El Salvador joins Latin America's leftward tilt
A talk show host wins the presidential election. Will he be more like Venezuela's Chávez or Brazil's Lula?
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the March 17, 2009 edition
San Salvador - The candidate of a party grown from the ranks of Marxist guerrillas claimed victory in presidential elections in El Salvador Sunday, becoming the first leftist party president in the nation's history.
Former TV journalist Mauricio Funes, of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), narrowly beat Rodrigo Avila of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), the conservative party that has ruled the country for 20 years.
Mr. Funes becomes the latest president in a string of victorious leftist candidates running on anti-free-market platforms across Latin America. His win came in the face of the ruling party's campaign to negatively compare Funes with Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez.
"This is a new era for us, this is a triumph for the whole country, and we will triumph over the next five years," says Gloria Maria Ramirez, who was almost in tears as she rushed to celebrate in a central plaza in San Salvador.
Salvadorans throughout the capital jumped into the back of pickup trucks, waving red FMLN flags and honking horns, and set off fireworks into the night sky.
While this election is a democratic crossroads for El Salvador, the new president faces immense challenges ahead, including an economy inextricably linked to the struggling US market and declining remittances from Salvadorans living abroad, rising unemployment, and gang violence that makes this country one of the most dangerous in the world.
These problems are the same ones that pushed many voters away from the ruling party, but will require intense bridge-building for the FMLN, a party that has won local races (since its transformation from guerrilla army to political party in 1992) but never the executive office before now.
"Given the global crisis, the winner is inheriting a country with extremely adverse circumstances," says Julia Evelyn Martinez, an economist at the University of Central America in San Salvador.
A vote for change
Funes's victory – with 51 percent of the vote – was in large part a rejection of the status quo, in terms of violent crime and the economy. "I want to thank all the people who voted for me and chose that path of hope and change," said Funes in accepting victory.
While Arena is seen as tough on crime, not unlike the Republican Party in the US, it failed to stop street violence by gangs or maras. That Mr. Avila is a former police chief did not boost his party's case: the murder rate is 60.9 per 100,000 habitants, up from 41.3 a decade ago, according to government figures.
Even though Arena has focused on the creation of a manufacturing sector in El Salvador, making ends meet is a daily struggle for most Salvadorans. In 2007, 57.5 percent were considered underemployed, according to government figures provided by Gerson Martinez, an FMLN lawmaker.
Among those ages 15 to 24, the number of those unemployed and underemployed is 62.4 percent.
Meanwhile the average cost of living for a family is $760 a month. The minimum wage in a factory job is just $173 a month.
"In the economic realm, people tend to blame Arena for bad performance of the economy," says Miguel Cruz, a former polling director in San Salvador and now a political analyst.
But troubles are expected to worsen before getting better. Over 2 million of the nation's 7 million residents live abroad, in cities such as Los Angeles, sending money home in what is a crucial engine of El Salvador's economy: remittances represent 20 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. That flow of cash from abroad has grown unabated over the past decade. But it's expected to drop by 5 percent next year, says Manuel Orozco, director of remittances and development at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.
Ms. Martinez says that, despite the challenges ahead, she believes Funes will be able to create a model that favors national production, for example, and boosts jobs instead of favoring multinationals. "The way [the FMLN] will deal with the crisis will lessen the social conflict, people will give them space to make the changes needed," she says.
But a new economic model is precisely what scares some voters. Jose Ramon Iraheta, a flower vendor with Arena flags hanging from his street stall, says that Arena is the party that is best placed to generate employment and keep foreign investment flowing into the country. "Leftists take over the country and investors run away," he says.
A vote for Chávez?
Many voters say they worry that an FMLN victory means a government like that of Venezuelan President Chávez, a vociferous US critic. Funes himself tried to temper such fears throughout his campaign, calling Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva his model.
But factions within the FMLN embrace Chávez's vision. "It will be interesting to see which tendency predominates," says Mr. Cruz, "and whether once in government [the administration] is more a moderate left or a Chávista left."
Many residents were drawn to Funes because he represents a more moderate face of the left. As a talk show host on prime-time television, he never shied away from taking on corporate media giants and schooled a postwar society in freedom of expression.
Iris de Cisco, a mother of three, says she voted for Funes because, "we were sick of misery, poverty, corruption." She's not worried that he will alienate the US, which sees El Salvador as an important ally.
Mr. Orozco says that, while Arena threatened that an FMLN victory would spell trouble for the country's relationship with the US, he expects it to remain stable, especially on key issues such as narcotrafficking.. Funes, for one, has said that he will respect the free-trade deal with the US and keep the dollar as the official currency. The Obama administration had stated its willingness to work with either candidate.
The vote was not a landslide and comes at the heels of a fierce and dirty campaign. Building coalitions will be critical for Funes, who must move quickly to temper brewing problems in the country, says Martinez. The FMLN might have trouble achieving simple majorities in the legislative assembly, where the FMLN holds 32 seats and Arena, 34. If Funes is blocked by the opposition, "the crisis will only deepen," she says.
In conceding defeat Avila promised his supporters: "We will be a constructive opposition."
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FACTBOX: Salvadoran President-elect Mauricio Funes
* Funes, 49, is a former TV journalist who hosted local news programs critical of past governments and appeared on CNN's Spanish-language channel. As the first FMLN presidential candidate without a rebel fighter background, he attracted some middle-ground voters wary of the FMLN's rebel warfare past.
* In his victory speech on Sunday, Funes urged unity and reconciliation with the right-wing ARENA party, which ruled for two decades after the end of the civil war and whose founder was closely associated with death squads during the conflict.
* Funes developed leftist sympathies reporting on the 1980-92 civil war, interviewing rebel leaders and grieving for a leftist brother killed in the conflict. Yet he says he is a center-leftist who admires Brazil's moderate president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. His wife is a Brazilian who represented Lula's Workers' Party in El Salvador.
* Funes ran on a platform of change and says he will fight tax evasion and use the funds to create jobs for Salvadoran immigrants returning from the United States. He also vows to invest in farming to reduce dependence on imported food.
* He says he wants to continue the close relations El Salvador has had with Washington, although opponents fear he could be a puppet leader with FMLN old-timers like Vice President-elect Salvador Sanchez pulling the strings.
(Reporting by Catherine Bremer and Alberto Barrera; Editing by Eric Beech)
Relevant Link & Information:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9748/his_eng.html
Brief history of El Salvador's government
Military government have been in power most of the time since 1931, often responding to political unrest with violent repression. Political violence increased sharply after the 1977 election in which General Carlos H. Romero became president. He was deposed in October 1979, but the military-civilian junta that replaced him was unable to stop the civil war between leftists and rightist. As a concession to the left, the junta proposed a limited land reform that affected about 25% of the land. At the same time, the junta, which was closeley linked to the right through the army, did little to control the rightist paramilitary National Guard. As a result, archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, associated with the left, was assassinated in 1980 by the rightist.
Under pressure from the U.S. to institute economic and human rights reform, the junta named Jose Napoleon Duarte, leader of the moderate Christian Democratic party, as president in December 1980. Although a small land-reform program was begun, fighting continued, as did rightist executions of farmers, peasents, and workers. The U.S. charging that the two main leftist groups, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation (FMLN) and the Revolutionary Democracy Front (FDR), were being helped by Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, increased its military and economic aid to the Salvadorian government (rightist) which were responsible for torturing and killing inocent people. In a 1982 election boycotted by the FMLN-FDR alliance, a constituent assembly was chosen to draw up a new constitution. Dominated by the rightist National Republican Alliance (Arena), the assembly curtailed the Christian Democratic land reform program. The new constitution was adopted in 1983, but in 1984, Duarte defeated Arena leader Roberto D'aubisson to win the presidency.
Despite various peace efforts, including El Salvador's participation in the 1987 Central America plan, the civil war continued. Duarte was succeeded as president on June 1, 1989 by Alfredo Cristiani of Arena. By 1990, as fighting and rights abuses surged and ebbed, the civil war had claimed more than 75,000 lives, mostly inocent people and thanks to military aid provided to the rightist National Guard by the U.S.. Agreement was reached in July 1990 that the United Nations monitor rights violations after a cease fire. UN sponsored negotiations continued, and on January 16, 1992, a peace accord was signed between the government and guerilla groups (FMLN). A cease fire went into effect on February 1. Under the agreement, the Salvadorian army was to be sharply reduced, the guerilla forces were to be absorbed in Salvadorian society, a new national police was to be created, and land reform measures enacted. In 1992 reconstruction began, under which the guerillas returned to civilian life in return for economic, social, and political reforms.
A United Nations commission announced in March 1993 that responsibility for the killings of thousands of Salvadorian civilians in the civil war must be assigned to senior military figures in the army, which were strongly backed by the United States and whom are still in power.
Comment: Clearly all of us should see the value of electoral politics in order to bring about a relatively peaceful democratic transition from a reactionary oppressive society and a revolutionary progressive one. However, let us not forget that many martyrs who died in order to bring about this quantum leap. It is natural for people to be free in enjoying liberty and liberation struggles led by vanguard elements are manifestations of this natural way of people to enjoy life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness.
The grand strategic aim is always the same: the seizure of state power by any means mandatory. Ideally it can be through legal peaceful methods of struggles or when such ways are not possible than 'other means' must be utilized. Nothing on Mother Earth can stop the striving of a people who have had enough of oppression in the misery of poverty and yearn to be and live in liberated territory!
Education for Liberation! Join Up!
Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THIRD-WORLD-NEWS/
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