Central America and beyond: ruminations, speculations & provocations

There were many problems with the past elections, but most of them had to do with the excesses in the campaign, not with election day itself. So why, two days before the election, did Schafik Handal along with the other presidential candidates sign a joint declaration promising to "respect the legitimate will of the people expressed in the results of the elections," only now to decide that they were in fact illegitimate and illegal?

ARENA takes out a very measured ad today that, in part, reproduces that document, inviting the FMLN to participate in the swearing in of president-elect Tony Saca.

Meanwhile, the FMLN fraction in the assembly last night debated whether to attend or not, despite the fact that the National Convention "ordered" all deputies not to attend. The debate went until midnight, and 12 of the 31 deputies (those considered "reformistas") voted to attend. But the majority won, so they will not attend.

For those who might be interested, among the dozen reformistas are Arnoldo Bernal, Héctor Córdova, Celina de Monterrosa, Hugo Martínez, Ileana Rogel and Gerson Martínez. Among the more prominent members of the ortodoxos are Walter Durán, Manuel Melgar, Violeta Menjívar, Salvador Arias, and of course Schafik Handal and Salvador Sánchez Cerén.

Meanwhile, the leading reformista, Santa Tecla mayor Oscar Ortiz, continues to believe that there's hope for reform within the FMLN, and says we still have to wait until the general election for new leadership on November 7th. In an interview today, he said that Sunday's convention doesn't mean anything, that they won't be silenced, and that the FMLN cannot continue with caudillos.

The positive side of all this open dissent is precisely that it is open. However, it remains to be seen what the fate will be of those who are now openly critical of the current leadership.

According to this report in the Sydney Morning Herald, there's a conference in Havana these days on "satisfactory longevity." You see, Cuba actually has one of the highest rates of life expectancy in Latin America (76.6 years) which is just below that of the United States (77.4 years), according to the CIA World Factbook.



So Castro's physician, Dr. Eugenio Selman Housein -- who believes "people are capable of living five times the number of years it takes for the human body to fully grow - which he said is around 25 years" -- told the audience that Castro is not only in excellent health, but that he can live at least 140 years.

Hmmm... I wonder how long it will take for this little bit of "news" to filter down to Schafik Handal, who's always looking for good reasons to praise the wonders of Cuba. And I'm sure, as a devout follower of Castro, Schafik also feels entitled to the same rights of longevity -- and control of the FMLN party apparatus.

Dissenting voices in the FMLN

"There's something that is powerfully striking about the reasoning of Schafik, which characterizes these elections as illegal or illegitimate, and which considers Saca to be illegal or illegitimate. As a citizen or as a party member, I ask myself: Why, when Francisco Flores won, were those elections not defined as illegal or illegitimate? Why, when Calderon Sol won, were those elections not defined as illegal or illegitimate? Why are the current elections now illegal? Because he was the candidate. We're operating under very personal opinions of Schafik. No, that's not the way to run the party."

--Ileana Rogel, FMLN deputy to the Assembly, from an interview today in La Prensa Gráfica. Today's paper notes that a sizeable group of FMLN legislators are seriously considering defying the FMLN conventions' mandate that they not attend the swearing-in ceremony of the new president on June 1.

I've been skeptical all along whether Ortiz and the other "reformistas" of the FMLN would be able to make much headway between now and November, when there are elections for the new leadership of the FMLN. Now, with the results of yesterday's national convention, it seems like the die has been tossed. The "ortodoxos" will maintain control of the party apparatus, and normal channels of internal democratic dissent will not be tolerated.

The convention was held principally to elect a terna of three candidates to be sent to the Legislative Assembly, which will then choose the FMLN representative to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (note: the top three parties in the presidential election get to choose a magistrate, and the Supreme Court designates the other two.) Most prominently, Julio Hernandez, a TSE magistrate for the past five years, and one of the most outspoken critics of the TSE itself during that period, was up for re-election. But also running was Eugenio Chicas, who managed the presidential campaign of Schafik Handal.

Remember that Hernandez had walked out of the meeting of the Political Council just one day after the FMLN's defeat, quite upset apparently that the FMLN was not going to be self-critical at all about the original sin of having put up Schafik Handal as its candidate. Well, as it turns out, instructions were given to delegates to vote for everyone but Hernandez, and he got the lowest vote of four candidates (143 out of 388 who attended), and Chicas came out on top with 245 votes.

480 delegates were able to attend the convention, but in days prior, some 187 delegates had been purged from the roster, a move which Hernández himself had protested before the Ethics Tribunal of the FMLN last Friday, saying that it had been illegal. If you do the math, less than 60% of the roster of members who had--up until a few days ago--been eligible to participate, actually ended up voting on Sunday. René Canjura, the FMLN mayor of Nejapa, among others, also protested the earlier purge.

Even more revealing, however, was the "unanimous" approval by the party faithful of an FMLN document that explained away the presidential loss, blaming a poor communication strategy as the principal internal factor, and the intervention of the U.S. as the prime external factor. I'm sure this latter move is popular with the orthodox base, but it's quite far-fetched. It was ARENA's overwhelming economic resources and nasty tactics that contributed far more to the FMLN's defeat--the U.S. played into that, but it's a stretch to say they were the principal cause.

Schafik also entered a motion to prohibit all FMLN officials from attending the swearing in ceremony of Tony Saca as president on June 1, calling his presidency "illegal" and "illegitimate". When Hernández and Oscar Ortiz tried to criticize this effort as an "error" and "inopportune", they were roundly booed by sizeable portions of the audience. Leonel Gonzalez, the FMLN coordinator who was running the event, did nothing to intervene, and in fact told the audience after Ortiz's intervention not be tempted by such "provocations." Even Nidia Diaz called for some reflection on this point--since deputies are invited not as members of their respective parties, but as deputies elected to serve the entire population--but such words of caution were for naught. The motion was approved, setting the tone for the kind of posturing we can expect from the FMLN for years to come.