El Salvador former rebels win power through ballot box

Salvadorean President-elect Mauricio Funes said he wants strong relations with Washington after his party of ex-Marxist guerrillas ousted their right-wing civil war foes in a tight election victory. A former TV journalist, Funes peaceful background helped the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, win power through the ballot box for the first time on Sunday years after it fought one of the Cold Wars bitterest conflicts.
Rather than swing El Salvador to the hard left after 20 years of pro-Washington rule by the ARENA party, Funes said he wanted even closer US relations to help tackle joint issues like migration, street gangs and drug trafficking. "I would aspire to strengthen relations with (US President Barack) Obama," he told Reuters Television after his win against ARENAs Rodrigo Avila late on Sunday, which sparked noisy street celebrations by red-clad supporters.
After years as a peaceful opposition party, the FMLN cashed in on electoral fatigue over ARENAs long rule and fears of the world economic crisis to win by nearly 3 percentage points, scotching the notion that the ex-rebels were unelectable because of associations with rebel warfare and Marxism.
"(It) doesnt mean a leap into a vacuum nor a break with the system," Funes, 49, said of his victory. "We have managed to get past fear to change." Funes never fought in the 1980-92 civil war and he urged unity and reconciliation with the ruling party, whose founder was closely associated with death squads during the conflict.
"From this moment on, I invite the different social and political forces to build this unity together," he said. The Nationalist Republican Alliance, or ARENA, has kept the coffee-exporting Central American country firmly in the pro-Washington camp as it held office since 1989, even sending small contingents of troops to help US forces in Iraq. But rampant poverty and street crime have helped the FMLN, which during the Cold War fought vastly better-equipped forces armed by the United States at a cost of billions of dollars. The guerrillas laid down their arms under a 1992 peace deal.