SAN SALVADOR — Salvadorans on Sunday elected a former TV reporter as the country's first leftist president, unseating a conservative party that ruled for two decades and choosing a government that will be dominated by former guerrillas.
Mauricio Funes, an affable political moderate running on behalf of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, claimed victory after nearly complete returns gave him a lead that experts said was insurmountable.
"This is the happiest night of my life, and I also want it to be the night of greatest hope for El Salvador," an emotional Funes said in a crowded hotel conference room, as cameras flashed and supporters cheered. "Thank you for choosing the path of hope and for overcoming fear."
He called for a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration similar to that which helped end El Salvador's bloody civil war 17 years ago.
With this victory, the FMLN completed its evolution from a coalition of Marxist rebels fighting U.S.-backed regimes in El Salvador's rugged hills to a broad-based party.
Funes, 49, who helped give the FMLN a following beyond its traditional militant base, frequently compared himself to President Obama as an agent of change and promised to maintain good relations with Washington. Instead of the FMLN red, he wore white guayabera shirts and dark business suits as he traversed the nation and pressed his message of national unity.
The Arena party's candidate, Rodrigo Avila, acknowledged defeat Sunday night. Armando Calderon Sol, an Arena leader and former president, told The Times: "It is irreversible. History is written."
FMLN supporters took to the streets in celebration. They filled downtown plazas here in the capital, waving red flags and posters of their candidate and chanting "Mauricio! Mauricio!" -- as well as the old standard, "The left, united, will never be defeated."
Analysts said a leftist win would indicate that voters were more concerned with poverty, unemployment and raging crime than the fear, fanned by the right, that Funes and the FMLN would push El Salvador down a radical communist path.
"The campaign of fear did not work 100% because the desire for change, even among conservatives, was so strong," said Raymundo Calderon, dean of the social studies institute of the University of El Salvador. "We were in such a difficult situation but always supporting the same politics. There's a limit. People decided they had put up with it 20 years and said, 'Enough.' "
