By GLENN GARVIN
             Herald Staff Writer

             SAN SALVADOR -- Barely a year ago, it seemed a dramatic tale was unfolding
             here: The leftist ex-guerrillas who successfully resisted the efforts of three U.S.
             presidents to wipe them out were on the verge of taking power in El Salvador with
             ballots, not bullets.

             But in a remarkable turnaround, when Salvadorans go to the polls Sunday to elect
             a new president, it appears all but certain that they will turn once again to the ruling
             right-wing ARENA party, with the left suffering a shattering defeat that puts its
             whole future into question.

             Three polls released late last month show ARENA's Ivy League-educated
             Francisco Flores, a former philosophy professor, with a lead of about 20
             percentage points over Facundo Guardado, the candidate of the Farabundo Marti
             National Liberation Front (FMLN) and former commander in chief of the guerrilla
             army.

             If Flores fails to win an outright majority -- and with seven candidates on the
             ballot, political analysts say that will be difficult -- a runoff election will be held in
             April.

             Struggling to reach a runoff election is hardly what FMLN chiefs expected to be
             doing when they were mapping their campaign strategy last year. Just five years
             after laying down their guns and transforming themselves into a political party, their
             party won a third of the seats in the National Assembly, just one less than
             ARENA, and took control of 100 city halls around the country -- including the
             capital.

             Hector Silva, a moderate who sang the praises of market economics, was the new
             mayor of San Salvador and seemingly the obvious FMLN presidential candidate
             for 1999.

             ARENA, the victor in the past two presidential elections, was foundering.
             President Armando Calderon Sol's government was battered by corruption
             scandals and mediocre economic performance.

             Setback for ex-rebels

             ``Then two things happened,'' observed Luis Cardenal, a political independent
             who is head of El Salvador's chamber of commerce. ``ARENA found Flores, and
             the FMLN started shooting itself in the foot.''

             Two FMLN nominating conventions dissolved into acrimonious shouting matches
             between the party's hard-line Marxists and its reformist wing. At the third
             convention, the reformers finally prevailed, but only by putting up two former
             guerrilla commanders as candidates for president and vice president.

             The 44-year-old Guardado was best known for leading a guerrilla patrol that shot
             its way into the San Salvador hotel where large delegations of U.S. and OAS
             diplomats were staying during the FMLN's last major offensive that ravaged the
             capital in 1989.

             He achieved new notoriety when a secret weapons depot he had set up in
             Nicaragua exploded in 1993, blowing up an entire city block and killing several
             bystanders.

             Not only did the arms depot violate the 1992 peace treaty that ended El
             Salvador's 13-year civil war but investigators found in the rubble plans for a wave
             of ransom kidnappings throughout the hemisphere, as well as stacks of forged and
             stolen passports.

             The vice presidential nominee, Maria Marta Valladares, known by her guerrilla
             nom de guerre, Nidia Diaz, was also linked to violence during the civil war. Diaz is
             prohibited from entering the United States because FMLN guerrillas from her
             faction staged a terrorist attack at a San Salvador restaurant in 1985 that killed
             about 20 people, including four U.S. Marines. Though Diaz was in prison at the
             time and has always denied ordering the attack, she defended it as legitimate in an
             autobiography published after the war.

             ``By nominating those people, they lost a golden opportunity to reach out to
             people and build a broader party,'' said Cardenal. ``This is much too hard-core an
             FMLN ticket to appeal to very many voters.''

             With its party too fractured to lend it much support, the Guardado-Diaz ticket
             never really got off the ground, barely clinging to second place in some polls.
             Already there is talk of a post-election purge and bitter feelings between reformers
             and hard-liners within the party.

             A fresh young face

             Meanwhile, ARENA came up with the amiable and articulate Flores, a
             39-year-old with a philosophy degree from Amherst who also studied at Harvard
             and Oxford. He seems light years away from his party's origins as the political
             voice of the paramilitary death squads that lurched through the capital streets
             during the early 1980s.

             ``People understand that there has been a deep change within ARENA,'' he said.
             ``It's not only a generational change, but it's a change in the way we do things and
             the way we relate to other politicians, to other political parties and to the
             Salvadoran people.''

             Flores wouldn't even be in politics if FMLN guerrillas hadn't assassinated his
             father-in-law, the chief of staff to then-President Alfredo Cristiani, in 1989.
             Angered by the killing, Flores abandoned his attempts at farming and joined the
             government. Eventually, he was elected to the National Assembly, where he burst
             into the public eye while presiding over hearings on corruption at El Salvador's
             central bank.

             Both Flores and Guardado have campaigned for a harsher government response
             to crime, and creating jobs by attracting foreign investment. The lack of a real
             clash over the issues seems to have put many Salvadorans to sleep; only about half
             of the country's 2.9 million eligible voters are expected to cast ballots.
 

                               Copyright © 1999 The Miami Herald