2 Salvador Mayors Quit in Face of Election Eve Guerrilla Threats

Leftist rebels frightened two city mayors and several election officials into quitting their posts, but a guerrilla commander said Friday that the rebels will not attack polling places or people who vote in Sunday’s presidential election.

The rebels have proclaimed a traffic ban before Sunday’s vote, threatening to attack vehicles on the nation’s roads.

No commercial traffic moved on rural highways Friday, and rebel sabotage kept much of El Salvador without electric power. At least one van was attacked with a firebomb, news reports said.

Few buses operated in San Salvador. But army trucks carried people, and some pickup trucks took passengers for fares.

“You can’t stop people,” said a driver named Roberto, who said he was charging the normal bus fare of 20 cents. “I did not come out yesterday, but I need to work, so here I am.”

The three principal presidential candidates have all condemned the guerrilla actions and stressed their efforts to end a nine-year-old civil war that has cost an estimated 45,000 lives.

Campaigning ended Wednesday by law. In public opinion polling, Fidel Chavez Mena of President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s Christian Democratic Party trails coffee millionaire Alfredo Cristiani of the Nationalist Republican Alliance, a party of the extreme right known popularly as Arena.

Guillermo Ungo, a former leader of the guerrillas’ political wing, is a distant third as the standard bearer for the Democratic Convergence, a left-wing political alliance. Four minor candidates also are running.

The mayors of Chalatenango, a northern provincial capital, and Metapan, a northwestern city, resigned under threats from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the guerrillas’ umbrella organization. More than half the country’s municipalities are without mayors as a result of guerrilla action, and nine mayors have been assassinated.

Election officials in three precincts near the eastern city of San Miguel were reported to have resigned. The guerrillas have told election officials to quit before Sunday.

A guerrilla commander in northern Cabanas province told the Associated Press that no attacks would be made on polling places or civilians voting on election day but that right-wing squads, disguised as guerrillas, might attack civilians.

No Attacks on Polls

A member of the guerrilla front’s office in Mexico City, Ana Guadalupe Martinez, said: “We will not directly attack those who are voting. Those who vote have to have that guarantee.”

She also said the rebels were urging election officials to quit but had not threatened to kill them.