Ex-guerilla leader wins El Salvador presidency

Election officials in El Salvador have declared ex-guerilla leader Salvador Sanchez Ceren the winner of the country’s presidential election following a close runoff.

The Supreme Electoral Court made the announcement on Sunday after rejecting the opposition’s last challenges to the results from the March 9 vote.

The losing National Republican Alliance (ARENA) had filed a petition to annul the results due to alleged vote fraud.

The results of the election showed a narrow win by Sanchez Ceren, who received 50.11 percent of the votes compared to 49.89 percent for rival Norman Quijano of the conservative ARENA party.

Sanchez Ceren, of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), will take office on June 1 to serve a five-year term, making him the first former guerilla commander to hold the presidential post.

The former guerrilla leader, who has previously served as vice president, will succeed incumbent President Mauricio Funes also from the FMLN party, who was ineligible to run for a consecutive second term.

Sanchez Ceren was nominated as a candidate in a bid to shore up a country struggling with rampant crime and high poverty.

Tackling gang violence is among the challenges facing the new president. Across the country, criminal groups, with an estimated 60,000 members, control whole neighborhoods and run drug trafficking as well as extortion rackets.

The country is also facing a mounting government debt burden and a high poverty rate that stands at more than 40 percent of the population.

El Salvador was gripped by a bitter civil war between 1979-1992, in which Sanchez Ceren was one of the top guerilla commanders. The conflict left 76,000 people dead.