El Salvador votes to emerge from civil war shadow

El Salvador votes to emerge from civil war shadowSan Salvador, El Salvador  - Salvadorans are set to elect a new president Sunday in a vote that could help the strife-torn Central American country put its violent political past behind it.

For the first time in 20 years of rule by the right-wing party ARENA, the leftist FMLN is within reach of the presidency. But the election between leftist former TV journalist Mauricio Funes, 49, and right-wing former police chief Rodrigo Avila, 45, remains too close to call, according to the latest surveys of public opinion.

Polls are set to open at 1200 GMT and close 10 hours later. Exit poll results will be issued after voting ends, while a university research institute has designed a quick count system that is set to run parallel to the official vote count by electoral authorities.

Some 20,000 members of the security forces are set to maintain order.

El Salvador is still recovering from the civil war that ended in 1992.

Some 75,000 people were killed - with many more still missing - during the 12 years of brutal fighting between the right-wing dictatorship and the leftist rebels of the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), or the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation, which has since converted into a political party.

About one-third of all Salvadorans live abroad, having fled poverty to seek work. In addition to El Salvador's resident population of 5.7 million people, some 2.3 million Salvadorans live in the United States plus another 600,000 in other countries.

In 2008, Salvadorans living in the United States sent home 3.8 billion dollars, the country's largest source of foreign currency. But those amounts are falling as the global economic crisis erodes jobs and incomes.

Violent crime is a key issue in El Salvador. Despite the current government's hardline policies against criminal gangs, the country registered more than 3,000 slayings in 2008, and the homicide rate appears to be climbing higher still this year. (dpa)

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