Central America and beyond: ruminations, speculations & provocations

I mentioned earlier that we can expect of problems on election day, which is always the case, although they've never been serious enough in the postwar period to call into question the legitimacy of the elections. This one should be no different, especially given that people will be voting for the first time ever with their new Single Identity Cards (DUI). While the DUI is much more reliable and transparent (pictures on laminated cards, to be compared with an electoral registry with photos of the voter as well!), this will nevertheless be the first time they will have been used.

To brush up on potential election day foibles, many of which are not related to the document used to vote, one surprisingly objective and well-documented report about irregularities in the March 2003 elections was published by the International Observation Mission of the Center for Exchange and Solidarity (CIS). The report is not afraid to document FMLN violations of electoral laws--such as improper use of propaganda, distribution of food (i.e., vote-buying), etc. on election day--alongside the numerous abuses by all the other parties.

If you want even more details, as well as a plethora of data and information on both the 2003 and 2004 elections, you could read the reports of the Consortium of Civic Education NGOs (COCIVICA) at their website. I haven't ploughed through them myself, but COCIVICA has been working on electoral issues for eleven years now (the only nongovernmental organization in El Salvador with that kind of track record), and know what they're talking about. They're a coalition of five NGOs ranging from center to left.

And you'll definitely want to click on the websites of the two principal candidates, Tony Saca (ARENA) and Schafick Handal (FMLN). Can't find a site for Hector Silva anywhere.

If you harbor any skepticism whatsoever that press coverage has been skewed toward the two major parties (as is this blog), with one party in particular getting more favorable coverage, just click on the logos of the four parties in contention at the Diario de Hoy site. Then compare the number of articles listed for each party. From the titles you'll get a general sense of the tone. Draw your own conclusions.

Nevertheless, there is justice. At all three sites, not one provides the proper website address for Tony Saca--all noting "tonysaca.org" instead of "tonysaca.com." For those of us who know the difference between an "org" and a "com", well, the address should be obvious. So you read it here first, folks.

By the way, neither party's site allows for online donations--at this time....

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The Salvadoran historian and writer Roberto Turcios has a wise column in today's LPG, in which he criticizes the authoritarian political culture which has infused the current electoral campaign. With both major parties accusing the other of attempting to steal (FMLN's charge against ARENA) or disrupt (ARENA's charge against the FMLN) the elections, and following what has been perhaps the most confrontational electoral battle since the signing of the peace accords, he scores the utter failure of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to assert its authority in the matter.

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As an occasional cellist myself, I have to mention a story by veteran reporter Phil Gunson in Friday's Miami Herald about a cellist (and director of the Venezuelan National Symphony) who accidentally found himself in the middle of a demonstration last week against the Chavez administration's dubious resistance to accepting some 800,000 signatures as part of a recall referendum. As a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Carlos Eduardo Izcaray was picked up by the National Guard, who proceeded to subject him to 20 hours of brutal beating and torture. (I'll spare you the details.) When asked about the case, the Defense Minister responded, "Torture? No, chico!"

Last Thursday, the day after this happened, the Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, a 34-year career diplomat, resigned. In his resignation letter, he noted that such repression "closely resembles those totalitarian or authoritarian regimes rejected by the peoples of Latin America in the 1980s.''

Ni modo. Also on Thursday, a columnist for Bloomberg.com noted that the stable value of the Venezuelan "DCB dollar-denominated floating rate bond" (no, I don't know what that means)... "means investors are remarkably sanguine about the current political situation. Bond prices tell us the prospect that investors have of getting paid interest and principal in full and on time. And for all his bluster, Chavez appears to have a not-so-terrible reputation as a debtor in the capital market."

Boy, that's a relief!

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The two leading parties in the March 21st presidential contest are ARENA and the FMLN. Things do not look good for the latter:

--If it is to survive electorally, the FMLN needs a second-round runoff (since no one even suggests that they might be able to win on the first round, whereas polls suggest that ARENA might win in the first round. (Check out these polls for yourself, through links on the right side of this web page.)

--The polls also suggest that ARENA would win by a wider margin in the second than in the first round.

--But if ARENA wins by such a large margin in the second round, then its mandate will be stronger than it would have been with only a minimal win in the first contest.

--So, assuming that ARENA is going to win (which the FMLN understandably refuses to accept, but which most observers do at this point), it might be better for ARENA to win in the first round, which would give them a weaker mandate and force them to reach out to the other political parties as they govern for the next five years.

--But if ARENA does win on the first round, then the FMLN will say the elections are rigged, and demand to recount every vote (sound familiar?) The stage is thus set: (1) Schafik has already warned that ARENA is setting a “trap” for election day, (2) almost half the public—according to the latest IUDOP poll—suspects there will be fraud in these elections, and (3) the FMLN base still thinks their man’s going to win, and are going to be pretty shocked when he does not.

--Which is why this electoral cycle will be far more peaceful if ARENA and the FMLN are forced into a runoff. For the second round, there will have been time to correct some of the irregularities that popped up in the first round, and which to some extent should be expected. But even if they are not, the margin of an ARENA victory is likely to be so great that these flaws will matter much less anyway.

--In the longterm, however, ARENA—if it wins in a second round—should let the strong showing of opposition parties in the first round give them pause, as did the results of the March 2003 legislative and municipal elections when they lost the popular vote to the FMLN for the first time ever.

As Roberto Rubio wrote in his column in today's La Prensa Gráfica, when the polls showed the FMLN ahead of ARENA a year ago, ARENA took it seriously, reoriented their strategies, and now they're reaping the rewards. One can only hope that ARENA will take the concerns of its citizens more seriously in spheres other than the electoral one, and translate them into more transparent and equitable public policies over the coming years.

A saber, pues.


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Kudos to Erick Lemus, the editor of Vértice (the often excellent Sunday magazine of the erstwhile reactionary daily El Diario de Hoy), for finally piercing the wall of silence and managing to slip in a reference to a December 2003 report by Human Rights Watch on labor rights in El Salvador. (This was the first report on El Salvador since I left HRW in 1993/94.) You see, until today the major media had avoided any mention of the "bad news" proffered by HRW--namely, that not only are existing labor laws deficient by international standards, but even these are not respected, and that CAFTA should try to remedy this situation.

Previously only the afternoon leftist daily Co-Latino, which has a relatively minor circulation, had cited the report. Obviously, the wealthy elites who control these papers have wanted to protect its readers against any information that might undermine the positive spin about El Salvador that their friends in the ARENA party would like to project. (I believe this comment falls into the category of speculation--thus the title of this blog.) A second report by HRW on abuses against domestic child workers in El Salvador, released in January 2004, has yet to receive any coverage in the local press (again, except for Co-Latino).

This may seem like a self-interested pet peeve, but check out these stories on the arrest of persons involved in bank fraud, in the Feb. 12th editions of El Diario de Hoy and La Prensa Gráfica. Now, can someone explain to me why these newspapers have no qualms about revealing names and publishing pictures of the accused (five of whom were released within two days), but cannot tell us which bank was involved (Banco Salvadoreño, apparently)? For further reflections on this kind of self-censorship, read this column by Chema Tojeira, the rector of the UCA.

By the way, the HRW document was reported in the context of a story on working conditions in the maquila sector, and mentions a new report by Intermon (Spanish affiliate of Oxfam), "Moda que aprieta", which might be worth checking out.

A propósito, yesterday I received a rare piece of FMLN campaign propaganda under my door. It was a flyer geared toward my middle class neighborhood (situated as it is in ARENA-dominated Antiguo Cuscátlan), aimed at explaining that the maquila industry would, in fact, stay put under an FMLN government, and that greater investment would indeed take place--as long as labor rights were respected. ("¡Con el FRENTE, las maquilas se quedan!") The background is a picture of Schafick & Co. meeting with Asian maquila owners.

Too little, too late: Just as it took the FMLN too long to realize it had to stop antagonizing the U.S., since having good relations with the U.S. government is, on the whole, electorally popular (more on this later) it also seems the FMLN has only too belatedly discovered that it might be better to focus on establishing good relationships with foreign investors (including Taiwan), rather than trumpet the fact that the first thing they'll do when they get to power is normalize relations with the People's Republic of China.


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"Hell, we couldn't find Noriega for four days in a country that we owned" (emphasis added)

--Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, on March 26, 2003, pondering as to just how difficult it was going to be to find Saddam Hussein, quoted in this piece by Rick Atkinson in today's Washington Post.

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To the editors of the Washington Post:

Scott Wilson's assertion in his March 7th story that Aristide's government had been "willing for the first time to take on difficult human rights prosecutions -- at least against its enemies" is simply befuddling. Isn't it always easier to go after your enemies than it is your opponents? Wilson discusses the trial and conviction of former army officers and paramilitaries implicated in an April 1994 massacre in Raboteau--a massacre which happened before Aristide returned to power--as a successful benchmark for human rights.

However, a cursory review of human rights violations and their prosecution since Aristide took office in 2001 reveals a less optimistic picture. In fact, six months into the second Aristide presidency the National Council for Haitian Rights --a group featured prominently in Wilson's article-- criticized the "systematization of impunity." Also in 2001, according to Human Rights Watch, "President Aristide announced a 'zero tolerance' crime policy, stating that it was not necessary to bring criminals to court. His words were widely interpreted by Haitians as an invitation to vigilante justice and police violence. Human rights groups reported that in the months following the speech, dozens of suspected thieves were killed by mobs." Is this what Wilson meant when he referred to Aristide having instigated armed gangs to "intimidate" political opponents?

No one can deny that Aristide has great support in Haiti for his outreach to the poor and disenfranchised, just as no one can celebrate the current chaos in which notoriously thuggish former soldiers appear to enjoy free rein.

But given Aristide's dreadful human rights legacy, it would be a huge error for journalists to leave readers with the impression that the rule of law had been steadily advancing in recent years.

David Holiday

POSTSCRIPT: After writing this, I found a letter to the Guardian from Helen Sproas, the Haiti field representative for Christian Aid, a British NGO. She writes:

"Christian Aid's Haitian partner organisations have ample evidence of serious human rights abuses and misrule committed by Aristide and his supporters. Despite his populist rhetoric, Aristide failed to take any serious measures during his last period in office that would address Haiti's underlying problems of growing poverty, glaring inequality and the exclusion of ordinary people from any say in the way the country is governed."

A couple of days later, she penned a balanced op-ed in the same paper, which said in part:

"For Haiti to stand a chance of overcoming this cycle of terror and misrule, it must listen to the voices of its poor. The one constant factor in Haiti's otherwise turbulent political history has been the exclusion of ordinary people's concerns from affairs of state. Instead, successive presidents have used power for their personal benefit to the detriment of any lasting institutions that could work in the interests of the country and not just its rulers."

Here is a brief but thorough position paper by Christian Aid on the Haitian situation; Grassroots International has also published some analyses from some of their counterparts, as well as recent blog entries on Haiti.

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There are several good interviews and editorials this week. First and foremost, take a look at this long interview with Salvador Samayoa, provocatively and bravely entitled "I don't want the Frente to win." While Salvador is pretty much a lone ranger at this point, he articulates very well here as to why some on the left are aliented from the FMLN. Also, his brother, Joaquín Samayoa, wrote a perceptive piece about the "messianic left" and the "apocalyptic right," and how both sides have based their campaigns on fear of their opponents. And, finally, this interview with the Costa Rican pollster Victor Borge gives a fairly reasonable overview (conventional wisdom, from my perspective) of the electoral situation.

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Not going to be as interesting as many abroad suspect, because, once again, ARENA's likely to win--perhaps even on the first round, according to all recent polls. Here is something I wrote back in November, in which I try to explain why I thought the FMLN didn't have a chance. Since then, the center has totally flopped. A stronger showing by the center coalition would have likely assured a second round. Now it´s not so clear whether there will even be a second round.

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