Leftist FMLN party wins Salvadoran Elections. Now What?

At the second busiest voting center in El Salvador, 131 voting tables stretched over a kilometre down the streets of Usulután, El Salvador. Thousands of people crammed the busy street, some around registry lists posed on cardboard placards, others having already voted stay just to chat and watch the spectacle of the election day crowds. Vendors were selling anything from salted green mangos to umbrellas as people waited in lines of 20 to 30, waiting for their turn to vote in arguably the most contested and historically important elections in Salvadoron history.

At 5pm the voting tables closed and counting began; by 8.30pm it was apparent that Mauricio Funes of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), the 1980s armed-leftist-guerrilla-group-turned-political-party, had won.

The streets were filled with dancing and celebrations, as chants of “si se pudo” (yes we could), echoed alongside fireworks and Latin rock music. The elections made it clear: El Salvador would be governed by a leftist government for the first time in history starting 1st June. And for the first time, Salvadorans would have a peaceful, democratic transfer of government.

Mauricio Funes won 51.27% of the vote, while Rodrigo Avila (the candidate for the right wing ARENA (Republican National Alliance) party), was awarded 48.73%. The nearly two-year long presidential campaign was an ugly, dirty affair, marred by fear-mongering ARENA ads and exaggerated, if not sometimes fraudulent claims, of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez’s influence on FMLN policy, while the FMLN’s campaign focused on 15-plus years of failed ARENA policies, ever increasing socioeconomic inequalities, and the lack of governmental accountability.

As a result of the ruthless campaign, Salvadorans went to the polls Sunday in record numbers: 60% of the 4.3 million registered voters showed up to vote. Such turnout is significant given the lack of confidence in the electoral system in El Salvador, a country which has suffered a turbulent history of high level political corruption, military rule, fraudulent elections, and a bloody, decade-long civil war. As a result, only half of Salvadorans said they had confidence in the electoral process and only 42.6% believed the elections would be clean, according to pre election polling by the University Institute of Public Opinion (IUDOP) at the University of Central America.

The European Union and Organization of American States, as well as many other international observer brigades, have declared the elections free and fair despite many documented instances of voter irregularities on election day as well as the available avenues for large-scale institutional fraud by ARENA. Nevertheless, the presiding ARENA party lost by an astonishingly close 2.5%. By 10.30pm election night Avila had already given his concession speech and the US ambassador had congratulated Funes in person.

If ARENA had won by such a small margin the election would be far from decided. There have been numerous allegations and documentations of fraud by international observational organisations like FUNDESPAD and CIS (Center for Exchange and Solidarity), mostly against ARENA: the buying of votes, dozens of buses full of foreigners brought over with the intention of voting, factory owners requiring employees to show cell phone photos of their marked ballots in order to keep their jobs, and the many available means of institutional fraud available to the seated ARENA government.

For example, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the organisation responsible for carrying out the electoral process, and the National Registry of Naturalised People which compiles the electoral registry, is run by the current ARENA government and ARENA supporters and not accountable to bipartisan or third party review. This documented and undocumented fraud certainly narrowed the margin in Sunday’s vote, which while hotly contested in the end, was polled by IUDOP to be a 21 point FMLN victory the days leading up to the election. This study had a less than three point standard of error and hints at the large amounts of fraud that took place. In San Salvador there were rumored plans by the FMLN to take over the Hotel del Oeste Capitalino, the location where the election-night press conference was held, if serious fraud was reported that affected the final results. Thankfully there was no need as the ARENA party, subject of the vast majority of fraud allegations, lost.

With the election over, the FMLN has plenty of work on its hands. For the first time they will run the government and Salvadorans and members of the international community alike are expecting results. Record high global food prices await the incoming president, coupled with the worsening economic crisis, the highest murder rate in Latin America, over a quarter of Salvadorans working in the US, and an ever increasing number of Salvadorans living in abject poverty. Funes will have the support of his ever-expanding band of Latino Leftists and what looks to be the benefit of the doubt from the new US Administration, but the freshly empowered FMLN will need to act quickly to meet Salvadorans’ high expectations, and all without a FMLN majority in the legislature.

Funes has promised to transition the economy from the current neo-liberalist style, export-driven economy to a more diversified one focusing on local food production, attempting to protect against the worsening global food crisis which has caused food prices in El Salvador – particularly staples such as rice, beans, and corn – to nearly double in the past two years. Funes also plans to reintroduce a nationalised health care system which the current administration privatised two years ago, an act which raised El Salvador’s medicine costs to the highest in the world, according to a National Salvador University study. Funes also promises to introduce domestic and international policy that places the best interests of Salvadorans ahead of corporate profits and an economic policy that places more environmental and workplace regulations on foreign businesses.

Furthermore, the legitimacy of the electoral process will only be furthered by giving the FMLN a chance at setting electoral policy and procedure. International Observer organisations have given
recommendations for the past 15 years on how to improve the security and validity of the electoral process, but nearly every recommendation of grave importance has been ignored election after election. The FMLN has been pushing for these unheeded electoral reforms for years and now will have a chance at following its own advice of implementing campaign finance reform and a fully transparent TSE in the hopes of increasing legitimacy and national confidence in the electoral process for the 2012 legislative elections. Simple reforms in the electoral process, such as requiring the TSE to share voting registration lists and having sources of campaign finance regulated and public knowlege would greatly improve the security of the Salvadoran electoral system.

Sunday’s election was not only a pivotal historical moment for Salvadorans, but for all of Latin America as well. El Salvador has won another successful battle for Latin Americas’ current swing towards the left, and in being the first country to do so since the new Obama Administration, it sets a precedent for more to come. The Obama Administration repeatedly stated that it would support and work with any Salvadoran government that was elected democratically in free and fair elections. This is a drastically different policy from that of the previous Bush Administration who in 2004 allowed members of his administration, congress, and the US Embassy to release pointed public statements threatening the deterioration of Salvadoran-US relations. This included to withdrawal of US aid to El Salvador, the refusal to renew Salvadoran work visas, and to block the practice of remittances if the FMLN were elected.

The election was not simply a victory for the FMLN, nor only a victory for Salvadorans’ electoral participation, or even Salvadorans as a whole. Rather, it was a victory for an ever-growing number of Latino social democratic states who are attempting to forge a political path that values national wealth over exports, standard of living over GDP, and human rights over profits. With the FMLN having won governmental power after years of struggle and sacrifice, the campaign graffiti that cover the streets of San Salvador is being painted over and Salvadorans as a whole express hope about what changes the FMLN might bring. The aura in San Salvador’s central market is one of a collective catharsis after decades of civil and political war. The FMLN has historically overcome one seemingly impossible challenge after another, from the civil war that characterised the 1980s, to the peace accords of 1992 that saw the FMLN turning their weapons in for legislative seats, and now finally the peaceful transition to executive power. Their next challenge – arguably both their most difficult and most important – is proving to the world that after 27 years of vying for power, that they can successfully use it to bring about a better tomorrow for El Salvador.