2 Campaign Workers Slain in El Salvador

Two campaign workers were killed and three others were injured by machine-gun fire as they returned home from a rally for the leftist candidate for mayor of Nejapa, a town about six miles north of the capital, party officials said Friday.

At a Friday news conference, officials of the Faribundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, a guerrilla army turned political party, described the attack by ski-masked gunmen.

The officials said Moises Cano, 23, and an unidentified young man were killed in the attack that occurred at 11 p.m. Thursday.

The deaths were the first fatalities of an increasingly bitter campaign leading up to the March 16 midterm elections, when 262 mayors and 84 representatives to the Legislative Assembly will be chosen.

In the week since the campaign began, posters have been defaced and election propaganda painted over.

Besides the fatal attack, FMLN campaign headquarters in Mejicanos and Ayutuxtepeque, two working-class northern suburbs of San Salvador, were also sprayed with machine-gun fire, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, party coordinator, told reporters.

Sanchez called the incidents “criminal acts that endanger the electoral process.”

Problems began even before the campaign started when the Legislative Assembly, which is dominated by the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance, or Arena, passed an extension of the filing date for candidates.

Tensions have increased since the University of Central America this week released a survey indicating that the election will be close.

The survey indicated that Arena, which has ruled this country since 1989, could lose numerous city halls--including the capital’s--and congressional seats to the FMLN. Some politicians believe that the threat of a big Arena loss is behind the violence.

“The surveys have them scared,” said Hector Dada, a researcher at the Salvadoran branch of the Latin American Social Science Faculty, a regional think tank. “The right has never turned over power after elections in this country.”

However, Gerardo Suvillaga, a member of Arena’s National Executive Committee, said: “For all we know, this could be another example of the street crime from which we all suffer.” He added that “it could also be a smoke screen” to cover a campaign financing feud between the FMLN and another leftist party.

The gunmen have not been identified.