troops to help in Iraq.
Handal vows to seek good relations with the United States and says he has no thought of taking over private property or imposing a socialist system -- something that would be difficult in any case since his party controls just 31 of 84 seats in congress.
He said he would raise tax rates on companies and on the rich while increasing social spending. He wants to review or revise the free trade pact and ensure that El Salvador's old currency, the colon, circulates alongside the dollar.
He said he would also seek to restore relations with Cuba and mainland China and that he would bring Salvadoran troops back from Iraq.
Both parties ran campaigns that recalled the civil war that killed 75,000 people died.
ARENA portrayed Handal as a kidnapper and thug who would install a communist system. Handal's backers accused ARENA of corruption and noted that its founder, Maj. Roberto D'Abuisson, had been accused by U.S. and U.N. reports of running death squads.