On June 1, 2009, Mauricio Funes of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a party that was formerly an armed revolutionary movement, was inaugurated to a five-year term as president of El Salvador. Funes, a former television journalist and the first FMLN presidential candidate without a guerilla past, defeated Rodrigo Ávila of the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) 51%-49% in a March 2009 election. Born in San Salvador in 1959, Funes earned a liberal arts degree from the University of Central America (UCA) José Simeón Cañas. He then spent more than 20 years working as a print, radio, and television journalist, becoming one of the most popular and well-respected figures in his field. In 2007, he was chosen to serve as the FMLN's 2009 presidential candidate, reportedly because party leaders thought that he would bring a modern face to the party. Despite some concerns about potential fraud and a few cases of inter-party violence in the weeks preceding the vote, the election was conducted relatively peacefully after an extremely polarizing campaign. During the campaign, ARENA sought to tie Funes to the more hard-line members of the FMLN and asserted that an FMLN victory would lead to deterioration in relations with the United States and the installation of an authoritarian political system. Funes attempted to project a moderate image, campaigning on the slogan, "hope is born, change is coming," but also promising to maintain close ties with the United States, implement the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), and keep the U.S. dollar as El Salvador's currency. Funes' presidential victory was a first for the FMLN, which fought a 12-year civil war against the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government before officially transforming into a political party following the signing of a peace accord in 1992. Some 70,000 Salvadorans (1.4% of the population) were killed during the conflict. The presidential victory followed a strong showing by the FMLN in the January 2009 municipal and legislative elections, in which it won 49.5% of the municipal vote and a plurality in the National Assembly. Funes' election has been described as a watershed moment in the history of El Salvador. However, an analysis of Salvadoran voting behavior since 1992 concluded that Funes' victory occurred at least partially as a result of a gradual shift leftward among Salvadoran voters that was already evident by early 2008. President Funes has generally pursued moderate policies since taking office. This has caused some friction between him and more radical members of the FMLN, including Vice President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a former guerrilla leader who is the party's 2014 presidential candidate. Many credit President Funes' pragmatic approach to governance with helping his administration secure much-needed support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other donors. Others express concerns, however, that he has strayed too far away from his FMLN base since forming an alliance with the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) party, a dissident faction that split from ARENA in October 2009 that is led by former president Elías Antonio (Tony) Saca. Although his government has struggled to improve the weak economic conditions and to address the serious security challenges it inherited, President Funes has maintained high approval ratings (75% in March 2013). Funes has also sought to address human rights violations from El Salvador's civil war era. He issued a historic apology to victims of the 1981 El Mozote massacre on the 20 th anniversary of the signing of the Peace Accords. In December 2012, the Funes government "recognized" the Inter American Court of Human Rights (IAHCR) ruling that El Salvador needs to reinvestigate the El Mozote massacre and guarantee the rights of victims to seek reparations. The government stopped short, however, of promising to reinvestigate the incident and prosecute those found accountable, which would require a repeal of the country's 1993 amnesty law. The Funes government has not pushed for a repeal of the law nor did it urge the Salvadoran Supreme Court to extradite military officers to Spain to stand trial for their roles in the 1989 murders of Jesuit priests. Twenty years after the U.N. Commission released its report on the war in El Salvador , Amnesty International issued a statement lamenting that the perpetrators of crimes identified in that report have not been brought to justice in El Salvador and that survivors have not received reparations. However, some former military leaders residing in the United States are facing judicial proceedings that could lead to their arrests and/or removals from the country. Analysts predict that President Funes will encounter greater difficulty enacting his legislative agenda and implementing his ambitious development plan now that he has entered lame duck status. ARENA regained popular support vis-à-vis GANA and the National Coalition party or CN, which replaced the National Conciliation Party (PCN), in the March 2012 legislative elections, increasing its representation in the 84-member legislature from 20 to 33. The FMLN lost 4 seats in the elections; it now has 31 congressional seats. Since the elections, however, ARENA has reportedly had five deputies leave the party. With no party having captured a simple majority, President Funes must form alliances to pass legislation. Funes has pledged to shepherd a law to allow seizure of criminal assets and a package of reforms aimed at facilitating business creation and investment through the legislature. He secured legislative approval of an $800 million bond issue in the fall of 2012 that will be used to pay for foreign debt payments that came due in early 2013. After a protracted dispute between the parties in the Assembly, they finally selected a new attorney general in December 2012 (the post had been vacant since September 2012). In January 2013, the Assembly passed a law backed by President Funes to revise existing legislation regulating free trade zones and international services to attract more foreign investment. A law to promote public-private partnerships remains pending. The IMF has urged the parties to enact agreements on economic and political policies that will be put in place as the country transitions to a new government in 2014 if they want El Salvador's stand-by-agreement to be renewed. Notwithstanding this progress, there has been ongoing tension between the Assembly and the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court (see " Constitutional Crisis and Lingering Institutional Instability "). From June to August 2012, the Funes Administration found itself in the midst of a constitutional crisis over the make-up and authority of El Salvador's Supreme Court. The court is comprised of 15 justices that are divided among four chambers, including a constitutional chamber. Five justices are appointed to the Court every three years by a two-thirds vote in the National Assembly after often highly politicized negotiations. They serve for nine-year terms. Following the 2009 elections, the Assembly approved five new justices after difficult negotiations. Since their installation in 2009, the five justices on the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court have taken actions which appeared intended to check the power of the president and the legislature, something it has historically failed to do. These rulings have allowed independent candidates to run for office, limited the use of the discretionary budget of the presidency, and revoked the charters of two political parties for not maintaining the level of popular support required by the constitution. These rulings angered politicians from across the political spectrum and have led to threats to the independence of the court. In June 2011, for example, President Funes hastily signed a decree adopted by the National Assembly that would have constrained the independence of the justices on the constitutional chamber. The decree was repealed in July 2011 after protests from domestic and international civil society groups. Although the repeal reaffirmed the independence of the court, tensions between the three branches of government still simmered beneath the surface. As noted above, the ARENA party picked up a number of seats and displaced the FMLN as the largest party in the Assembly in March 2012 legislative elections. In April, before the outgoing Assembly's three-year term ended, FMLN deputies and their GANA allies approved a new set of five justices for the Supreme Court in an attempt to influence the court's direction (as ARENA-dominated legislatures had done in the past). They also sought to transfer the head of the constitutional chamber to another chamber of the court and appointed a new attorney general. In June 2012, the constitutional chamber ruled that the vaguely worded Salvadoran constitution only allows each legislature to nominate one group of five justices to the Supreme Court. As a result, the National Assembly's April 2012 appointments were deemed unconstitutional, as the outgoing legislature had already appointed one group of justices in 2009. A similar situation took place in an earlier Assembly when five justices were appointed at the beginning of 2003 and a second group in 2006 at the end of that Assembly's term. The chamber found the 2006 appointments to be unconstitutional as well, and ruled that both the 2006 and 2012 appointees had to be replaced. The chamber's decision prompted ongoing tensions between the legislature and the constitutional chamber to erupt into a full-blown crisis. The Assembly rejected the court ruling and filed a lawsuit against the constitutional chamber with the Central American Court of Justice (CACJ), a body that many legal experts maintained did not have the authority to overturn a Supreme Court decision of one of its member states. The newly elected justices then forcibly entered the court building to take their seats on July 1, despite protests from the constitutional chamber. El Salvador then had two groups of judges claiming to be on the Supreme Court. On July 10, 2012, the constitutional chamber also declared the outgoing legislature's April 2012 selection of a new attorney general, originally scheduled to assume his position in September, to be unconstitutional. The justices again argued that each legislature is only entitled to select one attorney general. The legislature also rejected that ruling.