Reagan’s choice wins ballot

Press, 14 May 1984, Page 10

Reagan’s choice wins ballot

NZPA-Reuter San Salvador Jose Napoleon Duarte, due to become El Salvador’s first freely elected President for 52 years, announced yesterday that the Army had created a special commission to wipe out human rights abuses in its own ranks. “They have already created a commission to look into these problems,” the conservative Christian Democrat told a news conference after being confirmed the winner of the Presidential run-off. “It is they, not I, who will make the changes within the Armed Forces.” He repeated a promise to create a special Presidential commission to crack down on the notorious death squads and end human rights abuses by the country’s security forces. Mr Duarte, aged 58, the favoured candidate of the United States, was on Saturday officially declared the winner of the run-off poll, collecting 53.59 per cent of the vote. His far-Right opponent, Major Roberto d’Aubuisson, who is said to have links with the Rightist death squads, got 46.40 per cent. Leftists, boycotted the elections.

Mr Duarte will take office on June 1. Diplomats and Government officials have said that Mr Duarte’s victory will almost certainly lead to deeper American entanglement in the four-year-old civil war between the Army and Left-wing guerrillas that has claimed more than 42,000 lives. Senior military officers have said that the Army plans to purge the forces of hardline Rightist officers including Colonel Nicolas Carranza, head of the Treasury Police, who has been linked to the death squads.

Mr Duarte said that his Christian Democrats had signed a pact with Democratic Action calling for the country’s political parties to co-operate to “strengthen the new democracy.” In a reference to Major d’Aubuisson’s National Republican Alliance, which includes most of the country’s powerful business leaders, Mr Duarte said that he would be willing to sign a similar pact with “members of the private initiative if they wish to enter the democratic scheme.” Mr Duarte said that National Republican Alliance leaders would receive no posts in his Govenrment.