El Salvador Votes on Sunday

According to CS Monitor:
"And some analysts say that the comments by US officials may be bolstering ARENA's message. Last Sunday, White House Special Assistant Otto Reich gave a phone-in press conference at ARENA headquarters. According to local newspapers, he said he was worried about the impact an FMLN win could have on the country's "economic, commercial, and migratory relations with the United States."
In February, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega told voters to "consider what kind of a relationship they want a new administration to have with us." He met with all the candidates except Mr. Handal. Last week, 28 US Congress members sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell saying Mr. Noriega "crossed a boundary" and that his remarks were perceived as "interference in Salvadoran electoral affairs." This week two US congressmen blasted Reich's comments as inflammatory."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0319/p07s02-woam.htm
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Maybe this strategy will backfire, as when the U.S. embassy tried to get Bolivians to vote for anybody but Evo Morales and MAS.  

ARENA is the neoliberal party, generally associated with the wealthy landowners and oligarchs of El Salvador. Alfredo Christiani, a former president of El Salvador is the leader of ARENA. Up to the early part of the 1980's, El Salvador was controlled by a military Junta, now represented by the second largest right wing political party, the Partido de Conciliacion Nacional. While ARENA and PCN are both right wing parties, there is some conflict between the two as the PCN supports US objectives but has some concerns about the giving up of national sovereignty to the US.

ARENA has been giving away the farm, their privatizations have included the electric distribution system and the telephone system. ARENA has attempted to privatize the health care system almost every year since the early nineties, but has consistently backed down in the face of massive popular protest. One issue, of course, if the FTAA, CAFTA, and the PPP, or Plan Puebla Panama , all three supported by ARENA and opposed by the left factions of the FMLN.

The FMLN is divided into the renovadores, the socialistas revolucionarias, and the ortodoxos. Schafik comes from the Socialistas revolucionarias, and has run previously for the mayoral office in San Salvador. In 1999, the FMLN hired consultants from the United States who created a feel-good centrist campaign, to fit their centrist renovador candidate, Facundo Guardado. During the election campaigns, ARENA uses their anthem which includes the lyrics

"El Salvador sera la tomba, donda los rojos terminaran."
El Salvador will be the tomb where the reds will be terminated (loosely translated)

Often, a coffin with the word FMLN scrawled on the side is then lowered into the crowd, the significance should not be lost as ARENA was closely connected with the Salvadoran death squads of the 1980's dirty war. All of this with scantily clad cheerleaders singing along on stage.

Another issue at hand is that El Salvador is full of dirty secrets from the 1980's and beyond. During the 1980's, there was a secret hangar at the Ilopango Air Force Base, hangar 5, that was used by US intelligence for nefarious purposes, possibly including drug trafficking related to Iran contra. With the FMLN a strong force in the National Assembly and in control of the presidency, there's a good chance some of the US's dirty laundry could get aired. Be certain that the US will do all it can to ensure an ARENA victory.

Voter turnout in El Salvador's last presidential election, in 1999, was only 39 percent.

Today, according to this Reuters report in Spanish, turnout will exceed 60 percent.

Polls close at 8 p.m. Central Time (9 p.m. ET).

Here's a translation of the money point in the Reuters report:

(FMLN candidate Schafik) Handal said "we are certain of winning today and we will start celebrating at 8 p.m.," as he hung a floral wreath at the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, assassinated by a right-wing squadron in March of 1980.

(ARENA candidate Tony) Saca was leading in the polls by six points over Handal some days ago, but a poll published on Saturday revealed a tie.

If the vote is very close, it could cause a second round... the law demands an absolute majority to win in the first round.

(Hmmm. Wish we had that system in the United States!)

Anyway, stay tuned after 8 p.m. Central Time!

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (Reuters) - Ex-rebel commander Schafik Handal sought in elections on Sunday to become El Salvador's first leftist president and pull the country away from Washington after decades under strong U.S. influence.

As polls closed at 5 p.m. (6 p.m. EST), election officials said voter turnout was high at some 60 percent, a factor that could favor Handal. He had trailed candidate Tony Saca of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, or Arena, in pre-election polls...

Handal, 73, threatens to withdraw a small Salvadoran military unit from Iraq and re-establish relations with Cuba if he defeats Saca, a former sportscaster with no experience in office...

"His policy is to support only the lower class and by force if necessary," Aura del Rivas, a doctor, said after casting her vote in a comfortable capital suburb.

Leftist activists chanting, "The people, united, will never be defeated," crowded around outgoing conservative President Francisco Flores as he voted in the capital...

"If we win, it means the sovereign Salvadoran people are giving us a mandate to carry out our program, and no one else in the world, no matter how powerful they are, can come and tell us what to do," he told journalists last week.

Well, we'll have more info soon enough.

According to the daily El Mundo of San Salvador, exit polls tonight are all over the map:

* Channel 12 TV: "the FMLN is ahead in the voter preferences, with 49 percent... to 41 percent for ARENA... this would lead to a second round."

* Salvadoran Tele-Corporation (TCS News): This one has ARENA at 58 percent and FMLN at 35 percent.

BOTH can't be honest. That would mean a margin of error of 8.5 percent. One station or the other clearly made it up. So let's go to a third exit poll, the most independent, to see which is within the margin of error (normally 4 points) of that one...

 * Finally, the only non-commercial exit poll, by Francisco Gavidia University, which surveyed 261,000 voters, has it: FMLN 49.6 percent to ARENA 43.1 percent. (This one is additionally reported by Venezuela National Radio.)

...the Association of Participatory Radio Stations (ARPAS, in its Spanish initials) also gave the vitory to the Farabundo Martí Liberation front (FMLN, of the left) with 53% to 41% for the Republican Alliance (ARENA)...

Meanwhile, the government elections commission has not yet held its press conference scheduled for a half hour ago to give preliminary results and the results of its own exit poll.

We have just reported five exit polls here on The Narcosphere on the elections in El Salvador. Three of those polls (one university, one radio association, and one Commercial TV station) say the leftwing FMLN won. Two polls (one commercial TV station, one university) say the rightwing ARENA won.

But Reuters just reported:

Television exit polls showed Saca (ARENA) ahead of Handal (FMLN)...

Note the use of "exit polls," plural, and it is clear: REUTERS IS MAKING IT UP!

It is not true and, by definition, cannot possibly be true.

In any authentic news organization, a correction would be published immediately, heads would roll, careers would end.

But anonymous reports on Reuters (like AP) instead get repeated by a thousand newspapers before the truth can put its pants on.

Somebody at Reuters deserves a punch in the nose, and especially the manager that let that one past the goalie.

7:35 p.m.

U.S. Ambassador Visits Vote Counting HQ

(LPG) United States Ambassador Hugh Douglas Barclay came to the Raddison hotel, where ballots are being counted.

...and, well... 7:35 p.m. corresponds with the hour that the the simulation began.

As I just said to Menéndez, this is like Mexico 1988.

(Thanks to Salvadoran journalist Jorge Parada for the link.)

With 36 percent of votes counted, Tony Saca of the rightward ARENA party has, they say, 60 percent of the vote and Shafik Handal of the leftward FMLN has 33 percent of the vote.

I'll reserve comment until hard data emerges.

http://espanol.news.yahoo.com/040321/2/r5ry.html

"Los comicios, que cerrarán a las 17:00 hora local (2300 GMT), son vigilados por unos 1.500 observadores de 35 países, entre ellos 40 enviados por la organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA).

El presidente Francisco Flores depositó su voto en una escuela al sur de la capital mientras simpatizantes del FMLN gritaban consignas de izquierda.

Flores dijo estar "impresionado" porque "nunca en mi experiencia política había visto tanta gente queriendo ir a votar."

El jefe de la Policía Nacional Civil (PNC), Ricardo Meneses, dijo que los 17.000 agentes desplegados en los 262 municipios del país garantizaban la seguridad de las elecciones y a media jornada no se reportaban incidentes de importancia."

Workers sending money home is the largest source of foreign investment in Latin America, the Guardian reported today, citing the Inter-American Development Bank.

The article specifically mentioned El Salvador:

In El Salvador almost $2bn was sent home last year by workers living in the US, outstripping the country's exports.  The subject was a pivotal issue in this month's presidential election after US officials said that should the left win, they would consider blocking the transfer of money to El Salvador and expel Salvadoreans working in the US.  The pro-US Arena party candidate won the election.

A March 22 AP article by John Rice suggested the publicity ARENA gave this:

Saca's campaign has repeatedly suggested that if Handal [the FMLN candidate] is elected the United States might restrict family remittances from Salvadorans working there or begin a mass expulsion of them.  Handal has called that allegation ridiculous.

But the U.S. government, of course, was there to back up ARENA's version (from the same article):

U.S. officials so clearly favored Saca that Otto Reich, the White House special envoy for the Western Hemisphere, gave a group telephone interview last week to local reporters gathered at Saca's party headquarters.  Local newspapers quoted him as saying a Handal victory would be "a radical change."

A lot of questions still remain for me:

1. How effective was ARENA's propaganda that remittances would be blocked or Salvadoreans abroad sent home?


2. What was the estimated level of fraud in this election– who, exactly, counted the votes?


3. How weak-willed is the FMLN (conceding first-round loss despite conflicting poll data), how poorly organized and lacking a positive platform for people to vote for?


4. Whatever the specific reasons for the representatives of the rich remaining in power, does it all ultimately mean that massive violence against the left can keep a country pliable to US for a long time afterward (for instance Chile, the only Latin American country I'm aware of that has troops in Haiti)?