The Michigan Daily - Sunday, May 6, 1984 - Page 5 Salvadorans pick president today SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) - A runoff presidential election cam- paign that in many ways has matched the mood of this strife-torn country comes to an end at the ballot box today. Voters clutching all-important iden- tity cards are expected to stream to polling places all over the country - from the remote, tense countryside to the busy corners of San Salvador - to choose between two radically different presidential candidates. A CENTURY old law requires those eligible to vote and makes them liable for fines if they don't, although officials say fines are rarely imposed. An estimated 1.8 million of the nation's 4.8 million people make up the electorate. The issues that separate the two can- didates - Jose Napoleon Duarte, at moderate Chrisitan Democrat, and Roberto d'Aubuisson of the rightist Republican Nationalist Alliance Arene - have been buried in the vicious name-calling of the campign. The campaign that began after the first-round election March 25 was a reelection of a nation wrenched by civil war and polarized socially and economically and of a people who have taken to settling their own disputes in the absence of stable governement in- stitutions they can trust. MORE THAN 51,000 government troops, guerrillas and civilians have died and an estimated 500,000 people have fled the country in a civil war that has no end in sight. Duarte and d'Aubuisson have very different approaches to what has caused the problems and how to solve them. Duarte has called for conciliation and dialogue with the left and has made a "social pact" with labor and peasant groups, promising them Cabinet and other key posts in areas of special in- terest to them. He ascribes the coun- try's bloody civil war and class polarization to deep-rooted social inequality that will take time and un- derstanding to cure. HE PROMISES that if elected his government will tackle the ugly question of right-wing death squads and gain the "moral authority to confront subversion." D'Aubuisson calls Duarte's "social pact" an agreement with subversion and violently opposes any dialogue with the leftist guerrillas, favoring a military solution to a problem he sees as external in nature. A former National Guard intelligence major, d'Aubuisson advocates a free hand for those in the private sector, saying they are the only ones with the know-how and capital to put people to work and make the country productive again. HE DESCRIBES his party as more nationalitic than conservative and says his appeal has been to "true Salvadorans." Charges that he is linked to rightist death squads, which he insists are false, have led his being branding as a fascist and a killer by Duarte suppor- ters whom d'Aubuisson, in turn, calls communists. "I don't think it makes much dif- ference to most of the people here because they don't really believe either candidate is going to do much to help them in their day to day living," said a priest in the working class suburb of Sovapango just east of the capital. "A LOT OF people here vote out of duty but I think a lot also vote so they won't have trouble later on when they have to present their identity cards for security checks or government business," he said. Government identity cards are stam- ped when people vote in El Salvador, and there is a strong government cam- paign pushing the patriotic duty to vote. Many Salvadorans say they feel safer if their identity cards show they have voted. Even though the difference between the candidates are great, the campaign has not touched much on the bread-and- butter issues so vital to the country's millions of poor. THE SUBURB of Soyapango retains traces of the middle-class town it once was but has been swamped by thousan- ds of refugees from the war-torn coun- tryside. In the teeming, smoky marketplaces tucked among flimsy hovels and narrow paths, accusations, charges and countercharges from both parties blare from radios. "They just tell us who to vote again- st," said Francisco Esquivel, 60, an illiterate market porter. "They never tell us why we should vote in favor of either of them." Christian Democrat polls, which were fairly accurate in the first round March 25, give Duarte a 60-40 edge over d'Aubuisson without taking into effect alliances from other rightist parties. Duarte won 43.4 percent of the vote In the first round against 29.76 fwr d'Aubuisson, making a runoff necessary because no candidate had a clear majority. Leftists are boycotting the presiden- tial balloting, as they did the election for a Constituent Assembly in March 1982. They dismiss the election as a "farce" and say the only way to have a fair vote in El Salvador is to negotiate a share of power first. Francisco Jose Guerraro, the Con- ciliation Party's candidate, has hinted he would prefer a Duarte victory, although the Christian Democrats remain his party's archenemy. He shares a fear of many that if d'Aubuisson wins, U.S. military aid on which the Salvadoran government depends would be cut off "and we would become another Nicaragua, that's for sure." There has been no guerrilla attempt to disrupt the runoff or threaten voters. Leftist leaders have said they do not want to endanger civilians who might feel obligated to vote because they want their identity cards stamped. Minorities play a small role in nation newsrooms (Continued from Page2) minority journalists . to meet the demand. William Hillard, a black who started as a copyboy at the Portland Oregonian and now is executive editor, says his paper searches for minority staff members. Even so, he says, the Oregonian staff is only 5 percent non- white and the paper lost two of its three black reporters to other papers in the last few months. " Some argue that papers simply don't look hard enough. They say if newspapers were more willing to hire and promote minorities, word would get out and more would go into jour- nalism. Dick Gray, dean of journalism at the University of Indiana, says good students, white or minority, have no trouble finding jobs. But, Gray says, when it comes to the C-student, whites are hired by small or medium-sized papers, but those minorities often can't get those starter jobs. And some think that many papers are indifferent: they'd have a mixed staff if it was easy, but since it isn't, they don't. Jay Harris, a former journalism dean who now writes for Gannett newspapers, thinks the root problem is that the urge to integrate has come in response to external pressures - the civil rights movement and, more recen- tly, the threat of equal opportunity lawsuits - rather than "a desire by editors to improve their newsrooms or their news products." "As long as it is the courts and the fear of financial loss which is the primary motivator in this area as op- posed to commitment to excellence for readers, I look for a rush of activity for three, four or five years and then it will trail off again," Harris says. There's no question that relatively few black college students, even those who study journalism, look to newspapers as a career. PAUL PETERSON, an Ohio State University journalism professor, asked 1,127 black journalism majors in 1980 where they wanted to work. Only 5.4 percent said they hoped to join daily newspapers. Three times as many wan- ted to go into radio or television, where many black youngsters find a role model. Gray offers another theory on why white editors may be reluctant to hire minority applicants. "In the 1960s and early '70s, newspapers hired a lot of minorities whether they were well prepared or not," Gray says. "Maybe they got bur- ned. Maybe they're afraid they will be open to charges of discrimination if they fire persons who don't shape up." A harsher view comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer's Moore, now his paper's associate editor. "The bottom line is racism - whether it is overt or covert," he says. "Anybody who tells me he can't find black people or who uses the excuse that once we train them they go to other papers, I think that's evidence there's no commitment." Carl Morris, a former copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was hired by the ASNE to help the industry achieve its integration target. He says that when they hire minority people newspapers often have higher standar- ds than when they hire whites. "We're all not superstars," Morris says. "There are a lot of good, average reporters out there. You ought to hire them like you hire white reporters - some on their skills and some on their potential." This is a f ree introductory seminar for upcoming tests and an opportunity to meet UTPS faculty members! We will be administering LSAT/ GMAT/GRE mini tests with a review session Tuesday, May 8, on the U of M campus on the third floor of the Michigan League in Room D. LSAT/ GRE - 3:30 - 5:00 P.M. GMAT - 6:30 - 8:00 P.M.