Salvador Party Splits, Chooses a 2nd Presidential Candidate
A schism in the governing Christian Democratic Party widened Wednesday when a second faction nominated its own presidential candidate for next year’s election.
Fidel Chavez Mena, a 48-year-old lawyer and former minister of the presidency and communications under current President Jose Napoleon Duarte, was proclaimed unanimously by 180 national delegates gathered at party headquarters in downtown San Salvador.
Julio Adolfo Rey Prendes, a former foreign minister under Duarte, was nominated by the rival faction on April 29.
Rey Prendes, 55, has said he will take the matter to the Supreme Court. In comments to journalists Tuesday, he called Chavez Mena “a thief.”
Each faction considers the other’s convention illegal. Duarte, who by law cannot run for reelection, called last month for both hopefuls to step aside to make way for a unity candidate in the March, 1989, election.
Duarte is being treated in Washington for terminal cancer. He was released from Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Monday but is staying in residential quarters on hospital grounds.
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