Prosecutor: Pistorius should get mental evaluation

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Oscar Pistorius arrives at the high court in Pretoria, South Africa, Monday, May 5, 2014. Pistorius' murder trial enters a critical phase Monday as his defense team attempts to recover from a faltering start and reinforce the disabled athlete's claim that he fatally shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp by mistake because he was overwhelmed by a long-held fear of violent crime. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — The chief prosecutor in the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius on Tuesday asked that the double-amputee runner be placed under psychiatric evaluation after an expert witness testified that he had an anxiety disorder.

Prosecutor Gerrie Nel noted that a psychiatrist for the defense had testified that the disorder she diagnosed in Pistorius may have played a role in his fatal shooting of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his home on Feb. 14, 2013. The prosecutor has acknowledged that an evaluation of Pistorius' state of mind at a government facility could mean the trial, which began March 3, will be delayed.

Judge Thokozile Masipa ordered an adjournment and said she would rule on Nel's request on Wednesday morning.

Nel questioned why the defense decided to ask Dr. Merryll Vorster, a psychiatrist, to testify on behalf of the Olympic runner. He has suggested that the trial is not going well for Pistorius and that his lawyers are floating the idea that a disorder contributed to Steenkamp's shooting and that therefore Pistorius bears less responsibility for her death.

Pistorius says he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder when he shot her through the closed door of a toilet cubicle. Prosecutors say he killed her in anger after an argument.

In asking for another professional evaluation of Pistorius' mental state, Nel appeared to be trying to ward off any attempt by the defense to say Pistorius should be treated favorably by the court because of a mental condition linked to his disability.

Pistorius' chief lawyer, Barry Roux, said at the start of defense-led testimony that the double amputee's vulnerability and disability was at the center of his case of a mistaken killing. He said Pistorius should not be sent for 30 days of psychiatric evaluation and that he wanted to call another witness to continue testimony.

The psychiatrist, Vorster, met Pistorius this month, prompting the prosecutor to question whether the timing of her late entry to the stable of defense witnesses signified a change in tactics by the defense, which has said Pistorius fired out of fear that he was about to be attacked.

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The Israel puts more children in solitary confinement: NGO

A Palestinian youth throws a stone at policemen outside the Jalazoun refugee camp near the West Bank city of Ramallah January 12, 2014. (REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman)

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel is placing increasing numbers of arrested Palestinian children in solitary confinement, an international children's rights group said in a report issued Monday.

The report came just months after Israel's army, under international pressure to introduce reforms, agreed to test alternative treatment for children it detains in the West Bank.

In more than one in five cases recorded by Defence for Children International in 2013, children detained for questioning by the army reported "undergoing solitary confinement," DCI said in a statement.

This was a two-percent rise on 2012 figures, it said.

"Use of isolation against Palestinian children as an interrogation tool is a growing trend," said Ayed Abu Eqtaish of DCI in the Palestinian territories.

"This is a violation of children’s rights and the international community must demand justice and accountability," he said.

"Globally, children and juvenile offenders are often held in isolation either as a disciplinary measure or to separate them from adult populations," DCI said.

"The use of solitary confinement by Israeli authorities does not appear to be related to any disciplinary, protective, or medical rationale."

DCI's research included 98 sworn affidavits from Palestinian children aged 12 to 17.

In October, the UN children's fund (UNICEF) said Israel had agreed to test alternative treatment for Palestinian children arrested in the West Bank.

These included issuing summons instead of arresting children at their homes at night.

But UNICEF said that "ongoing" violations by the army were rife and included physical violence and verbal abuse.

Over the past decade, Israeli forces have arrested, interrogated and prosecuted around 7,000 children between 12 and 17, mostly boys, UNICEF found, noting the rate was equivalent to "an average of two children each day."

Benjamin Ekpenyong

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Helper: U.S. deploys surveillance aircraft over Nigeria to find girls

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has deployed manned surveillance aircraft over Nigeria and is sharing satellite imagery with the Nigerian government to find more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist insurgents, a senior Obama administration official said on Monday.

Washington has sent military, law-enforcement and development experts to Nigeria to help search for the missing girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram militants from a secondary school in Chibok in remote northeastern Nigeria on April 14.

"We have shared commercial satellite imagery with the Nigerians and are flying manned ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) assets over Nigeria with the government's permission," the U.S. official said.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a news briefing on Monday that the U.S. was providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support. She said U.S. teams on the ground "are digging in on the search and coordinating closely with the Nigerian government as well as international partners and allies."

Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was also considering deploying unmanned, drone aircraft to aid the search.

One of the U.S. officials told Reuters the United States had been carrying out the manned surveillance flights "for a few days" but did not elaborate.

Last week, U.S. Undersecretary for Africa Linda Thomas-Greenfield told Reuters in an interview that Nigeria had requested surveillance and intelligence from the United States.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has said he believes the girls are still in Nigeria. The leader of Boko Haram has offered to release them in exchange for members of its group being detained, according to a video posted on YouTube on Monday.
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Benjamin Ekpenyong

From BEN Latest News: www.benlatestnews.com

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Missing Malaysian plane: Could it have landed?

Plane theories: Mystery of Flight 370

Yet another theory is taking shape about what might have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain.

The suggestion -- and it's only that at this point -- is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggesting that the plane wasn't just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia.

Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands.

The radar data doesn't show the plane over the Andaman Islands, but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying.

 

 Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

 

Flight 370 search expands to Indian Ocean 

 

Andaman Island editor: 'No plane here'

 

'Significant likelihood' plane in ocean

 

The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. That makes some investigators think the plane flew on for hours before truly disappearing.

Aviation experts say it's possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have hijacked and landed the giant Boeing 777 undetected.

But Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper, says there's just nowhere to land such a big plane in his archipelago without attracting notice.

Indian authorities own the only four airstrips in the region, he said.

"There is no chance, no such chance, that any aircraft of this size can come towards Andaman and Nicobar Islands and land," he said.

The Malaysian government said Friday it can't confirm the report.

And a senior U.S. official on Thursday offered a conflicting account, telling CNN that "there is probably a significant likelihood" the plane is on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

Regardless, India has deployed assets from its navy, coast guard and air force to the south Andaman Sea to take part in a search for Flight 370, the country's Ministry of Defense said Friday. The Indian navy is leading the operation, and its Maritime Operations Center in New Delhi is coordinating the effort, the ministry said.

Indian search teams are combing large areas of the archipelago. Two aircraft are searching land and coastal areas of the island chain from north to south, an Indian military spokesman said Friday, and two coast guard ships have been diverted to search along the islands' east coast.

The jetliner, with 239 people on board, disappeared nearly a week ago as it flew between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Beijing. The flight has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials. Authorities still don't know where the plane is or what caused it to vanish.

Suggestions of what happened have ranged from a catastrophic explosion to hijacking to pilot suicide.

Malaysian officials, who are coordinating the search, said Friday that the hunt for the plane was spreading deeper into both the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

Andaman and Nicobar Islands

 

"A normal investigation becomes narrower with time, I understand, as new information focuses the search," said Hishammuddin Hussein, the minister in charge of defense and transportation. "But this is not a normal investigation. In this case, the information we have forces us to look further and further afield."

As of Friday, 57 ships and 48 aircraft from 13 countries were involved in the search, Hussein said.

On Friday, the United States sent the destroyer USS Kidd to scout the Indian Ocean as the search expands into that body of water.

"I, like most of the world, really have never seen anything like this," Cmdr. William Marks of the U.S. 7th Fleet told CNN of the scale of the search. "It's pretty incredible."

"It's a completely new game now," he said. "We went from a chess board to a football field."

More on the landing theory

James Kallstrom, a former FBI assistant director, said it's possible the plane could have landed, though he added that more information is needed to reach a definitive conclusion. He referred to the vast search area.

"You draw that arc and you look at countries like Pakistan, you know, and you get into your Superman novels and you see the plane landing somewhere and (people) repurposing it for some dastardly deed down the road," he told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday.

"I mean, that's not beyond the realm of realism. I mean, that could happen."

Even so, he acknowledged the difficulty of reaching firm conclusions with scraps of information that sometimes conflict.

"We're getting so much conflicting data," he said. "You veer one way, then you veer the other way. The investigators need some definitive, correct data."

Other developments

On the seventh day of efforts to find the missing Boeing 777-200, here are the other main developments:

• Another lead: Chinese researchers say they recorded a "seafloor event" in waters around Malaysia and Vietnam about an hour and a half after the missing plane's last known contact. The event was recorded in a nonseismic region about 116 kilometers (72 miles) northeast of the plane's last confirmed location, the University of Science and Technology of China said.

"Judging from the time and location of the two events, the seafloor event may have been caused by MH370 crashing into the sea," said a statement posted on the university's website.

• Tracking the pings: Malaysian authorities believe they have several "pings" from the airliner's service data system, known as ACARS, transmitted to satellites in the four to five hours after the last transponder signal, suggesting the plane flew to the Indian Ocean, a senior U.S. official told CNN.

That information, combined with known radar data and knowledge of fuel range, leads officials to believe the plane may have made it as far as the Indian Ocean, which is in the opposite direction of the plane's original route, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

• Why the Indian Ocean? Analysts from U.S. intelligence, the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board have been scouring satellite feeds and, after ascertaining no other flights' transponder data corresponded to the pings, came to the conclusion that they were likely to have come from the missing Malaysian plane, the senior U.S. official said.

Indian search teams are combing large areas of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a remote archipelago in the northeast Indian Ocean.

• Malaysian response: In a statement Friday, Malaysia's Ministry of Transport neither confirmed nor denied the latest reports on the plane's possible path, saying that "the investigation team will not publicly release information until it has been properly verified and corroborated." The ministry said it was continuing to "work closely with the U.S. team, whose officials have been on the ground in Kuala Lumpur to help with the investigation since Sunday.

U.S. experts are using satellite systems to try to determine the possible location of the plane, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of the Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation, said at a news conference Friday.

On Thursday, Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said that Rolls-Royce, the maker of the plane's engines, and Boeing had reported that they hadn't received any data transmissions from the plane after 1:07 a.m. Saturday, 14 minutes before the transponder stopped sending information. He was responding to a Wall Street Journal report suggesting the missing plane's engines continued to send data to the ground for hours after contact with the transponder was lost.

The Wall Street Journal subsequently changed its reporting to say that signals from the plane -- giving its location, speed and altitude -- were picked up by communications satellites for at least five hours after it disappeared. The last "ping" came from over water, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified people briefed on the investigation.

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Singapore: World’s Costliest City

The city-state of Singapore is now officially the costliest, or most expensive, city to live in the world. This news was released in the 2014 Worldwide Cost of Living survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) which, by what The Wall Street Journal reports, a relocation tool that compares the cost of living between 131 cities worldwide to New York, which has a score of 100. The main purpose for the survey is to examine prices across 160 products and services in 140 cities to help companies calculate allowances for executives being sent overseas.

According to MSN News, the declining value of the yen is the reason last year’s costliest city, Tokyo, slid down to sixth place this year giving Singapore the opportunity to take the top spot. Their position, however, is a jump from last year since they were the one in the sixth place position. The 40% rise in the Singapore dollar along with solid price inflation, especially with transport costs, utilities, and alcohol, are the primary reasons for why Singapore is now number one.

Singapore: World’s Costliest City

To better understand how expensive it is to live in Singapore, it is best to look at the price curb for ownership for automobiles, which includes a quota system and high taxes. For example, a new Toyota Corolla Altis costs $110,000 in Singapore compared to around $35,000 in Malaysia. Overall, transport costs are almost three times higher than that of New York City.

As it pertains to utilities, the survey had this explanation:

    In addition, as a city-state with very few natural resources to speak of, Singapore is reliant on other countries for energy and water supplies, making it the third most expensive destination for utility costs.

It should also be reported that Singapore has the highest concentration of millionaires to its 5.4 million population. Ergo, malls and boutiques in its popular Orchard Road retail hub import luxury European brands to “satisfy a wealthy and fashion-conscious consumer base”. Its per capita income of more than $51,000 in 2012 masks a widening income gap between the richest and poorest.

 

Singapore isn’t the only city to rise dramatically in expensiveness. Paris jumped six places to become the second costliest city in the world. This is a trend the EIU said was indicative of recovering European prices and currencies. The editor of the survey report, Jon Copestack, said this about Paris’s improvement though it relates to European cities as a whole:

    Improving sentiment in structurally expensive European cities combined with the continued rise of Asian hubs means that these two regions continue to supply most of the world’s most expensive cities.

Other cities to be in the top ten include Sydney, Melbourne, Caracas, Geneva, and Tokyo. New York City, the city which is the base for the survey, came in at the 26th place. As for Singapore, they may not be the costliest city by this time, next year. That’s how long it took for Tokyo to lose its number one spot so it is possible that is how long it will take Singapore to lose its spot too. Tokyo actually might be back on top in 2020, since they are the city to host the 2020 Olympic Games.

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South Africa, Rwanda Feud Heats Up With Expelled Diplomats

South Africa and Rwandan relations have taken a turn for the worst as both countries have expelled the others’ diplomats. The feud, which is rapidly escalating is over the murder of a former Rwandan government official who was killed in South Africa’s capital of Johannesburg three months ago.
Bloomberg news reports that Rwanda’s foreign minister announced the moves on Twitter on Friday saying:

“We have expelled six South African diplomats in reciprocity and concern at South Africa harboring of dissidents responsible for terrorist attacks in Rwanda.”

In retaliation, a government official from South Africa confirmed it had expelled the rival country’s diplomats as well. According to the BBC, the moves come after armed men invaded and attacked the Johannesburg home of Kayumba Nyamwasa, a Rwandan former chief of staff.

The former official has been exiled from his home country, making him a prominent target for attackers loyal to the opposition. Fortunately for him, he was not at home at the time of the attack. The invaders did manage to steal the man’s computer and a few documents.

Rwanda’s former head of intelligence, Patrick Karegeya is the man at the center of the two countries’ latest harsh actions. On New Year’s day, Karegeya was found dead in a hotel room, located in South Africa’s affluent Sandton area. At the time of his death, the former official was meeting with a friend from his home country.

South Africa believes that Karegeya was a target from the neighboring county because he co-authored a briefing note that attacked Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

“Rwanda is essentially a hard-line, one-party, secretive police state with a facade of democracy,” it said. “President Kagame and the ruling party that he leads depend on repression to stay in power.”

Four days after the murder in South Africa’s capital, the government announced it would start an official probe into the death. Not long after that release, Kagame said that enemies of his government should expect to “pay.” That seemed to indicate that Kagame not only knew who had committed the crime but that he knew it was going to happen.

It appears that people in and around Johannesburg are not keen on a leader of another country sending armed men into the town in order to carry out political retribution. While Kagame government officials haven’t admitted to any role in the murder, South Africa appears ready to pin the blame on the rival country.

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Hong Kong Gets Advised Against Democratic System

Hong Kong is scheduled to have a direct election in 2017, but the chairman of China’s National People’s Congress (hereafter NPC) Zhang Dejiang has cautioned against being too democratic. After the annual NPC meeting in Beijing, several delegates quoted Zheng’s worries about the new move in government and whether it was a good fit for Hong Kong. As Radio Free Asia reports, delegate Ma Fung-kwok quoted the chairman in this summary of his thoughts, “You can’t just import [electoral systems] or copy foreign countries, or else it may not be a good fit with the local environment and easily enter a democratic trap…” The chairman of NPC also counseled Hong Kong that adopting too many Western election habits “could bring disastrous results.”

Zhang has emphasized that Hong Kong must keep “love of country” as the top priority at all times, meaning the polls must reflect that love as well. In order to ensure this, all Presidential candidates must be approved by a nominating committee. Reuters has estimated that the committee will be dominated by pro-Beijing loyalists, making it questionable as to whether or not opposing democratic nominees will be allowed to run.
However, loyalists are starting to receive significant backlash from Hong Kong’s pro-democracy advocates.

There have been threats to shut off the business district and instigate a kind of “Occupy Central” to voice their displeasure against China’s “fake democracy.” While there is doubt that these protests will do anything to change the proposed democratic process, outcries over the Google blocks a few years ago certainly swayed Chinese government officials.

Defenders of Zhang and other chairmen ensure that this kind of democratic election will be what is best for Hong Kong and China. In order for a democratic process to work in Hong Kong, the laws must conform to the local expectations, otherwise the city will fall into a democratic trap. However, the NPC has failed to announce exactly what this trap would do or what the supposed dangerous results of more Western-influenced voting may be.

Throughout the next three years Hong Kong will be playing a tug of war between its people and its government. Hopefully by election season there will be more of an understanding between the people and the rulers.

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Saudi Arabia To Unveiled Women: Don’t Go To Girls’ Schools

Saudi Arabia’s education departments are implementing a new rule that will ban unveiled women from entering girls’ schools, Saudi Gazette reports.

In a memo addressed to school principals, education departments in some regions of Saudi Arabia are mandating girls’ schools to abide by Islamic regulations. One of the entries in the memo is a rule preventing female employees and visitors who are not wearing veils from entering the campuses.

Male and female guards of the Saudi Arabia schools covered by the memo are asked to uphold the honor of their profession by strictly subscribing to these regulations.

The ban on unveiled women in girls’ schools is just one of the many new rules that the education departments of Saudi Arabia will be implementing on the academic institutions.
Another on the list of new regulations is the restriction of female employees and students from leaving their campuses before school hours unless they have secured permission from the head of school.
Men are allowed to enter the campuses on the condition that they secure permission from the female principal and that they follow strict regulations regarding gender separation.

The memo also mandates drivers of female students in private cars to constantly surrender their identity cards for regular inspection.

Female guards of the schools will be given more responsibilities as they undertake the task of observing female visitors closely whenever they roam around the campus. They will also be giving assistance to teachers-in-charge in carefully watching out for female students who might break school schedules provided to them.

Saudi Arabia’s education departments have particularly stressed to the recipients of the memo to report any violation of these rules to security authorities.

Saudi Arabia has been on the hot seat for the past decades for its policies towards their women population. Non-profit group Human Rights Watch report that these unfair policies include a ban on driving and a prohibition on travelling without a male guardian’s consent.

CNN reported October that at least twenty-five Saudi Arabia women challenged the Kingdom’s ban on women driving by going behind the wheel and cruising the streets on their own. Some of the women protesters even filmed themselves driving the streets of Saudi Arabia and uploaded their videos on YouTube. Five of the protesters were stopped by authorities and were asked to sign a pledge saying never to drive again.

Saudi Princess Pushes For Women's Rights

Another report of Saudi Arabia’s mistreatment of women came to Inquisitr November 2012 when they were revealed to have developed plans to electronically track every woman in the kingdom.

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Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Hijacked? Terrorism Investigated After Plane Crash Kills 239

A Malaysia Airlines plane may have been hijacked and taken down in an act of terrorism, officials suspect after questions continue to mount over the identity of a number of passengers.

After losing contract with air traffic controllers, the plane crashed early on Saturday with 239 passengers and crew members on board. The plane is believed to have gone down off the coast of Vietnam, with search crews discovering an oil slick in the South China Sea later on Saturday in the suspected crash site.
The cause of the crash has yet to be determined, but increasing evidence points to a possible terrorist attack against the Malaysia Airlines plane.

But both investigators and government officials say it is too early to make any definite statements.
“We are looking at all possibilities,” Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said when asked if terrorism was a possible cause.

On Saturday, officials investigating the crash of Flight MH370 discovered that two people on board were using passports that had been stolen. The circumstance raised suspicions among American lawmakers, and prompted the FBI to get involved in the investigation.

“This gets our antenna up, for sure,” said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee. “Once you hear that — stolen passports, a plane disappearing from the radar — you have to go to the full-court press.”

More evidence discovered Saturday pointed to a possible terrorism in the crash of the Malaysia Airlines plane. Authorities have not been able to verify the identities of two more European passengers on board the plane, and that the two unknown passengers had bought tickets with the pair who had stolen passports.
“The background checks with the embassies are being done but these two cannot be confirmed,” a source told The Malaysian Insider, adding that both were from the same country.

If the Malaysia Airlines plane was hijacked in an act of terrorism, it would be the 20 deadliest single act of terrorism in modern history.

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Hong Kong Journalists Protest Freedom Of The Press Deterioration

Traditionally, Hong Kong residents have been very vocal in their opinions, but lately journalists feel that the freedom of the press is being squashed as never before.

This past Sunday, thousands of people took to the streets — in what they dubbed “Free Speech, Free Hong Kong” rally — to protest what they see as an alarming trend of media censorship in their homeland, which is a former British colony.

The protest follows another demonstration over a week ago, when thousands participating in the Hong Kong Standard Chartered Marathon displayed blue ribbons to raise awareness of the deteriorating situation regarding press freedoms.

According to this weekend’s rally organizer, veteran journalist Shirley Yam — who spoke to CNN — the freedom of the press situation in Hong Kong is currently the worst that she has witness during her career:

“Headlines were added, complete pages were removed, photos were cancelled, interviews were bought, columnists were sacked. We get calls from senior government officials, we get calls from tycoons, saying ‘we don’t want to see this in your paper.’”
“It’s sad and terrifying,”

On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong — located in the southern China coast — became one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People’s Republic of China — the other one is Macau — but retained its government system and its constitution stipulates that the country will have a “high degree of autonomy” in all matters except foreign relations and military defense, for which they adhere to China.

Hong Kong has always enjoyed a high ranking in international polls including its economic freedom, financial and economic competitiveness, quality of life, corruption perception in studies conducted by the UN and WHO and had the longest life expectancy in the world in 2012.

However, now many see — as the country becomes closer to China — that there are attempts at squashing their precious freedom of speech, which they have always prided themselves in having.

Among other things, protesters at this weekend’s Hong Kong rally were complaining about the firing of prominent government critic Li Wei-ling from Commercial Radio, which many believe was intended to appease local officials who are in the process of renewing the station’s broadcasting license.

Protesters also voiced their discontent at last month’s firing of Ming Pao newspaper editor Kevin Lau —who had reported on official corruption and human-rights violations.

China made specific promises to keep the freedom of speech intact guaranteeing Hong Kong press freedom when it took over the city from Britain in 1997, but the ruling Communist Party — which doesn’t allow free press — still finds ways to squash local journalists.

The Chinese encourage self censorship and many Hong Kong journalists follow their wishes because they don’t want to anger Beijing and lose the business ties they need to succeed or for fear of being fired.

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El Salvador Elections: Will An Ex-Guerilla Commander Become President?

El Salvador is the center of South American politics Sunday as the rivalry between left-wing Farabundo Marti National Front (FMLN) and right-leaning Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) intensifies with the nationwide casting of votes in the country.

With 50 percent of the votes already counted, current projections point to a possible win for FMLN presidential candidate, ex-rebel commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren against ARENA standard bearer Norman Quijano, mayor of El Salvador capital San Salvador.

Sanchez Ceren currently has an 18 percent lead against Quijano for the presidential seat.
69 year old Sanchez Ceren is currently El Salvador’s vice president under Mauricio Fuenes, television journalist turned president who took the seat in 2009.

Fuenes, the first president to come from FMLN, was instrumental in putting a temporary truce between gangs in El Salvador.

EL Salvador has one of the highest murder rates in the world, with an average of 14 dead bodies a day appearing on the streets of the country. This is mostly attributable to the relentless gang wars which have plagued the country until 2012 when the Fuenes government intervened with the affairs of the Mara Salvatrucha, the most active gang in El Salvador.

April 12 2012 was celebrated in the country; a day when no single murder was committed for the first time since 2009.

However, Sanchez Ceren has been observed to stray away from gang issues during his campaign, according to BBC South America correspondent Will Grant.
The ex-rebel promises to uphold a moderate government system in El Salvador which will give the opposition a more involved role in policy making.

His rival candidate, mayor Quijano, warns the citizens of El Salvador that Sanchez Ceren will bring the country towards a communist state similar to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

He adds that Sanchez Ceren, a top ranking rebel leader during the El Salvador civil war, has once tried with his troop to convert the country into communism.

Al Jazeera notes that Quijano’s strategy of bringing the long-buried issues of the bloody civil war back to the citizens has been ineffective, adding that the majority of the El Salvador population are focused on current issues like gang violence or the dwindling economy.

If victorious, Sanchez Ceren will be the first president to have actively participated in the El Salvador civil war as a rebel. He will also be the second head of state that will hail from leftist FMNL after Fuenes.
Outgoing Fuenes, who was a popular journalist during the civil war, was not directly involved with the political affairs during the civil war but has since shown sympathy for the left-leaning sector of El Salvador.

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