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Fatima Valdes Haugstveit follows the preparations for elections in El Salvador in 2009, where she will be an election observer. This is the first of three articles that she will write for NorLARNet on the coming elections.

Coming elections in El Salvador 2009
El Salvador elections

During the first half of 2009, Central American country El Salvador will be going through an important electoral process. On January 18th, Salvadorians are going to elect mayors and local politicians from 262 municipalities for a period of 3 years. At the same time 84 representatives will be elected to the National Assembly and 20 representatives to the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN). On March 15th, there will be scheduled elections for the country's president and vice-president, who are going to be elected for a period of 5 years.


According to the TSE (Tribunal Supremo Electoral), 4.2 million Salvadorians will be voting this time round. Parties have started nominating their candidates and the three major political forces have already presented their presidential candidates.

The following political parties have already confirmed their participation in the forthcoming elections:

The ARENA party has been in power since 1989. The Party has now nominated Rodrigo Ávila (44) as presidential candidate. Ávila has a degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University.In 1993, Ávila was appointed as deputy director of the newly established National Civil Police, which substituted the old military police which was abolished during the peace accords of 1992. Ávila later became a permanent director of the National Civil Police. ARENA was founded by Roberto D'Aubuisson in the early 1980s. D'Aubuisson established and was the leader of death squads, an organization responsible for severe atrocities committed in the country. ARENA is now a modern conservative party and the political figures of the party are now well educated and have different profiles and perspectives. They cannot be compared with the leaders of the 1980’s. The party is now dominated by a wealthy elite with strong economic interests in the private sector. ARENA has generally had a strong market oriented economic policy.

FMLN,the old guerrilla group, was converted into a political party after the peace agreement in 1992 and is now the second largest force in the country. FMLN has nominated Mauricio Funes (born in 1959) as a presidential candidate. Funes is an experienced TV journalist working with media institutions since 1987 and decided to leave the profession last year to get involved in the political life of the country. His face is well known by the public in El Salvador. During the war, he was one of the journalists who kept confronting politicians, asking them critical questions openly. Since the end of the war in 1992, the FMLN have been the major opposition force in the country.

After Schafik Handal’s death in January 2006 after having lead the party since 1993, the FMLN has experienced changes in its internal structure and is moving towards a modern left party. Handal belonged to a conservative wing of the party leading it in an authoritarian way, causing internal conflicts with a younger and moderate reformist left wing. Handal was an early member of the communist party and represented a left orthodox political wing. Funes is one of those new faces who is giving the party a modern image and who represents a change in the trajectory of FMLN. As vice-president, FMLN has nominated Salvador Sánchez Cerén who is one of the legendary commanders who participated in the civil war and negotiated the peace agreement in 1992.

PCN has nominated José Tomás Chéves (55), a protestant Pentecostal pastor. Chéves is new to politics, he belongs to a church, which is strongly expanding in popular sectors. PCN is the third political force in the country (Elim congregation). In the National Assembly, traditionally PCN has given its political support to ARENA, and this factor positions the party in a Centre-right political tendency. In the past, PCN was the party of the military governments. Cheves’s nomination was a surprise and a new element in the political scene of the country. Evangelical movements are strong in El Salvador, and they are moving in the political scene.

PDC has nominated Carlos Rivas Zamora who was the mayor of San Salvador and was nominated by FMLN between 2003 and 2006. He belongs to the reformist wing inside the FMLN. During his period as mayor he got into confrontations with Handal, and the party isolated him. He has been out of politics for the last 2 years and his appearance in the PDC is not strange. In the National Assembly, PDC gives from time to time their support to the left block and some other times to the right block, placing the party in an ideological centre. The PDC played an important role during the armed conflict and was the party of the legendary Jose Napoleon Duarte, the first civil president of El Salvador in many decades.

CD and FDR are in the nomination process and are small political parties. In the past, FDR was the political face of the guerrilla FMLN. These two parties will cooperate together presenting joint ballots papers in some districts.

According to the latest polls, presented by the Centre of Public Opinion from the University Francisco Gavidia, El Salvador (published 23rd September 2008), Mauricio Funes will obtain an overwhelming majority. One of the questions asked was, “If the elections were this coming Sunday, who would you vote for?" FMLN obtained 47.42% while got ARENA 23.65%. Another question asked was, “Which candidate has a better capacity to govern?" FMLN obtained 53.6% while Arena 27.2%.

Parties from the left are winning popularity in Latin America and it seems that El Salvador is not an exception. By nominating Mauricio Funes, the FMLN now has the chance to win votes from a wider area of the population. The fight will not be easy. The candidate from the PCN is an interesting phenomenon in the political constellation,taking into consideration that the evangelical movements can mobilize thousands of people from wide social spheres. Security has been one of the major problems for the country for many years as groups of young criminals (maras) have terrorized the neighbourhoods. Ávila is a man with a lot of experience in the security questions, but over the years he was directing the police he did not succeed improving security in the country, being El Salvador one of the most dangerous counties in Latin America.

In the next article, I will present an analysis of the development of the electoral campaign and the major political features of the party programs.

Fatima Valdes Haugstveit (fatima.valdes(at)haugstveit.no)

September 26th, 2008