President-elect Sanchez Ceren calls for unity, Quijano cries foul
But the opposition National Republican Alliance (ARENA) countered that the leftist Sanchez Ceren's victory in Sunday's run-off was "illegitimate," setting the stage for an acrimonious dispute in the Central American country, which is still traumatized by civil war.
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal said Sanchez Ceren, a former rebel commander of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), won 50.11 percent of the vote while ARENA candidate Norman Quijano, a conservative, received 49.98 percent.
With such a narrow victory, the president-elect's first words were a promise to "work to unite the country."
"Let's build together a more inclusive, more developed country where we can have a decent home and life for all," Sanchez Ceren said.
A victory rally was called for Saturday night in the capital San Salvador.
Sanchez Ceren, who is to be sworn in June 1, takes on a highly polarized population plagued by gang violence, rampant poverty and an economy that grew just 1.9 percent in 2013.
- Opposition cries foul -
The electoral tribunal had conducted a manual count of the votes at the request of Quijano, who also had demanded that the results be nullified because of alleged fraud.
ARENA, which has three days to appeal the outcome, remained bitterly unsatisfied after the tribunal announced the final result, which was identical to a preliminary result announced Sunday.
"There is an illegitimate winner of a corrupt process with an overseer of the process that was in charge of covering it up from the start and which enjoys no credibility," ARENA vice president Ernesto Muyshondt said, referring to the tribunal.
Sanchez Ceren, 69, had been favored to win the run-off by as many as 10 percentage points, so the tight margin came as a big surprise to many.
He served as vice president under President Mauricio Funes, who came to office in 2009 at the head of El Salvador's first leftist government, ending two decades of right-wing rule.
Sanchez Ceren was one of five top guerrilla commanders during the 1979 to 1992 civil war, and the first to be elected president.
The FMLN and ARENA were the main protagonists of that conflict.
After the rebels laid down their arms, the FMLN became a legal political party.
Quijano, 67, the mayor of the capital San Salvador, was a law-and-order candidate and staunch anti-communist who campaigned against the country's high crime rate and the notorious "mara" street gangs behind much of El Salvador's drug dealing and extortion.
Quijano, however, suffered from his links to ex-president Francisco Flores, a former campaign adviser under scrutiny over $10 million donated by Taiwan that went missing during his 1999 to 2004 government.
After the civil war, El Salvador found itself facing violence from street gangs which control whole neighborhoods and run drug distribution and extortion rackets.
Forty percent of El Salvador's six million people live in poverty, and the country relies heavily on remittances sent by Salvadorans living abroad -- around $4 billion a year, or 16 percent of the country's GDP.
Source AFP Tags: press
