El-Salvador elections

Mauricio Funes won the presidency for the leftist party, El Salvador's former leftist guerrillas, while Funes defeating his Arena opponent, Rodrigo Ávila, a former national police chief. Mr. Funes’s party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front is led by many of the same commanders who laid down their weapons with the 1992 peace agreement and entered politics, although the presidency has eluded it until now. Funes will be El Salvador’s first leftist president.
With their party’s victory, El Salvador joins a few Latin American countries that have elected leftist governments this decade, as a response to the failure of free-market policies The right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as Arena, beforehand won four successive presidential elections since 1989. Arena pushed for a hard line against the guerrillas during the civil war. Mr. Funes stated he won’t judge his party’s enemies from the country’s civil war. Funes is a former television journalist but wasn't in the guerrilla.
Funes has pledged to govern as a moderate though he will face pressure from inside his party to move to the left. Simultaneously, he will have to negotiate with the right.
Funes intends to continue El Salvador’s close relationship with the United States.
Hopefully he will meet his supporters high expectations

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/world/americas/17salvador.html?ref=world