FMLN Gains in Elections despite Fraud and Corruption of Democratic Institutions

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CISPES 2006 Salvadoran Elections Analysis - March 2006

On March 12th, Salvadorans went to the polls to elect 262 mayors and municipal councils, 84 Legislative Assembly deputies, and 20 Central American Parliament representatives.  The final vote count reflects important victories for the FMLN, including the mayor of San Salvador and the largest number of votes for deputies to the Legislative Assembly.  Although the FMLN suffered some losses at the municipal level, the end results were positive and many Salvadorans are celebrating the FMLN’s elections victory, both at the ballot boxes and defended in the streets.

In this electoral cycle the FMLN won 784,894 votes for legislate deputies on a national level, which is slightly less than their Presidential candidate, Schafik Handal, won in 2004. By comparison ARENA won 1,433,000 in 2004 and only 783,208 this cycle, a 49% decrease.  This margin of victory in terms of absolute number of votes will not translate into the FMLN having the most deputies, though.  The FMLN will now have 32 deputy seats in the 84-member Legislative Assembly, while ARENA will have 34.  The remaining 18 seats will be divided between the PCN, PDC, and CD (with 10, 6, and 2 respectively).  This unrepresentative spread of deputy seats is the result of a residual voting system that gives greater representation to smaller parties.  However, the great victory for the FMLN in terms of the number of deputies is that the FMLN again has the “key” to stopping any legislation or appointment that requires 2/3 majority.  This means that in the next legislative session ARENA must negotiate with the FMLN all legislation requiring this 2/3 majority. ARENA had made limiting the FMLN’s representation to 29 or less one of its main campaign goals, and thus the FMLN’s 32 total means a major defeat to ARENA.

At the local level, the FMLN candidates for mayor and municipal councils won in 59 municipalities, with a total of 670,515 votes nationally.  In the 2006-2009 period, the FMLN will govern 42 percent of the Salvadoran population (6 percent more than ARENA), because their mayoral victories were in the more populated areas. The greatest municipal win by far was the FMLN’s victory in San Salvador, where ARENA tried to steal the elections in the days after March 12th.  

Within a few hours of closing polling stations on Sunday night, most counts had the FMLN’s Violeta Menjívar winning the mayoral election in San Salvador.  However, that night President Saca announced that ARENA’s mayoral candidate – Rodrigo Samayoa – had won, seriously violating the institutionality of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), since Saca was trying to use his role as president of El Salvador to override a supposedly independent government institution.  For the next three days ARENA used its stranglehold on the TSE to stall the announcement of Menjivar’s victory. On Wednesday night, TSE president Walter Araujo announced that Menjivar was ahead by just 54 votes, but that 83 boxes had to be re-opened to count the contested ballots.

FMLN activists, who had occupied the central plaza downtown since Sunday night, marched to the hotel which housed the TSE’s vote counting operation to demand an official announcement of Menjivar’s victory.  A few hours later, in the middle of the night, the TSE finally announced that Menjivar had won San Salvador by 44 votes.  San Salvador, the center of much of the country's population and activity, has been governed by the FMLN since 1997.  ARENA had pinpointed the city as the big prize in this year’s election, and losing that bid was the other major defeat for ARENA in these elections.

The FMLN wasn’t as successful in retaining some other municipalities, however.  FMLN leaders and activists are reflecting on their failure to win re-election in 15 municipal races. Although the exact reasons for those losses varied from municipality to municipality, in general people point to fraud, ARENA’s dirty campaigning tactics, and the FMLN’s need to do even more organizing in the municipalities where it is in the local government as the main reasons for the losses.

Pre-elections fraud and structural manipulation of democratic institutions

Of course the significance of the FMLN’s accomplishments can only be measured after taking into account the many ways in which the right wing worked to undermine democracy throughout the campaign season, including on Election Day and in its aftermath.  Not surprisingly, many Salvadorans and international observers considered these the most fraudulent elections since the 1992 Peace Accords.

Manipulation of the elections process began last November, when the right-wing ARENA party pushed through several key election reforms that affected the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), centralizing decision-making in the hands of right wing parties.  The importance of these reforms was made ever so clear after Election Day, when the TSE baldly transformed itself into an arm of ARENA by dragging out the announcement of the elections results and therefore buying time for ARENA to potentially steal the elections.

Even before Election Day, however, the TSE did not work to guarantee fair elections.  It did not allow for a public audit of the electoral register despite documented cases of irregularities – massive voter migration from one municipality to another, foreigners and minors with Salvadoran IDs, deceased persons still on the registry.  Neither did the TSE act to curb ARENA illegal electoral campaigning. ARENA’s unrelenting stream of television and radio advertisements was paid for by state funds, and used state entities, like the National Civilian Police (PNC) and the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (ISSS).  Some sources have cited ARENA outspending the FMLN 20 to one in the race for San Salvador.

One of the most clearly illegal aspects of ARENA’s campaign was the way in which President Saca for all intents and purposes abandoned his public duties to campaign for his party in the months leading up to the elections.  Saca appeared at ARENA mayoral rallies promising national funding for municipal projects if the ARENA candidate won.  He spoke on national television, as president, asking voters to “remove the roadblocks” in the National Assembly – in direct reference to the FMLN –so that he could govern more easily.  His participation in the campaign was so clearly a violation of both the constitution and simple democratic norms that even the conservative Organization of American States denounced Saca’s role in the campaign.

ARENA’s political campaign also included a dose of U.S. government intervention. Two weeks before Election Day, Bush extended Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for 250,000 Salvadorans living in the US. ARENA used the signing ceremony as a photo-op for its campaign to demonstrate Saca’s close ties to Bush. In fact, some of ARENA’s most publicized campaign points related to this “special treatment” by Bush, like DR-CAFTA, TPS extension, etc.

ARENA made the FMLN the subject of its dirty campaign of fear and intimidation by leaguing the leftist party with organized crime, jail riots, gang-related activity, and “de-stabilization.”  One TV commercial showed alleged gang members claiming to receive orders from FMLN leaders. ARENA also launched a campaign of physical violence against FMLN activists.  On several occasions, organized attacks by armed ARENA contingents left dozens of FMLN activists injured, hospitalized and shot, with two FMLN activist killed.

Elections Day and lessons learned

Election Day problems were abundant.  International observers witnessed ARENA fill voting centers with party colors and usurp the responsibilities of TSE officials.  The right-wing party illegally bussed thousands of voters to polling sites.  International observers identified the lack of secrecy, general disorganization, voting by people with false voter identification cards, and the indelible ink not working as some of the anomalies.  The most serious problems reported to international observers were vote buying, foreigners voting, pressure on workers to vote for ARENA, and forcing public employees to represent ARENA in the voting centers.

Despite all of these structural problems and fraudulent electoral practices, FMLN activists and voters consider the 2006 elections results positive as they celebrate this election cycle’s hard fought victories.  The lessons learned from the elections will be important in building over the next three years up to 2009, when the presidential, legislative and municipal elections coincide.  The FMLN’s cohesion demonstrated during the elections played an important role in its victory, and party militants will need to remain committed to building that unity.  And most importantly, the fight to defend the victory in San Salvador demonstrated that winning state power through elections is only one part of creating change; ultimately, it was the party’s leaders and supporters accompanied by the organized resistance in the streets that forced the right to accept defeat.  That powerful combination is what Salvadorans are counting on building between from now to 2009 and beyond.

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