By TIM ROGERS
Special to The Miami Herald 

Though the vote is more than a year away, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party, is considered the early favorite after nearly 20 years of right-wing rule by the ARENA party, one of Washington's closest allies in Central America.

Polls suggest that a majority of Salvadorans are ready for change, and the FMLN claims it's ready to capitalize on that sentiment and piggyback on the recent electoral success of other left-wing parties in the hemisphere.

''Like in the 1960s through '80s, when we saw a tendency in Latin America of breaking the dictatorships, there is a new movement now to break the current model of government,'' Salvador Sánchez Cerén, the FMLN's vice-presidential candidate, told The Miami Herald.

''People want more democracy, where the citizens participate and exercise power,'' he said. ``This is the new current in Latin America, and the left is better prepared to lead it.''

President Daniel Ortega and the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front are in power in neighboring Nicaragua. Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador all elected leftist presidents. El Salvador and Colombia have Latin America's only conservative governments.

`NOW IS THE MOMENT'

''The FMLN has its best chance to win now, not because it is doing things well, but because there has been no renovation on the [political] right,'' said Hector Silva, a former FMLN mayor of San Salvador who later defected from the party. ``There is a feeling that now is the moment for the left.''

FMLN guerrillas turned in their weapons and became a political party after signing an agreement with the government in 1992 to end a brutal civil war that left an estimated 75,000 dead.

The FMLN appears to be borrowing a page from Ortega's successful 2006 presidential race.

Just as Ortega ran a big-tent campaign by tapping a former political adversary and banker as his running mate, the FMLN has nominated a popular TV journalist, Mauricio Funes, as its presidential candidate alongside Sánchez -- the last of the FMLN's guerrilla commanders still with the party.

Sánchez said that the FMLN's choice of Funes has ''confused the right'' and signifies ``an alliance between the party and the people.''

The Sandinistas' slogan was ''peace and national reconciliation.'' The FMLN softened its revolutionary message into one of ``peace and hope for a new El Salvador.''

Sánchez said his campaign hasn't even mentioned socialism or revolutionary change.

CRITICS UNCONVINCED

Not everyone is convinced the FMLN has changed much.

Facundo Guardado, a former guerrilla leader and the FMLN's presidential candidate in 1999, said his former party's hard-line Stalinist element has taken over. Attempts to reform the FMLN and make it more of a Social Democratic party over the years have failed, he said, resulting in massive defections over the past decade.

''The FMLN was more democratic during the war,'' Guardado said. ``Now they are fascinated with authoritarianism and fundamentalism.''

Guardado says he has no doubt that if the FMLN wins, El Salvador will become the next partner in Hugo Chávez's ''21st century socialism,'' forming a Central American bloc with Nicaragua. FMLN municipal governments already buy discounted oil from Venezuela.

Sánchez downplayed the influence that Chávez has on the FMLN and denied that the Venezuelan leader is funding the party's campaign.

THIRD PARTY

Guardado and a group of moderate former guerrillas are striking out on their own in hopes of offering a third-party option in hopes of appealing to disenchanted voters on the right, left and center. Their Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR) is running businessman Arturo Zablah for president.

The Democratic Front is reaching out to other minority parties to form a coalition that can challenge the FMLN and ARENA, which is expected to pick its presidential candidate next month.

Julio Hernández, the secretary general of the FDR, says lots of voters may support the right only because there is no viable option on the left. But he hopes to change that.

''We are going to reinvent the left,'' Hernández said. ``We are like Robin Hood, we are going to take votes from the rich to help the poor.''