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March 16, 2009

FMLN’s Mauricio Funes Wins El Salvador Election
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In El Salvador, leftist presidential candidate Mauricio Funes has
claimed victory, ending twenty years of conservative rule. Funes’s
party, the FMLN, is a former guerrilla group that fought El Salvador’s
US-backed military government for close to twenty years. Funes defeated
Rodrigo Avila of the ARENA party by three percentage points. During a
victory speech, Funes promised “safe change” in the mold of Brazil’s
president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Mauricio Funes: “That is why I invite, from this moment, different
social and political forces to help us build this unity, which should be
based on tolerance, on respecting differences and the identification of
common objectives.”



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