Salvadorean vice-president Salvador Sanchez just short of outright victory, and two Costa Rican candidates neck and neck
El Salvador and Costa Rica both appear to be heading for presidential runoffs, in elections widely viewed as referendums on political stagnation.
The ruling leftist party in El Salvador is fighting to hold on to the presidency after one term, with critics saying the government of President Mauricio Funes has done little to energise a sluggish economy and reduce gang crime. In Costa Rica, the ruling conservative party is in a tough battle weighed down by corruption allegations.
El Salvador's electoral tribunal said that with about 58% of ballots counted, Funes' vice-president, Salvador Sanchez, had 49% of the vote in his bid to extend the rule of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the party of former civil war guerrillas that won the presidency for the first time in 2009.
Sanchez was just under the 50% plus one vote he needed to win outright, and the election tribunal predicted he would fall short and have to face a runoff. San Salvador's mayor, Norman Quijano, the candidate of the long-governing conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as Arena, was second with nearly 39%.
In Costa Rica, election officials said that with 61% of polling stations reporting, the governing National Liberation party candidate Johnny Araya was running neck-and-neck with Luis Guillermo Solis of the Citizen Action party. Solis held a tiny lead, with each candidate having around 30% of the vote, leaving both far short of the 40% needed to avoid a runoff on 6 April.
Funes, a former television journalist who is stepping down as Salvadoran president, won the support of the poorest sectors of his country by implementing social programmes including giving books, shoes and uniforms to schoolchildren, seeds and fertilisers to the poorest farmers and a small pension to elderly people.
Jeanette Aguilar, director of the Public Opinion Institute at the Central American University Jose Simeon Canas in El Salvador, said: "The people in rural areas, in marginalised sectors, people with lower levels of education, were once the main political capital of Arena, but they are now the FMLN's electoral stronghold."
For Salvadorans, the main issues were a sluggish economy and rampant gang crime. Under Funes, leaders of El Salvador's main Mara street gangs declared a truce in several cities that yielded mixed results. "Homicides have gone down but [the gangs] are still killing; now they hide the victims," said Roberto Rubio, director of the National Foundation for Development. "Extortion has intensified and gangs have solidified their control over territory." In the last year, police have found mass graves containing the bodies of at least 24 alleged gang victims.
On top of the lack of security, Funes was unable to control the deficit or create jobs. But his poor handling of the economy might be not enough to bring back Arena, said Omar Serrano at the Jose Simeon Canas university. "The population is not satisfied with the current government, is not convinced that the FMLN should continue to rule, but it's very much convinced that Arena shouldn't return to government," Serrano said.
In Costa Rica, the National Liberation party was beset by infighting and corruption allegations. Araya, who has been the mayor of the capital, San Jose, since 2003, also needed to overcome discontent over high unemployment during President Laura Chinchilla's government.
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