CISPES?2009 presidential elections analysis

Blogpost

 A victory for the Salvadoran people and the U.S. solidarity movement

     On Sunday, March 15, Salvadorans headed en masse to the polls tocast their ballots for their next president. By 9:30 p.m. MauricioFunes, candidate of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front(FMLN), pronounced himself President-elect — the first leftist head ofstate in the country’s history. The  significance of this shift inpower cannot be understated, considering it comes on the heels of 75years of unbroken, brutally repressive right-wing rule, backed bydecades of unflagging support from the White House.
    Official tallies showed Funes of the FMLN edging out NationalistRepublican Alliance (ARENA) candidate Rodrigo Ávila 51.3% to 48.7%.This slim margin is a testament to the heated electoral battle thatraged in El Salvador for close to two years.
     In spite of the smear campaign, fear-mongering and fraudulentvotes whipped up by ARENA and backed by hard-line conservatives of theU.S. government,  the right-wing could not take this election. Thistime, the FMLN and the U.S. solidarity movement had learned the dirtytricks employed in the 2004 Presidential election, and werewell-organized and poised for action when ARENA and its U.S. alliestried to stack the deck again in 2009.

    In the months leading up to the election, CISPES, SANA (the Salvadoran American National Association) and other solidarity groups spearheaded a grassroots Congressional campaign to stop U.S. intervention in the 2009 elections.  In early March, these coalition efforts yielded a letter to President Obama, signed by 33 Congressional Democrats, calling for an official U.S. declaration of neutrality with respect to the Salvadoran presidential election. Less than a week later, House Republicans reverted to the interventionist scare tactics that succeeded in maintaining ARENA party rule in the 2004 presidential elections.
     Just four days before the election, Congressional Republicans publicly defamed the FMLN and emphatically repeated the threats of the Bush administration: to cut off remittance monies to El Salvador and to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of Salvadoran immigrants if the FMLN won on March 15.  Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) warned, “If an ally of Al-Qaeda and Iran comes to power in El Salvador, the national security interests of the United States will require certain immigration restrictions and controls over the flow of the $4 billion in annual remittances sent from the U.S. back home to El Salvador.” Salvadoran mainstream media outlets dutifully provided extensive coverage of the Republicans’ statements, printing their threats as front page news.
     This was a deliberate Republican effort to strip away the FMLN’s popular support with only days remaining before the vote, after the formal close of the campaign period, thus leaving the FMLN legally unable to respond to these scathing attacks from Capitol Hill.
     CISPES organizers and Democratic allies in Congress sprang into action. Calls from thousands of concerned U.S. citizens “flooded” (in their words) the State Department and U.S. Embassy, demanding a public statement of U.S. neutrality from the Obama administration. Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Representative Howard Berman (D-CA) weighed in on the fray, both publicly rejecting the Republicans’ threats and reaffirming U.S. neutrality.     
     On Friday March 13 — two days before the presidential vote — the State Department and U.S. Embassy in San Salvador made unprecedented, formal declarations of neutrality, further promising to respect the result of the election and to work with whoever won the presidency.  Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon stated: “…this is a choice of the Salvadoran people that we will respect and we look forward to continuing our very positive relationship with El Salvador, and working with the next elected government.” The news spread across El Salvador just in time for election day. Solidarity activists, invigorated by the success, settled down to wait out the election.
     When election day arrived, voters and poll workers were so anxious to get started that some voting centers opened before the official 7:00 a.m. start time. International observers noted that many polling places were a “sea of red,” with voters sporting FMLN colors.
     Election day itself was a relatively smooth operation. Nonetheless, sources agree that the most egregious fraud — the mobilization of illegal, foreign voters — was set in motion by ARENA long before the polls opened. Reports of Guatemalans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans trucked in by ARENA members and holed-up in preparation for Sunday’s vote were heard across the country in the days leading up to the election. Indeed, CISPES observers responded to two such reports on the eve of the vote.
     The FMLN was also ready to respond to this devious, but all-too familiar ploy. FMLN activists arose at 2:00, 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. on election day to watch over roads to prevent busloads of illegal voters from entering their towns. In San Salvador and San Miguel, neighborhood residents and FMLN activists linked arms and sealed off buildings where foreigners were housed, collectively vowing not to let anyone leave on election day. Salvadorans assumed authority over their own elections, protecting the true voice of the pueblo, and it worked.
     At 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 15, Mauricio Funes gave his victory speech.  The streets were already filled with thousands and thousands of Salvadorans celebrating the people’s victory, waving FMLN flags, chanting “Sí se pudo, sí se pudo!” (“Yes, we did!”) and crying tears of joy. Amidst this ecstatic backdrop, Funes dedicated his presidency to Monseñor Romero — the Archbishop of San Salvador who was assassinated in 1980 for his unshakable support of El Salvador's poor — and committed to making “profound changes in the model of public management, of transparency, of participation and of social justice.”   n

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