San Salvador  - Salvadorans are set to elect a new president Sunday, in a vote that could help the strife-torn Central American nation put its violent political past behind it.

For the first time in 20 years of right-wing rule, the leftist FMLN is within reach of the presidency against the ruling right-wing ARENA.

Most notable is the moderate tone of the election. Both parties are fielding young candidates in their 40s who say they can lead the country out of the divisions of the bloody civil war of the 1980s. Both have set aside right- and left-wing rhetoric and are courting the political centre.

While opinion polls in El Salvador have proven to be unreliable in predicting election outcomes, the fact remains that the leftists in January squeaked to a narrow victory in national legislative elections.

The presidential candidates - Mauricio Funes, 49, for the FMLN, and Rodrigo Avila, 45, for ARENA - appear to be tied, with opinion polls favouring sometimes one, sometimes the other.

El Salvador is still recovering from its civil war that ended in 1992. Some 75,000 people were killed during the 11 years of brutal clashes between the right-wing dictatorship and the leftist rebels of the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation. Many people are still listed as missing.

The right-wing party ARENA has governed the country ever since, with the backing of the business community, the rich and the country's Roman Catholic Church. But they lost some of their grip on power in January, when voters gave 35 National Assembly seats to the FMLN and only 32 to ARENA. The remaining 17 seats in the 84-seat body went to other parties.

About one-third of all Salvadorans live abroad as they flee poverty and seek work elsewhere, mostly in the US. In addition to the country's resident population of 5.7 million people, some 2.3 million live in the US and another 600,000 live elsewhere.

Analysts are hoping for a clear outcome on Sunday. A tight result could launch another political crisis, they say.

Funes was only put forward as a candidate by the FMLN a year ago. The eloquent former TV journalist was until a few months ago not even a member of the party that was created out of the former guerrilla movement. The same can be said for most of the aides that he presented last week as his future ministers, should he win Sunday.

Still, Funes' critics charge he is backed by the former guerrilla leadership.

Salvadoran media mostly back ARENA, and outgoing President Antonio Saca has been campaigning heavily for Avila.

"The only thing that has changed in the FMLN is the apparently moderate candidate. In the end he will have to follow orders from Havana and from all his bosses," Saca said in an interview with the daily El Diario de Hoy.

Funes has staunchly denied such allegations. The candidate, who has a Brazilian wife, stressed that he is politically close to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and is also friendly with him.

"We have a duty to implement political change," Funes told reporters.

He noted that El Salvador is set to be badly hit by the ongoing global economic and financial crisis, particularly due to its dependency on the United States.

"It would be suicide to turn away from the United States," warned Alex Segovia, the leftist candidate's closest adviser.

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

Rival candidate Avila is also to some extent an outsider in his own party. He is not a member of the right-wing oligarchy made up of a few wealthy families which has ruled the country for many decades.

Avila, the owner of a security firm, served two terms as police chief and is considered a candidate to follow on Saca's footsteps.

Nonetheless, violent crime could play a negative role for Avila. Saca's "super-tough hand" programme to curb violence has dramatically failed as the country registered more than 3,000 violent deaths in 2008. The number of homicides appeared to continue its upward trend in the current year.

In the face of such a daunting backdrop, El Salvador should try to achieve definitive internal peace, said Hugo Barrera, general manager for the food company Diana.

A staunch representative from the rightist ARENA, Barrera believes his party "would be better-placed to do that, because we have more experience," he said.

But showing he was open to a different outcome, he added: "Whoever wins the election will have the opportunity to put confrontation behind him." (dpa)