A Milestone for El Salvador

Given that El Salvador’s bitter civil war ended only two years ago, it was inevitable that Sunday’s national elections would be tense and marred by mistakes and possibly even fraud. But the voting was peaceful, and that is a hopeful sign.

The final results are still several days off, but preliminary tallies show the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, or ARENA, falling short of a clear majority in the presidential election. That is unlikely to change as the count continues, independent election observers say.

If ARENA candidate Armando Calderon Sol indeed does not win a majority, a runoff must be held within a month. That would pit Calderon Sol against the No. 2 vote-getter, Ruben Zamora, the candidate of a coalition of nine leftist parties that includes former guerrillas.

Such a ballot-box confrontation would involve the same two factions that waged the 12-year-long civil war, a stalemate that cost 75,000 lives. ARENA’s leaders include former members of El Salvador’s military, while Zamora’s coalition includes the five guerrilla factions that made up the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

There may be an almost poetic symmetry here, but a runoff would put a great deal of added stress on El Salvador’s electoral machinery, still new and faced with many difficulties as it tries to bring democracy to a nation that has never known it.

Voting next month also would add to the burden of the United Nations, which brokered the negotiated settlement that led to an uneasy cease-fire in El Salvador. The United Nations sent 900 election observers to El Salvador to monitor Sunday’s voting, and they noted many problems that may have affected the results. The United Nations now must prepare to mount an effort to make the final round of voting as honest and open as possible--and to make sure that both sides accept it as such. In that effort the world body would need support from the United States. The Clinton Administration has tried to keep its distance from these elections, but in view of the key role U.S. aid played in the civil war, Washington’s influence cannot be underestimated.

Both Washington and the United Nations must work to prevent the left and the right from again trying to win power with guns. Because if that happens there will no winners in El Salvador, only losers.