ARENA has tried to divide support for the FMLN by portraying acriminal image of the party and attributing its rising popularity toFunes, a journalist who critics call a political moderate who onlyserves for the photos. But the FMLNs current popularity is not anisolated phenomenon and Mauricio Funes isnt the anomaly the rightwould like us to believe. It is true that Funes candidacy hasstrengthened the FMLNs chances of winning. His 20 years ofinvestigative journalism and his popular morning news show, "TheInterview," which provided a forum for the public to challenge thegovernments actions and official reporting, has given millions ofSalvadorans a long look at Funes and a wide-open view into hispolitics. For this work he is widely respected. It is also true thatthe FMLNs current popularity is very much in line with increasingelectoral gains the party has made in past elections.

In 1994, the first year it competed in elections, the FMLN earned 12mayoral seats and 22 legislative deputies; in the presidentialelections of 1994, 1999 and 2004, the FMLN earned 32%, 29% and 37% ofthe vote, respectively. The 2006 mid-term elections marked a turningpoint for the party as it closed an enormous gap in voter turnout andwon the election with 943,936 votes to ARENAs 854,166. By that time,the FMLN was governing over 40% of the total population of El Salvadorat the municipal level. Today, the party has 96 mayoral offices governing 60% of the population and the most deputies of any singleparty in the legislative National Assembly, holding 35 of 84 seats.

When asked in November 2008 by Nicaraguan newspaper The Monoclewhy he was running for president, Funes replied, "There's an historicalopening for me to be president. The problems here are so powerful thatI can't continue working as a journalist. Journalism has allowed me toknow the realities of El Salvador especially, the reality of poverty.But journalism doesn't allow me to change that reality."

'The El Salvador We Want'

Financial exclusion and major news media blackouts have all butdismissed the FMLN as a party, negating its popular support. Right-wingownership of mainstream media has made it practically impossible forthe left to fully participate in the established political structure.Since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1992 and the recognition ofthe FMLN as a political party, the party has consistently submittedpolicy recommendations to the National Assembly to little avail. TheFMLN's long-standing political objectives can are reflected in its 2009platform, which can be found in the 96-page of the Programa de Gobierno (Government Program).

The FMLN's political project is outlined by ten central principlesof action to be implemented at the highest levels of government:

1. Overcome unemployment, the high cost of living, poverty, exclusionand inequality in the distribution of benefits and costs ofdevelopment.

2.Exceed the slow growth of the economy by accelerating and diversifying the countrys production of resources.

3. Overcome the insecurity of the population and state impunity.Defeat delinquency and organized crime. Overcome violence and thedamage to norms of social coexistence.

4. Overcome exclusion and inequality in the access to knowledge andreduce the gap of knowledge, science, technology, and information thatdistances our country from highly developed countries.

5. Clean up public finances, ending incompetence andirresponsibility in the handling of public money that precipitated thefinancial crisis. Overcome the lack of political will and reach anaccord that opens a passage for the integral fiscal reform that ElSalvador needs.

6. Confront the effects provoked by the global economic crisis:Agricultural insecurity, energy vulnerability, consequences of climatechange, and the local effects of the recession in the United States.

7.Unify the country: dismantle the foundations of intolerance, polarization and a fractured economy.

8.Remove the obstacles to democracy and to the implementation of the Peace Accords.

9. Overcome the fragility, deterioration, and degradation of stateinstitutions with legal security for people, families, and the life ofthe country.

10. Overcome regional fragmentation and the lack of integration thathas impoverished and disadvantaged people in this region of the world.Move forward toward integration that is justified by the interests ofthe people.

Evidence of the FMLNs popularity is not hard to find. It can beglimpsed in massive attendance at rallies and in the results of thefirst round of elections. Electoral opinion polls consistently show theFMLN has the plan that voters want; and one that ARENA isnt inclinedto follow: Putting the Salvadoran government to work for the Salvadoranpeople.

According to the ARENA government, the FMLN is making promises itcannot keep and its electoral campaign is only a smokescreen for itstrue ambition: Creating "armed groups" of children in the Salvadorancountryside for a fight alongside Hugo Chávez, Hezbollah, Colombianguerrillas, and street gangs to overthrow the U.S Empire. This gem offiction makes one wonder what ideas must have  been scrapped in ARENAscampaign strategy meetings.

A more revealing incident of ARENAs militaristic preoccupations, ifless fantastic than the above-mentioned Armed Groups story, which hasreceived incessant and unsubstantiated coverage, was President AntonioSacas address to the Salvadoran military on the Day of the Soldier.On the military holiday in May 2007, Saca addressed a large group ofyoung soldiers and implored asked that they summon the spirit of thesoldiers who fought in the civil war to stop the waves of dangerouspopulism that threaten the region today. Saca made similar statementsto war veterans in 2008.

Whos Afraid of Populism? Who's Afraid of the Salvadoran People?

Reacting to its dire performance in the polls and the public's deepopposition to some of its cornerstone policies, such as the repressiveMano Dura (Iron Fist) policing program or the privatization of publicresources, ARENA would need a dramatic about-face to improve itschances of turning the election in its favor. ARENA would have to startby pulling back on its national water privatization plan, signingpublic water provision agreements with the water workers' union. Butthen the party would be going against its own commitments. ARENA couldgain voter confidence by canceling its mining contracts with PacificRim Corporation and the scores of other exploitative projects it haspromoted in northern El Salvador. But that is not the ARENA party. Itwill never choose such a path. For ARENA, predatory foreign investmentand diminished public ownership are signs of "efficiency" and"progress."

ARENA has shown contempt for voters, while putting its friendlyforeign investors on notice of what looks to them as an impendingdisaster: A functioning democracy. While asking for tougher electoralintervention from the U.S. government, the party has spent nearly $10million on a campaign of fear and distortion as well as requested over$1.5 billion in international loans. ARENA party leaders who have beenselling El Salvador piecemeal to multinational corporations for yearsare now working quickly to secure corporate-driven developmentcontracts before President Sacas term expires in June. One suchproject is the Port of La Unión, a multi-billion-dollar transnationaltrade hub that ARENA believes should be 90% privately owned.

An FMLN victory would immediately open up the governmentsaccounting books, exposing ARENA's systematic siphoning of national andforeign aid budgets this, among ARENA's myriad other abuses to thepeople, land and resources of El Salvador. For example, the FMLN hasrepeatedly cited the more than $600 million in still unaccounted formissing taxes that corporations and individuals should be paying intothe national budget each year. In addition, the FMLN has repeatedlydenounced the fact that 85% of El Salvadors land and commercialsectors are owned by a five-family oligarchy.

Despite its worries and its reluctance to engage honestly with theSalvadoran electorate, ARENA is not going down without a fight evenif it means acting illegally. Indeed, it is pulling out all of thestops in an attempt to buy the election. In perhaps its strangest actof irony, the party is blasting email advertisements throughout U.S.cities that offer discounted airfare to Salvadorans who are willing toreturn home to vote for ARENA candidate Rodrigo Ávila. The $330 pricetag almost certainly guarantees a ride from and back to the airport anda full-time escort, who will ensure that visitors find their way to thevoting box and then promptly return to work in the United States.

Interestingly, while mainstream media has helped the ARENA party tostunt and vilify the FMLN's aspirations for government, Funes'candidacy has been maintained as a positive and prolific campaign.While the FMLN has had to pay exorbitant rates for costly and minimalad space in right-wing daily newspapers and primetime television slots,the Internet contains dozens of interviews, monologues, campaignspeeches, and ads surrounding Funes and the FMLN campaign.

One of the most inventive media pieces of the campaign are the party's Microprogramas,which are short, smart and stylish tutorial programs that explorevarious aspects of El Salvadors government and economy and outline theFMLNs platform on such issues. Each program lasts 5-10 minutes and theFMLN has made 45 of them. The Microprogramas are windows intohow the FMLN has led public education campaigns in strengtheningpeoples understanding and approach toward the governments role inSalvadoran society.

If the FMLN has its way, El Salvador will join the growing movementfor participatory democracy across Latin America in its own unique way,as prescribed by the people who voted it into power. Funes has promiseda transparent budget prioritization process and a functional AttorneyGenerals Office. He has also committed himself to strengtheningcitizen's rights to basic necessities such as food, education, housing,health care, and civil liberties, while enhancing El Salvadors role inthe local and regional economy over the next five years. The FMLNsability to make these goals a reality begins and ends with its base ofsupport and the poor majority.

The peoples resistance in El Salvador walks on two feet; one footis the social movement and the other is the FMLN," says Estela Ramirez,a factory worker turned union organizer. "The work of the government isto create the legal and financial framework for all people and sectorsof society to be able to access the government. This way the majorityof Salvadorans can determine the course of our countrys future.