Salvador Vote Looms as Genuine Contest

Encouraged by an unprecedented rebel cease-fire and a resurgent leftist political opposition, four large truckloads of peasant farmers rolled out of this guerrilla-controlled town Sunday and crossed into government territory to vote for the first time in 11 1/2 years of war.

On the steep, twisting dirt road to the polling station in Chalatenango, 12 miles to the west, they joined hundreds of others walking, trucking or riding horseback from a string of isolated hamlets to cast ballots for municipal authorities and a new National Assembly.

The heavy turnout of first-time voters from this war zone and others long abandoned by the government to a hard core of guerrilla sympathizers added suspense to El Salvador’s most broadly competitive election since the start of fighting that has claimed 75,000 lives.

President Alfredo Cristiani’s right-wing National Republican Alliance, known as Arena, led the field in early returns Sunday night but was struggling to retain its slim majority in the Assembly against challenges by three small conservative parties, the centrist Christian Democrats, the Communist-led National Democratic Union and a coalition of three socialist parties called the Democratic Convergence.

The leftist groups, seeking Assembly seats for the first time since the 1970s, gained most in the guerrilla-held areas.

“Until now, there was no point in voting because the candidates were the same ones who always promised and never delivered,” said Jose Angel Beltran, a 37-year-old rebel sympathizer, expressing the newfound civic spirit of the caravan to Chalatenango. “Today there are parties that represent the people. In my way of thinking, that means we could have a true democracy and perhaps some peace.”

The election outcome, expected to be known today, could tip the balance in government-guerrilla peace talks mediated by the United Nations. The talks have been deadlocked in recent months over how sharply to reduce the 57,000-member armed forces. A victory by the opposition, which favors deeper military cuts than Arena, would reshape the legislature that must approve any of the proposals being discussed as part of an armistice.

Sunday’s voting was the first test for Arena since it captured the presidency in 1989. The party has 32 of 60 seats in the current Assembly, but the opposition hoped to capitalize on recent election reforms that expanded the legislature to 84 seats, made it easier for minority parties to win representation and simplified voter registration.

Arena got 44% of the nationwide vote in the preliminary, unofficial returns and claimed to be winning a bare majority of 43 Assembly seats. But the Christian Democrats, in second place with 25% of the vote, and the Democratic Convergence, a suprising third with 16%, disputed Arena’s projections and said that control of the Assembly was still in doubt.

The rebels’ Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front staged nationwide attacks to discourage voting in all five previous elections since 1982. The FMLN denounced those elections as fraudulent means to legitimize a series of U.S.-backed governments it was seeking to overthrow in favor of a Marxist system.

But since the collapse of Marxist rule in Eastern Europe and Nicaragua, FMLN leaders have disavowed that goal. The aim of the fighting now, they say, is to improve their bargaining power in negotiations and guarantee their participation in a demilitarized multi-party democracy.

To encourage voting, rebel leaders declared a weekend truce and withdrew most of their forces from populated areas to avoid clashes with the army. The only combat reported Sunday centered around eight towns in the provinces of Chalatenango, Morazan and La Union. The army said it killed nine guerrillas and lost one man.

Residents and foreign election observers here in Chalatenango said the army appeared to be trying to discourage voting this time. They said government forces shelled the outskirts of San Jose las Flores before dawn Sunday and threatened to burn the home of anyone in nearby Guarjila who went to the polls.

“Those mortars are like the Scud missiles that Iraq aimed at Israel; they served no military purpose whatsoever,” said Peter Bottomley, a Conservative member of the British Parliament who spent the night in the area. “The only purpose they had here was to frighten these people.”

Most of the 17,000 people living here and in seven nearby towns are FMLN supporters who took refuge in neighboring Honduras during heavy fighting in the early 1980s. Returning in 1987 to towns abandoned as well by the government, they took control of their own schools, health care and crop marketing under protection of rebel troops.

On Sunday, the army pushed the border between government and guerrilla territory to the outskirts of the town, setting up checkpoints along the road to Chalatenango. But the government made no effort to set up polling stations here or in 18 other rebel-controlled municipalities across the country, and was forced to withdraw ballot boxes from at least five contested towns. Voters had to trek elsewhere to cast ballots.