Left-leaning candidates dominated presidential elections in Central America
Left-leaning candidates dominated presidential elections in Central America on Sunday, with polls showing El Salvador’s Salvador Sanchez Ceren and Costa Rica’s Luis Guillermo Solis poised to claim victory in their respective runoffs.
Left-wing supporters cheered and danced across Central America this weekend, following victories in presidential elections in both El Salvador and Costa Rica.
Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a former guerrilla leader, won 48.9% of votes in the first round of the ballot in El Salvador, just shy of the 50% needed to avoid a second round.
Around 900 km south-east, Luis Guillermo Solis (pictured in main) finished first in Costa Rica's own presidential vote. A left-leaning former diplomat, Solis earned a surprising 30.9% of the vote, edging out the centrist candidate from the ruling government.
Opinion polls suggested both men were well placed to triumph in their respective runoffs in the coming weeks.
Ceren and Solis are just the latest candidates to ride a wave of centre-left sympathy in Latin America, where right-wing parties are struggling to attract voters.
From guerrillero to frontrunner
Sanchez Ceren, 69, was one of the top commanders of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) rebel army that fought a 12-year civil war against El Salvador's military-led government.
He was a signatory of the peace treaty that ended the bloody armed conflict in 1992 and ushered in the FMLN's transformation into a political party.
The FMLN won the previous presidential elections in 2009, but by running an independent candidate for the top job and Ceren as the vice-presidential nominee.
As not only the country's vice-president, but also its education chief, Ceren has been credited with setting up popular welfare reforms, like offering free school supplies to pupils from the poorest families, over the past five years.
http://www.france24.com/en/20140203-left-wins-presidential-elections-costa-rica-el-salvador-fmln-ceren-solis/