Ruling-Party Candidate Ahead in Salvador Vote

SAN SALVADOR —  On the eve of a four-day visit to Central America by President Clinton, Salvadorans voted peacefully Sunday in a presidential election that pitted a former guerrilla commander against a philosopher representing the extreme right-wing party that has ruled their tiny country for a decade.

With 48% of the ballots counted, philosopher Francisco Flores, the candidate of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, led a field of seven candidates with 51.63% of the vote. If that percentage holds throughout the tally, he would win outright, avoiding a runoff election next month.

Facundo Guardado, the candidate of the former guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, had 29.37% of the preliminary vote, far ahead of popular lawyer Ruben Zamora, who, based on opinion polls, had been expected to seriously challenge Guardado for second place.

As expected, fewer than half of the 3 million registered voters cast ballots, election authorities said.

Except for a few scattered incidents, the voting took place in an orderly fashion, suggesting that a democratic tradition is taking hold in this once war-torn region. During this decade, freely elected governments have replaced the military dictatorships that provoked civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua along with repression in Honduras.

“We have come a long way, and we will continue to advance on this path, fine-tuning the values and mechanisms of a democratic system and a culture of peace,” President Armando Calderon Sol said in an election-eve address to the nation. He also noted with pride that El Salvador will be Clinton’s home base during his tour of Central America.

Clinton has promised nearly $1.3 billion to help the region’s poor countries recover from the ravages of tropical storm Mitch, which killed 9,000 people last fall. Analysts warn that without extensive international aid to rebuild the houses, hospitals, bridges and schools destroyed by the storm, the resulting social problems could undercut these fragile democracies, where peaceful voting days like Sunday are still a novelty.

“These have been normal elections, not like before, when people voted with fear,” said Julio Perez, a 25-year-old student, recalling the civil war days of 1980-1992, when rebels planted bombs at polling places or shot at those standing in line to cast ballots.

On Sunday, many voters were ferried to polling centers in government-chartered buses and pickup trucks decked out in the red, white and blue banners of Flores’ party, known as Arena.

At the International Fair, an exposition center that was a major polling area in the most affluent part of this capital city, traffic stretched for blocks, and voters who had driven to the polls were forced to park up to six blocks from where they cast ballots.

Other polling centers appeared less crowded. Despite high abstention, those who did vote had to stand in long lines in the hot sun of March, usually the warmest month here.

“You can see how few people are voting,” said Alfredo Rodriguez, 65, who voted two hours before the polls closed at the Marcelino Garcia Flamenco School in the working-class suburb of Santa Tecla. “There are 4,000 ballots [at this precinct], and I have No. 81.”

Some voters, like 75-year-old Maria Pena, were turned away because of bureaucratic mix-ups. The number on her voter identification card did not match the one for her on the registration list. “I came enthusiastically to vote, and now my vote is wasted,” she said sadly.

Pena said she had planned to vote for Flores, the 39-year-old California-educated philosopher, who campaigned on a platform of creating jobs, alleviating poverty, controlling crime and improving the environment. Flores is considered a moderate within his party, which was linked to death squads during the 12-year civil war.

His proposals are not easily distinguishable from those of Guardado, 44, and Guardado’s vice presidential candidate, Nidia Diaz.

Zamora, 56, spent much of the war in exile.

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Times researcher Diego Aleman contributed to this report.