ALWAYS ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY:

New Face Delivers Old Result in El Salvador: Candidate Seen as an Average Joe Retains Presidency for Pro-Business Party (Mary Beth Sheridan, March 23, 2004, Washington Post)

Tony Saca, the winner of El Salvador's presidential elections, had everything going for him. He was backed by the country's business barons, by a party in power for 15 years and by a national media tilted strongly toward his conservative party.

And yet, Saca's Nationalist Republican Alliance, or Arena, was running scared as it geared up for Sunday's vote. Many Salvadorans have expressed concern about a lack of economic progress, and showed it in previous elections -- handing a victory in congressional elections last year to a party headed by former Marxist guerrillas. That raised the possibility of a dramatic change of leadership in El Salvador, one of the most pro-American governments in Latin America.

Arena fought off the challenge with its traditional advantages of money and media. But it also renovated its image, distancing the party from the 12-year civil war in which it had been linked to death squads.

The new president is a 39-year-old businessman who had no role in the conflict and no experience in political office. Saca became famous as a TV commentator narrating soccer games, and went on to purchase a string of radio stations. He projected a cheerful, Average Joe style in a party dominated by well-heeled businessmen.

"I represent that Salvadoran who wants to find . . . a pretext to vote for Arena," Saca said in an interview on the eve of the election.

But his overwhelming victory, with about 57 percent of the vote, also reflected the difficulties that El Salvador's former rebels have faced in adjusting to democratic competition since they signed peace accords in 1992, political analysts said. Their party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, ran a former guerrilla leader known for his hard-line views. The candidate, Schafik Handal, 73, failed to gain much support beyond his party's hard-core supporters. [...]

Saca, who takes office on June 1, has promised to continue Arena's free-market policies, which have included privatization of state-run industries, adopting the U.S. dollar as the nation's currency and negotiating a free-trade agreement between Central America and the United States. He said in the interview that he would "be ready to consider" any U.S. request to keep the Salvadoran troops in Iraq beyond their current commitment, which ends in June. And he has pledged to seek more programs for the poor, who make up about half the population, according to official statistics.

Senator Kerry, of course, did his level best to help the FMLN take over El Salvador in the '80s and even recently worked to stop the nomination of Otto Reich as revenge for his role in defeating Central America's Marxist movements.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 27, 2004 4:40 PM