Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Leftist Mauricio Funes of El Salvador's former Marxist rebel FMLN party has won the country's presidential election. He defeated his conservative rival, the Arena party's Rodrigo Avila, who has admitted defeat. Arena had won every presidential election since the end of El Salvador's civil war 18 years ago. Addressing jubilant supporters, Mr Funes said it was the happiest day of his life and the beginning of a new chapter of peace for the country. Branded by his opponents as a puppet of Venezuala's President Hugo Chavez, Mr Funes vowed to respect all Salvadorian democratic institutions. The FMLN won 51.3% of the vote against Arena's 48.7%, Reuters news agency reported. Break with tradition "This is the happiest night of my life, and I want it to be the night of El Salvador's greatest hope," said Mr Funes. Mauricio Funes is the first FMLN leader who has not been a combatant "I want to thank all the people who voted for me and chose that path of hope and change." His FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) party was founded by Marxist guerrilla fighters from the civil war. The conflict ended in a UN-sponsored peace accord in 1991, after the loss of some 70,000 lives over less than two decades. Mr Funes, a former television journalist, marks a break of tradition for the party as he is the first of its leaders not to have been a combatant in that war, says the BBC's Stephen Gibbs in El Salvador. He stressed his moderate policies during his campaign and says he intends to maintain good relations with the United States. He strongly rejected suggestions put forward by his political opponents that El Salvador under his watch would become a Venezuelan satellite state. Supporters of Mr Avila, a former police chief, dismissed the FMLN as "communists". Mr Funes will take over a country plagued with problems, our correspondent notes. El Salvador has one of the world's highest murder rates. It has also been badly hit by the world economic downturn, with remittances from Salvadorians living abroad falling dramatically.
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President-elect of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes 
Sunday night, Mauricio Funes of the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party declared victory in El Salvador's 2009 presidential elections. Although El Salvador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal has not yet certified a winner, Funes shows an insurmountable lead in the results, besting Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) candidate Rodrigo Ávila by a margin of 51.27% to 48.73%, with 90.68% of votes counted. Ávila conceded defeat, vowing that ARENA would remain vigorous in opposition. 

Funes' victory marks a major shift in the politics of the country: ARENA has controlled the presidency of El Salvador since the end of El Salvador's civil war in 1991. The FMLN was founded by Marxist guerrillas who fought in the civil war. When the guerrillas and the government signed a peace agreement in 1992, the FMLN became a political party. 

Funes, a former television journalist, is the first FMLN leader not to have been an combatant in the war. In his victory speech in San Salvador Sunday night, he said: "I want to be the real president of the real reconstruction of the country, which starts with the reconstruction of people."

"I want to thank all the people who voted for me and chose that path of hope and change," added Funes. 

During the polarizing electoral campaign, Ávila tied the FMLN to communism and said that an FMLN victory would turn El Salvador into a satellite of Hugo Chávez's Venezuela. Discontent with unemployment, gang violence and corruption under the government of ARENA president Antonio "Tony" Saca trumped concerns that the FMLN would return to its radical roots or spoil El Salvador's historically close relationship with the United States.

About 60% of the electorate voted, including thousands who returned to the country from the United States in order to cast ballots.