Saturday, April 03, 2004
El Salvador and the Iraqi Quagmire
It hasn’t been a good week for the U.S. in Iraq, and it might soon start turning ugly for Salvadoran troops stationed there as well.
On the heels of the Mogadishu-like slaying this weekof four American contractors (civilian, with security duties), on Thursday a patrol of the Salvadoran Cuscatlán Batallion in Iraq exchanged fire with some 10-15 men near the southern Iraqi town of Kufa; three Salvadorans were slightly injured. These are the first casualties of the second contingent of some 380 troops sent in February, which relieved the first contingent of 360 troops that had been in Najaf and Kufa since last August as part of the Spanish-led Plus Ultra Brigade. Not to worry, though, because the head of the Salvadoran Batallion told La Prensa Gráfica: “Here it is very peaceful, the biggest thing here is the religious problem.”
SALVADORAN TROOPS--ENEMIES OF IRAQ?
This "religious problem," however, may have dire consequences for occupying forces. On Friday, according to a report in today’s Washington Post, Moqtada Sadr said in a sermon in Kufa: "I and my followers of the believers have come under attack from the occupiers, imperialism and the appointees. Be on the utmost readiness, and strike them where you meet them." Sadr is the 30-year-old radical Shiite and junior cleric whose newspaper, al-Hawza, was shut down this week by the US occupation force. He is important in this context because the Salvadorans suspect that it was his militia, known as the Mahdi Army, that clashed with their troops on patrol.
Sadr also said in his sermon: "From here, I declare my solidarity with the solidarity between Hezbollah and Hamas. May they consider me their striking hand in Iraq, whenever necessity requires it." And it is Islamic support for Hamas, in fact, according to University of Michigan historian and Middle East expert Juan Cole, which may have been behind the killing of four U.S. privatized military contractors this week. He writes in his blog, Informed Comment:
"There is increasing evidence that the brutal attack on the American security guards in Fallujah, and the desecration of their bodies, was the work of Islamists seeking vengeance for the Israeli murder of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Leaflets found at the scene said the operation was in the name of Yassin. al-Hayat reports in its Friday edition that responsibility for the attack has been taken by a group called Phalanges of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The group said the deaths were a "gift to the Palestinian people."
Meanwhile, Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald reports today that “thousands of supporters of a young Shiite cleric Friday staged the largest protest march since the fall of Baghdad nearly a year ago, gathering near the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition to decry the closure last week of their newspaper. The huge turnout -- estimated at 20,000 -- was a disciplined flexing of muscle by the followers of Sheik Muqtada al Sadr and followed six straight days of growing protests against U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer's order shutting down the paper.”
WHAT'S NEXT?
So that tranquil little patch of Southern Iraq where Salvadorans are stationed may be in for a few surprises in future months.
As E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post noted, the attacks this week “suggest that the [June 30] deadline [for handing things over to the Iraqis] -- prompted more by the American electoral calendar than by circumstances in Iraq -- may be encouraging Iraqi insurgents to step up their efforts to create chaos.”
A more ominous analysis about Iraq’s future was offered by John F. Burns in the April 1 New York Times. He wrote: “Several Iraqis interviewed on Wednesday, including middle-class professionals, merchants and former members of Mr. Hussein's army, suggested that that the United States might be facing a war in which the common bonds of Iraqi nationalism and Arab sensibility have transcended other differences, fostering a war of national resistance that could pose still greater challenges to the Americans in the months, and perhaps years, ahead.”
OUTSOURCING SALVADORAN SPECIAL FORCES?
Of course, look on the bright side. The Salvadoran contingent is largely made up of Special Forces—although they made sure to get a few drivers this time, since the only death thus far was the result of a driving accident—and who’s to say that these guys can’t join the outsourced forces of Blackwater and company after their stint in Iraq. Blackwater is one of many outfits known as Privatized Military Firms (PMFs), which is a $100 billion a dollar industry operating in over 50 countries worldwide.
After all, Blackwater has already hired 60 Chilean former commandos for security-related tasks in Iraq. According to a report in the Guardian, these guys make “up to $4,000 a month.” Hmmm. That’s funny, because the Washington Post article yesterday about Blackwater says their employees make up to $1000 a day.
What do you want to bet that Blackwater is billing at $1000 a day, and paying these Chilean footsoldiers… let's see, what would that be, 12% of their overall take?
SPEAKING OF PRIVATIZATION
Naomi Klein reports this week in The Nation about a visit with Hamid Jassim Khamis, the Baghdad Soft Drinks Company's managing director. As the local producers of Pepsi-Cola, she expected to find herself in an oasis of pro-Americanism. She was wrong:
"All the trouble in Iraq is because of Bremer," Khamis told me, flanked by a line-up of thirty Pepsi and 7-Up bottles. "He didn't listen to Iraqis. He doesn't know anything about Iraq. He destroyed the country and tried to rebuild it again, and now we are in chaos."
Klein notes that “it is the profound sense of betrayal expressed by a pro-US businessman running a Pepsi plant that attests to the depths of the US-created disaster here. ‘I'm disappointed, not because I hate the Americans,’ Khamis tells me, ‘but because I like them. And when you love someone and they hurt you, it hurts even more.’”
FURTHER READING
On Privatized Military Firms (PMFs), of which Blackwater is one of many, see this story by Barry Yeoman, originally published in Mother Jones, May/June 2003
Also, this really amazing interview with P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, whose recent book, Corporate Warriors, examines the proliferation of (PMFs) and notes that the profit motive in warfare raises troubling questions for democracy, ethics, human rights, and national security.
And finally this article in yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor.
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
The Economist strikes below the belt
Friday, April 02, 2004
Electoral observations (3): Bill Barnes
"Thanks to Tommie Sue for a fine commentary. This is the kind of frankness we -- and the FMLN -- need. This election was eminently winnable for the left, at least up until the ortodoxos forced Hector Silva out of the FMLN a year and a half ago -- and maybe after that if they had agreed to Mauricio Funes' conditions for accepting the nomination (polls showed Funes' ten times more popular than Schafik, and it seems likely he would have been a great campaigner; whether he would have been a good president is another question).
For another excellent, realistic analysis of Salvador election dynamics (why FMLN sympathizers in Perquin and Soyapango voted for Calderon Sol for president), go back to the piece on the 1994 elections by Liesl Haas and Gina Perez in the Fall 1994 LASA Forum. It still applies. Anyone in touch with reality knew what kind of campaign Schafik's candidacy would draw from ARENA and knew that Schafik could not win. No legitimate poll ever showed it close -- no one who knows anything about election polling and who looked at how the UES and Gavidia polls were done could take them seriously.
The polls done for the FMLN by an able Guatemalan pollster always showed Saca well ahead, as did IUDOP. The response of the Political Commission was to fire the Guatemalan pollster and to condemn IUDOP and UCA as having sold out to ARENA. Their conduct of the campaign (including barring previous campaign managers from any independent decision-making), and their post-election conduct, shows that the ortodoxos -- smart as Schafik and Leonel are in some ways -- have learned nothing in ten years."
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
For another excellent, realistic analysis of Salvador election dynamics (why FMLN sympathizers in Perquin and Soyapango voted for Calderon Sol for president), go back to the piece on the 1994 elections by Liesl Haas and Gina Perez in the Fall 1994 LASA Forum. It still applies. Anyone in touch with reality knew what kind of campaign Schafik's candidacy would draw from ARENA and knew that Schafik could not win. No legitimate poll ever showed it close -- no one who knows anything about election polling and who looked at how the UES and Gavidia polls were done could take them seriously.
The polls done for the FMLN by an able Guatemalan pollster always showed Saca well ahead, as did IUDOP. The response of the Political Commission was to fire the Guatemalan pollster and to condemn IUDOP and UCA as having sold out to ARENA. Their conduct of the campaign (including barring previous campaign managers from any independent decision-making), and their post-election conduct, shows that the ortodoxos -- smart as Schafik and Leonel are in some ways -- have learned nothing in ten years."
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
Electoral observations (2): Tommie Sue Montgomery-Abrahams
FROM: Tommie Sue Montgomery-Abrahams, Fulbright Professor, Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" San Salvador
"I've been in El Salvador, this time, since the first of January and I generally concur with Lisa Kowalchuk´s analysis. This election was the FMLN's to lose and, after 10 days here last July, I wrote that if Schafik
was the candidate, the FMLN would lose. There was tremendous sentiment for change and, to be blunt, had Hector Silva been the FMLN candidate, I absolutely believe he would now be the president-elect. 15 years of ARENA has been enough for most people, but Schafik carried too much baggage from the past and, as Lisa notes, his temper and intemperate remarks sealed his doom.
The FMLN ortodoxos have their heads in the sand (a great play on words in Spanish as sand = "arena"). This seems to be a plague among Central American leftists (not to mention Fidel): they simply don't know when to pass the torch. The irony in all this is that Schafik has turned himself into his old nemesis, Cayetano Carpio.
Remember Cayetano? 34 years ago he split from the PCS because Schafik and company were too moderate, wanting to participate in elections and all those reformist things. Cayetano and followers went off to the mountains of Chalatenango and founded the first of the political-military organizations, the Popular Forces of Liberation. Schafik and the PCS spent the 70s participating in presidential elections, through a legal front, the UDN, and were the last revolutionary group to take up arms, at the end of the decade, when they realized that if they didn't they would be left in the dustbin of history.
Meanwhile, Cayetano (Comandante Marcial) proceeded to build the largest of the mass organizations, the BPR, and the largest of the guerilla groups, the FPL. Why is this relevant now? Because Marcial became increasingly rigid and orthodox in his views, insisting that the only way to organize a revolutionary movement was HIS way. His intransigence caused endless problems in the process of trying to unify the FMLN, beginning in 1980 and the problems didn't end until Marcial committed the unpardonable crime of ordering the assassination of his 2nd in command, Mélida Anaya Montes, in Nicaragua. When the Sandinistas, a few days later, uncovered the truth (Marcial having wept at Mélida's funeral) Marcial committed suicide. Immediately thereafter, the process of unity and military coordination took off and the FMLN never looked back.
Schafik has fallen into the same monomaniacal trap: it's his way or the highway. His extraordinarily ungracious speech on election night (he refused to congratulate Saca) and his threats to paralyze the government (the FMLN holds the plurality in the Legislative Assembly) for the next 2 years (until the next elections for Assembly deputies and mayors) will not only damage the country; more important, it will damage the FMLN. One can be sure that ARENA will make great political hay out of the FMLN's deputies wholesale stalling of legislation, which will NOT help the Frente in 2006, especially if Tony Saca tries to live up to his commitment to negotiation and concertación (in contrast to Frankie Flowers, who announced 5 years ago that he had been elected to govern, not negotiate. He ended up doing neither.)
The other irony worth noting, since I'm on a history kick tonight, is that the smallest of the 5 original FMLN organizations--together with a segment of the former FPL-- has ended up running the show. On the other hand, this should not be surprising, precisely because Schafik and company spent so many years in political organizing before they headed off to the mountains.
It is regrettable that the current leadership is so married to the old Leninist (or was it Trotsky?) principle of democratic centralism. Even ARENA has left that one behind; one of their deputies between 1997 and 2000, Rodrigo Avila, voted against his party 5 times in those three years, and the party didn't sanction him.
The campaign, as Lisa has described it, was disgustingly dirty. ARENA did far more than it had to to win, simply because Schafik was his own worst enemy. He made ARENA's job easy. But the dinosaurs in ARENA, trapped in their anti-communist ideology and mind-set of 20 years ago had to MAKE SURE. These are not the people closest to Saca...but it will be interesting to see whether Saca can/will put distance between himself and the dinosaurs, or whether he will become their pawn. His strength is his youth; his weakness is his inexperience and that could leave him vulnerable to manipulation by the hard-liners. It will be interesting to watch....
Finally, one note about Joe DeRaymond's earlier commentary. He was factually wrong when he said that Ambassador Barkley belatedly said that the US would work with whatever government was elected. The ambassador made that comment publicly on a couple occasions well before the election and I personally heard him state it unequivocally in a town meeting he called for all US citizens resident in El Salvador on 25 February. My feeling after Noriega and Reich shot off their mouths was that, to all appearances, they had pulled the rug out from under Barkley who publicly was trying to play it straight."
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
"I've been in El Salvador, this time, since the first of January and I generally concur with Lisa Kowalchuk´s analysis. This election was the FMLN's to lose and, after 10 days here last July, I wrote that if Schafik
was the candidate, the FMLN would lose. There was tremendous sentiment for change and, to be blunt, had Hector Silva been the FMLN candidate, I absolutely believe he would now be the president-elect. 15 years of ARENA has been enough for most people, but Schafik carried too much baggage from the past and, as Lisa notes, his temper and intemperate remarks sealed his doom.
The FMLN ortodoxos have their heads in the sand (a great play on words in Spanish as sand = "arena"). This seems to be a plague among Central American leftists (not to mention Fidel): they simply don't know when to pass the torch. The irony in all this is that Schafik has turned himself into his old nemesis, Cayetano Carpio.
Remember Cayetano? 34 years ago he split from the PCS because Schafik and company were too moderate, wanting to participate in elections and all those reformist things. Cayetano and followers went off to the mountains of Chalatenango and founded the first of the political-military organizations, the Popular Forces of Liberation. Schafik and the PCS spent the 70s participating in presidential elections, through a legal front, the UDN, and were the last revolutionary group to take up arms, at the end of the decade, when they realized that if they didn't they would be left in the dustbin of history.
Meanwhile, Cayetano (Comandante Marcial) proceeded to build the largest of the mass organizations, the BPR, and the largest of the guerilla groups, the FPL. Why is this relevant now? Because Marcial became increasingly rigid and orthodox in his views, insisting that the only way to organize a revolutionary movement was HIS way. His intransigence caused endless problems in the process of trying to unify the FMLN, beginning in 1980 and the problems didn't end until Marcial committed the unpardonable crime of ordering the assassination of his 2nd in command, Mélida Anaya Montes, in Nicaragua. When the Sandinistas, a few days later, uncovered the truth (Marcial having wept at Mélida's funeral) Marcial committed suicide. Immediately thereafter, the process of unity and military coordination took off and the FMLN never looked back.
Schafik has fallen into the same monomaniacal trap: it's his way or the highway. His extraordinarily ungracious speech on election night (he refused to congratulate Saca) and his threats to paralyze the government (the FMLN holds the plurality in the Legislative Assembly) for the next 2 years (until the next elections for Assembly deputies and mayors) will not only damage the country; more important, it will damage the FMLN. One can be sure that ARENA will make great political hay out of the FMLN's deputies wholesale stalling of legislation, which will NOT help the Frente in 2006, especially if Tony Saca tries to live up to his commitment to negotiation and concertación (in contrast to Frankie Flowers, who announced 5 years ago that he had been elected to govern, not negotiate. He ended up doing neither.)
The other irony worth noting, since I'm on a history kick tonight, is that the smallest of the 5 original FMLN organizations--together with a segment of the former FPL-- has ended up running the show. On the other hand, this should not be surprising, precisely because Schafik and company spent so many years in political organizing before they headed off to the mountains.
It is regrettable that the current leadership is so married to the old Leninist (or was it Trotsky?) principle of democratic centralism. Even ARENA has left that one behind; one of their deputies between 1997 and 2000, Rodrigo Avila, voted against his party 5 times in those three years, and the party didn't sanction him.
The campaign, as Lisa has described it, was disgustingly dirty. ARENA did far more than it had to to win, simply because Schafik was his own worst enemy. He made ARENA's job easy. But the dinosaurs in ARENA, trapped in their anti-communist ideology and mind-set of 20 years ago had to MAKE SURE. These are not the people closest to Saca...but it will be interesting to see whether Saca can/will put distance between himself and the dinosaurs, or whether he will become their pawn. His strength is his youth; his weakness is his inexperience and that could leave him vulnerable to manipulation by the hard-liners. It will be interesting to watch....
Finally, one note about Joe DeRaymond's earlier commentary. He was factually wrong when he said that Ambassador Barkley belatedly said that the US would work with whatever government was elected. The ambassador made that comment publicly on a couple occasions well before the election and I personally heard him state it unequivocally in a town meeting he called for all US citizens resident in El Salvador on 25 February. My feeling after Noriega and Reich shot off their mouths was that, to all appearances, they had pulled the rug out from under Barkley who publicly was trying to play it straight."
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
Electoral observations (1): Lisa Kowalchuk
From a brief exchange on the Central America Section list-serve of LASA, Lisa Kowalchuk --a Canadian sociologist-- comments on a piece by Joe DeRaymond, published March 26 in Counterpunch.
"I would like to say that I was with Joe DeRaymond in Jayaque doing election observation and I have been in the country for 2 months doing research. Joe is not exaggerating in his description of ARENA's campaign tactics. Did he leave some information out?
Admittedly it is not a thorough analysis of what led to the electoral outome, in that it focuses exclusively on what analysts here, of the left, are referring to as the external factors, and he leaves out the internal factors, i.e., the errors, oversights of the FMLN particularly its Comision Política. Foremost among these is the choice of Shafik as one of the two pre-candidates in last July's primaries.
There are still many FMLN militants, of the "ortodoxos" camp, who argue that even if the candidate had been the Baby Jesus, he would have been just as vulnerable to ARENA's smear efforts. I don't believe that and if it's true the FMLN may as well just give up forever on contending for executive power, and there is also no point in any kind of self critical reflection at this point.
The problem is not just that Schafik is a communist, though that did lend itself to a special kind of fear mongering. A main feature of ARENA's campaign in its early phase was that El Salvador would become another Cuba. This carries great weight in rural areas where the majority of uneducated campesinos don't know from Cuba, nor understand the impossibility of a socialist restructuring of El Salvador. I know peasants who believed that with Schafik as president, the ancianos would be killed and turned into soap, just like in Cuba, and any earnings above subusistence would be confiscated by the state, again just like in Cuba.
Schafik's personality was undoubtedly also a serious liability. He has a volatile temper that often he doesnt succeed in controlling. Evidence -- when decree 1024 (preventing privatization of the public healthcare system, hard-won by healthcare unionists and a broad swath of civil society who supported their labour strike) was striken down in the Legislative Assembly by the other legislators in December 2002, he shouted "We will go back to the montañas!", i.e. a cry for a return to civil war. He is also at times impatient and hostile even with moderate to left news media, in a context in which friends in the media are very scarce.
Another conclusion of many FMLN supporters here is that the FMLN leadership was over confident in interpreting last year's legislative and municipal results as a prediction of what would happen in a presidential race.
Actually Joe´s characterization of ARENA's campaign, left-tainted though it may be, actually doesn't go far enough. It was EXTREMELY dirty. Part of the problem is there is no regulation here in El Salvador on how the media are used in election campaigns. Unlike in other countries where media outlets are obliged to allow equal space and time to all contenders for their campaign publicity, it is not that way in El Salvador. Also there is no regulation on private donations to electoral contenders. The paralysis of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal here is also a decisive factor. The electoral laws (apart from the aspects I just mentioned) are good, but there is nothing to enforce them. Not only does ARENA block its functioning internally but at the Executive level it continues to veto any kind of serious reform of how the TSE functions, or other kinds of electoral reform...."
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
"I would like to say that I was with Joe DeRaymond in Jayaque doing election observation and I have been in the country for 2 months doing research. Joe is not exaggerating in his description of ARENA's campaign tactics. Did he leave some information out?
Admittedly it is not a thorough analysis of what led to the electoral outome, in that it focuses exclusively on what analysts here, of the left, are referring to as the external factors, and he leaves out the internal factors, i.e., the errors, oversights of the FMLN particularly its Comision Política. Foremost among these is the choice of Shafik as one of the two pre-candidates in last July's primaries.
There are still many FMLN militants, of the "ortodoxos" camp, who argue that even if the candidate had been the Baby Jesus, he would have been just as vulnerable to ARENA's smear efforts. I don't believe that and if it's true the FMLN may as well just give up forever on contending for executive power, and there is also no point in any kind of self critical reflection at this point.
The problem is not just that Schafik is a communist, though that did lend itself to a special kind of fear mongering. A main feature of ARENA's campaign in its early phase was that El Salvador would become another Cuba. This carries great weight in rural areas where the majority of uneducated campesinos don't know from Cuba, nor understand the impossibility of a socialist restructuring of El Salvador. I know peasants who believed that with Schafik as president, the ancianos would be killed and turned into soap, just like in Cuba, and any earnings above subusistence would be confiscated by the state, again just like in Cuba.
Schafik's personality was undoubtedly also a serious liability. He has a volatile temper that often he doesnt succeed in controlling. Evidence -- when decree 1024 (preventing privatization of the public healthcare system, hard-won by healthcare unionists and a broad swath of civil society who supported their labour strike) was striken down in the Legislative Assembly by the other legislators in December 2002, he shouted "We will go back to the montañas!", i.e. a cry for a return to civil war. He is also at times impatient and hostile even with moderate to left news media, in a context in which friends in the media are very scarce.
Another conclusion of many FMLN supporters here is that the FMLN leadership was over confident in interpreting last year's legislative and municipal results as a prediction of what would happen in a presidential race.
Actually Joe´s characterization of ARENA's campaign, left-tainted though it may be, actually doesn't go far enough. It was EXTREMELY dirty. Part of the problem is there is no regulation here in El Salvador on how the media are used in election campaigns. Unlike in other countries where media outlets are obliged to allow equal space and time to all contenders for their campaign publicity, it is not that way in El Salvador. Also there is no regulation on private donations to electoral contenders. The paralysis of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal here is also a decisive factor. The electoral laws (apart from the aspects I just mentioned) are good, but there is nothing to enforce them. Not only does ARENA block its functioning internally but at the Executive level it continues to veto any kind of serious reform of how the TSE functions, or other kinds of electoral reform...."
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
Thursday, April 01, 2004
The profound failure of the TSE
This graph shows the results of an online poll taken by El Faro. We're still waiting for that OAS report.... More critiques to follow.
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
FMLN: Back to normal?
The papers' note this morning the FMLN has accepted Saca's overtures to "concertar" and will start with a discussion of the national budget, which has still not been approved.
Oscar Ortiz and the reformists are going to begin lobbying the grassroots membership of the FMLN to prepare for November 21 internal elections.
They're also being vigilant regarding the review of the new registry of party members, fearful that the orthodox wing will try to stack the deck against them.
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
Oscar Ortiz and the reformists are going to begin lobbying the grassroots membership of the FMLN to prepare for November 21 internal elections.
They're also being vigilant regarding the review of the new registry of party members, fearful that the orthodox wing will try to stack the deck against them.
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
Who needs the PCN, anyway?
UPDATE: The PCN had their first defection to ARENA last night, Dolores Alberto Rivas. Of course, no one's talking about what he was offered in return, but in the past we know that PCN deputies have been bought with considerable sums of money. The key victory for ARENA is that now there is no way the opposition can override any presidential vetos.
The answer: both the FMLN and ARENA, if either of these parties want to get any legislation passed in the next two years.
In the last elections, the PCN --that paragon of corrupt, rightwing populism-- got just under three percent of the vote, which means that it will lose its legal status (along with the CDU and PDC) as a political party. It's not really a problem to re-register, but it means they have to change names and spend time and money gathering some 70,000 signatures. They have the party machinery at the local level to do this, but still it would be so much easier if the Legislative Assembly (in which they are the swing voters--sometimes to the left, oftentimes to the right) just passed a resolution lowering the 3% standards. This has been done before (in 1997, to allow the Democratic Party to continue to exist, for example), but the interesting thing is that it appears that might not happen this time. The PCN is also trying to get an interpretation by the Supreme Court of the electoral law that would go in their favor (and I really can't imagine the basis for this.)
After the elections last March, the FMLN and the PCN entered into a formal legislative alliance, in which the PCN agreed to support a number of progressive social measures and modernization of the assembly in return for FMLN support for the PCN presidency of the Assembly (which should have gone to the FMLN).
Now most public voices in ARENA, including the president-elect Tony Saca and the legislative faction leader Rolando Alvarenga, are making noises that they're not interested in cutting the PCN any slack. As a result, the PCN is already sounding like it's not going to do ARENA any favors in the near future. If the PCN continues to ally with the FMLN --out of spite, we should say, since they have no real principles-- then that will make the new ARENA presidency something less than a picnic.
On the other hand, perhaps the PCN and ARENA are just posturing, trying to see who needs who more, and in the end we'll see if ARENA ends up buying off either the entire faction or a few PCN and PDC deputies in order to get some kind of minimal agenda passed. After all, ARENA only has 28 deputies out of a total 84 seats. The PCN has 15, which combined with ARENA would give them the necessary 43 votes for passing most legislative initiatives. (FMLN has 31 deputies --unless we see a split in the next two years-- while the PDC and CDU each have 5. So even an FMLN/CDU/PDC legislative alliance needs at least two votes from the PCN to get simple legislation passed.)
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
The answer: both the FMLN and ARENA, if either of these parties want to get any legislation passed in the next two years.
In the last elections, the PCN --that paragon of corrupt, rightwing populism-- got just under three percent of the vote, which means that it will lose its legal status (along with the CDU and PDC) as a political party. It's not really a problem to re-register, but it means they have to change names and spend time and money gathering some 70,000 signatures. They have the party machinery at the local level to do this, but still it would be so much easier if the Legislative Assembly (in which they are the swing voters--sometimes to the left, oftentimes to the right) just passed a resolution lowering the 3% standards. This has been done before (in 1997, to allow the Democratic Party to continue to exist, for example), but the interesting thing is that it appears that might not happen this time. The PCN is also trying to get an interpretation by the Supreme Court of the electoral law that would go in their favor (and I really can't imagine the basis for this.)
After the elections last March, the FMLN and the PCN entered into a formal legislative alliance, in which the PCN agreed to support a number of progressive social measures and modernization of the assembly in return for FMLN support for the PCN presidency of the Assembly (which should have gone to the FMLN).
Now most public voices in ARENA, including the president-elect Tony Saca and the legislative faction leader Rolando Alvarenga, are making noises that they're not interested in cutting the PCN any slack. As a result, the PCN is already sounding like it's not going to do ARENA any favors in the near future. If the PCN continues to ally with the FMLN --out of spite, we should say, since they have no real principles-- then that will make the new ARENA presidency something less than a picnic.
On the other hand, perhaps the PCN and ARENA are just posturing, trying to see who needs who more, and in the end we'll see if ARENA ends up buying off either the entire faction or a few PCN and PDC deputies in order to get some kind of minimal agenda passed. After all, ARENA only has 28 deputies out of a total 84 seats. The PCN has 15, which combined with ARENA would give them the necessary 43 votes for passing most legislative initiatives. (FMLN has 31 deputies --unless we see a split in the next two years-- while the PDC and CDU each have 5. So even an FMLN/CDU/PDC legislative alliance needs at least two votes from the PCN to get simple legislation passed.)
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Iraq: Make music, not war
Call me a sellout, but it seems that this is something worth doing. Creative Learning, the nonprofit arm of Creative Associates International, has requested a donation of musical instruments for the Baghdad Conservatory of Music and Ballet and other musical training outfits in Iraq. I say: Adelante!!! And I only hope that Iraqi musicians do not end up like the string quartet who went down with the Titanic....
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Quotes (and Photo) of the Day
La Prensa Gráfica-- "moderados" of the FMLN try to fight their way into a meeting; "ortodoxos" respond, shouting "¡Fuera, areneros, vendidos, fuera!" and spraying pepper gas
"In the end, it is not a question of who leads the FMLN --since it will be the bases who decide that and the electorate who votes again in 2006-- but rather its democratic institutionality and political stature. The FMLN continues to be kidnapped by its own mistrust, and the channeling of decisions via improvised departmental assemblies without any formal convocation or defined participants, which have had no clear mechanisms of discussion or voting, have done nothing more than aggravate that."
--Editorial this morning from El Faro
NOTE: The national council of the FMLN apparently took a vote yesterday not to move forward to September the internal elections originally scheduled for November. Oscar Ortiz and company had apparently already left the meeting, however, when they made this "unanimous" decision.
"This administration's reliance on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics —even compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to abuse power — to use its control of the government to intimidate potential critics."
--Paul Krugman's column in today's NYTimes
"This administration is truly scary and, given the times we live in, frighteningly dangerous.... [it has] created the most secretive presidency of my lifetime … far worse than during Watergate."
--John Dean, from his new book, Worse than Watergate, quoted in Robert Scheer's op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times.
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Sunday, March 28, 2004
Press watch: the electoral impact of remittances
Besides Marcela Sanchez's weekly Friday columns in the Washington Post, all Latin Americanists should pay attention to Andres Oppenheimer's Thursday and Sunday columns on Latin America in the Miami Herald. (Both are syndicated widely.)
Oppenheimer's column today focuses on remittances and the role they played in the Salvadoran elections, but he gives their potential importance for the rest of Latin America perhaps too much credit.
At the same time, he misreads the Salvadoran case somewhat. First, the polls did NOT show that the FMLN and ARENA were neck-and-neck just two weeks before the election. It was clear since last September that ARENA held a lead, which proved to be accurate. Second, it's simply inaccurate to compare any material aid the FMLN received from China (computers, t-shirts) to the kind of campaign that was waged by ARENA, the media and their official US allies.
Unlike Sanchez-- who last Friday noted that the Salvadoran case is likely to be unique-- he says that remittances are of such growing importance in so many Latin American countries that what we saw here "is only the beginning."
So, who's right? One way to start looking for an answer to that question is to figure out whether Mexico, Honduras and Ecuador-- the countries he mentions in which remittances are also important-- have the same kind of monopolistic media culture, where the major press has been in bed with the ruling party of the past 15 years. Second, in any of those countries, is there a strong opposition party whose rise to power might presage a dramatic change in relations with the U.S.?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but El Salvador does appear to be pretty unique under those circumstances.
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
Oppenheimer's column today focuses on remittances and the role they played in the Salvadoran elections, but he gives their potential importance for the rest of Latin America perhaps too much credit.
At the same time, he misreads the Salvadoran case somewhat. First, the polls did NOT show that the FMLN and ARENA were neck-and-neck just two weeks before the election. It was clear since last September that ARENA held a lead, which proved to be accurate. Second, it's simply inaccurate to compare any material aid the FMLN received from China (computers, t-shirts) to the kind of campaign that was waged by ARENA, the media and their official US allies.
Unlike Sanchez-- who last Friday noted that the Salvadoran case is likely to be unique-- he says that remittances are of such growing importance in so many Latin American countries that what we saw here "is only the beginning."
So, who's right? One way to start looking for an answer to that question is to figure out whether Mexico, Honduras and Ecuador-- the countries he mentions in which remittances are also important-- have the same kind of monopolistic media culture, where the major press has been in bed with the ruling party of the past 15 years. Second, in any of those countries, is there a strong opposition party whose rise to power might presage a dramatic change in relations with the U.S.?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but El Salvador does appear to be pretty unique under those circumstances.
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
Reconfiguring the left
The cover of Vértice today (above, portraying a shattered Schafik Handal) is better than the accompanying articles, which mainly focus on the internal dynamic within the FMLN, but the analysis offered by La Prensa Gráfica's Sunday magazine, entitled "Does the 'New Left' Exist?" is definitely worth a look.
LPG's analysis takes as a point of departure the response of several illustrious -- but non-FMLN -- leftists: Ruben Zamora, Hector Silva, Roberto Turcios, Dagoberto Gutiérrez, Facundo Guardado and Roberto Rubio. Interestingly, it is clear to Hector Silva that any left alternative to ARENA will not happen through the FMLN: he's tried it, and everyone else who's tried it will fail. But Joaquín Villalobos --not really an important political actor anymore, but often an astute analyst-- notes that it's only the FMLN that has a real base of activists, and that any future for the left thus depends on reform with the FMLN, such that future left alliances are more feasible.
The news today, however, was that Oscar Ortiz et al. appear not to have gained support this weekend in the departmental assemblies of the FMLN for moving up the internal elections from November to September (Ortiz had originally asked for June), or for the immediate resignation of the Political Commission. This could be due more to the Orthodox wing's control of the party structure than any real lack of support for Ortiz and reformists, which they seem to have in many quarters.
Meanwhile, Hector Silva and Ana Cristina Sol launched a "public convocation" to all interested forces to form a new "democratic left" movement. By doing so, he's implicitly recognized one of the weaknesses of his campaign--that of a fuzzy indefinition of the center, neither right nor left, "ni chicha ni limonada." The CDU and PDC are undergoing their own internal battles, and it's too soon to tell whether anything will come of this. Will Silva's resounding defeat in these elections affect his political future? Too soon to tell, but I wouldn't rule him out just yet.
A key question: what will the newer generation of the FMLN do several months from now if they appear to get nowhere in trying to reform the party?
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Quote of the Day
''America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope,'' a hope expressed in Bob Dylan's words as ''freedom just around the corner.''
--The first quote is from none other than Samuel P. Huntington, but it rings true to this particular expatriate, who suffers frequent disappointments. Cited in a book review today by Gordon Wood, in the New York Times.
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
--The first quote is from none other than Samuel P. Huntington, but it rings true to this particular expatriate, who suffers frequent disappointments. Cited in a book review today by Gordon Wood, in the New York Times.
Comments to dlholiday@yahoo.com
