Salvador President Declared

Francisco Flores, a 39-year-old philosopher and the new standard-bearer of El Salvador’s main right-wing party, Monday was declared the winner of Sunday’s presidential election.

Election officials reported that with just over 95% of the ballots counted, Flores, of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, or Arena, had received 52% of the vote; his main challenger, Facundo Guardado of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, received 29%.

The margin, voting officials said, assured Flores of the simple majority needed to claim victory and avoid a runoff that had been tentatively scheduled for next month. Five smaller parties were also on the ballot.

Flores’ victory was diminished somewhat by low voter turnout. Less than 40% of this small Central American nation’s 3.1 million registered voters went to the polls in the country’s second presidential election since 1992, when a peace accord ended a protracted civil war that killed an estimated 75,000 people.