El Salvador Elections a Campaign of Fear - local report

Hello again from San Salvador, 2 days after the presidential elections...

As you may have heard, the detentions of election observers was finally
resolved, and observers with credentials from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal
were allowed into the country. However, there was some apparent
intimidation of foreign observers in the form of an armed robbery of a
Norwegian CIS observer at a local cyber cafe a few days before the election.
It was clear by the actions of the assailants that they were specifically
looking for foreign observers, and it may have been an attempt to terrorize
other observers. This is the only incident of this type of harassment that
I am aware of, and I have personally not experienced any problems in my
whole time here as of today.

For the full week leading up to the elections, we were involved in trainings
on Salvadoran electoral code and process by CIS coordinators as well as
Salvadoran government officials. Other speakers from various government
agencies and community groups also came to speak with us about the current
political, economic and social situation in El Salvador. We also met with
representatives of the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador, and were able to
question them on the US´s involvement/interference with the Salvadoran
presidential campaign. One of the fear tactics used by the rigjt wing ARENA
(Nationalist REpublican Alliance) party here was that if the left wing FMLN
(Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front)party won the presidency, the
remittances that so many Salvadorans receive from relatives living in the
U.S. would be made illegal, and a major income source for Salvadorans would
be lost. Unfortunately, many Salvadorans are not educated enough to know
that this is a lie, and that remittances are not controlled by the U.S. nor
the Salvadoran government.
Unfortunately, the U.S. and it´s Ambassador did nothing to help dispel that
myth. Consequently, El Salvador now has another ARENA president, most
likely as a result of people´s fear of lost remittance income and deepening
poverty. As the FMLN Deputy said to us yesterday, "Fear won over hope in
these elections..."
We also saw amazingly dirty campaigning leading up to the elections, with
ARENA supporters playing on people´s fears of communism and therefore their
mistrust of the FMLN candidate, Schafik Handal - a long time Communist Party
member and leader in the FMLN guerrillla movement. Many electoral laws were
violated by both the main parties even before election day, including dirty
campaigning, campaigning early, campaign violence in a few municipalities,
and campaigning after the official closeof the campaign 72 hours before the
polls opened. We were also told that the massive ARENA campaign of their
candidate Tony Saca spent $55 million from the "improvised spending"
fund...a fund which is fed by money not fully spent on other government
prgrams, and which essentially becomes the president´s own fund to spend as
he pleases. This use of public funds seems like it would be highly
illlegal, but is often used for campaigns, buying off officials and deputies
in the national assembly, etc. In addition, U.S. officials, such as George´s
brother Jeb Bush, have made visits to San Salvador, essentially backing the
right wing ARENA party and adding to the fear campaign against the poor
here. I also received several accounts from Salvadorans that many business
owners met with their employees and threatened them that if they did not
vote for ARENA, they would no longer have a job. Other people believed that
the U.S. would begin bombing El Salvador if FMLN won the presidential seat.
One woman I met in Cojutepeque said that the poor people want the FMLN, but
are afraid of what will happen to them if they don´t vote for ARENA. To be
fair, violations were blatantly committed by both the major parties - FMLN
and ARENA....the violations by ARENA have just been more obvious and widely
talked about as far as I am aware.

For election weekend, I was sent, along with a group of 5 other observers,
to La Union, a small town of about 5,000 in the far east of El Salvador. It
is a seaside town, across the Bay of Fonseco from Honduras. The local
people depend mostly on fidhing for income, a grwoing problem, as the
independent fisherman finds it more and more difficult to compete with the
large mutinational fising enterprises who fish off the coast. Despite
widespread poverty in the country, it was ne of the only places I actually
saw people sleeping on the street. During the civil war, the FMLN received
arms shipped from Nicaragua via the bay, and had guerrilla encampments in
the neighboring hills and forest, not far from the local military base.
Today, the mayor is a member of the right wing ARENA party, which has been
in power since the end of the war.

Saturday morning, we were invited by the mayor´s office of the neighboring
town of Conchagua to hike the local volcano, which offers spectacular views
of the bay, Honduras and the Pacific Ocean. Our guide, Cesar, an employee
of the mayor´s office, drove us up and shared his impressions of the war,
which he experienced as a small boy. He portrayed the local people as
victims of both the Army and the guerrillas, as their loyalties were often
caught between the two. He described the war as a business between the U.S.
and Salvadoran governments, something that is painful for him and other
Salvadorans to admit, as they suffered so much as a result. When I asked,
he mentioned that there was an obvious presence of U.S. military personnel
during the war, as well as training of the local military by U.S. military
personnel.

Election day opened bright and early, with the observers arriving at 5 am to
witness the installation of the Juntas de Receptora de Votas (Vote Receiving
Councils). These consisted of up to 4 people- one representative from each
of the 4 political parties with candidates in the presidential election.
Ballots, boxes and other papers to run the voting process were received at 6
and voting began shortly after 7 am.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with the cooperation between the members of
the councils, considering this had been a very tense and close campaign.
Most of the tables I observed were very well run.
However, we did witness several violations of electoral code, and violations
of voters´rights. There is a real lack of a secret vote, with voting
centers being very crowded, and polling booths placed too close to the
council tables, and relatively open which allows passersby to see how a
person votes. The police presence within the voting centers was very heavy,
including police helicopters circling the center, which is a violation of
Salvadoran electoral law. The crowding and lack of organization also
contributed to voter frustration, including some folks who left the center
without voting because they could not figure out where they needed to vote.
Other observer groups also observed the buying of votes, influence of voters
by party members, widespread lack of training of voting center personnel and
some violence between political rivalries inside and outside of polling
places.
Although there didn´t appear to be major intimidation and fraud on election
day, I feel that the sum of all of the violations we observed made it very
clear that El Salvador still has a long way to go to have truly free and
fair elections. As often happens, it appears the poor and uneducated people
are the victims of a Goliath with the backing of the King of Goliaths, the
United States government. Unfortunately, the results of this election have
effectively opened wide the door to privatization of health care and water
in El Salvador, as well as the implementation of the Central American Free
Trade Agreement, the effects of which have already been seen here, in the
form of inflated prices, poor service, deepening poverty and even more
disparity between the rich and poor. No wonder the graffitti says in San
Salvador..."Only two kinds vote for ARENA: the rich and the ignorant."

Day after tomorrow, I leave for Suchitoto, a city to the north of San
Salvador, where the FMLN had a stronghold, and was hardest hit by bombing
during the war. I and 2 others from the Oakland Catholic Worker will be
meeting with community groups involved in the repopulation of the community,
as well as the mayor of the town, and the national environmental
organization, CESTA, which has an ecological and reforestation center on the
nearby volcano of Guazapa. I hope to give you one more update before I
leave the country on March 28th...


Paz-

Rachel Montgomery
Oakland Catholic Worker