To forgive and forget: a new version

The candidates that ARENA has proposed for the local government face three problems.

The campaign of the congressmen

Just a few months away from the next legislative elections, one of the questions that definitively torture the members of the Congress is the possibility to be reelected. Consequentially, the most logical thing would be to find this concern in the decisions and the most relevant issues that dominate the debates in the Congress. This would be the time for the law initiatives that tend to create a significant media impact, and for the pompous discourses in favor of certain legislative projects. All of these aspects would be framed inside the national political activity, in which –as far as the legislative elections are concerned- the party’s structure is more important than the image of a particular congressman. From this perspective, the war of words at the Congress is an appendix of the fight between the parties.

The observation of the recent events at the Legislative Assembly leaves no room for doubts about the motivation of the congressmen. They are definitively looking for electoral support. They are constantly traveling all over the country, they are sponsoring different projects, and their activities are gaining a sudden importance. However, the cacophony, a well-known characteristic of the national political discourses, has grown along with the insistence to get more attention. The electoral market distorts the confrontation between the congressmen, and without a doubt the discredit of this organ increases.

The ARENA congressmen are more interested in the issues related with the infrastructure, the alleged “defense of the liberty”, and the discredit campaign against the adversary. In order to discredit the adversary, they already count with a considerable number of reporters who take the time to tell the world the mistakes, whether they are real or not, of the so called “enemies of freedom” or the “enemies of the public order”, or simply “enemies of progress”. They have been saying for weeks that such freedoms are threatened, either by the violent demonstrations of the opposition or by the opinions of the other political party. In this context, the “official” legislators keep talking about their compromise with freedom and about stopping the Communist activity.

About the infrastructure issue, the defense of the road construction projects becomes more accelerated. These projects are a controversial subject from an environmental point of view. However, the congressmen who defend the construction, specially the construction of the beltway, think that in the end the population will reward all the important projects promoted by their party during the elections. They are kind of right when it comes to that issue. There is no doubt that a considerable amount of Salvadorans approve the so called “modern air” of the beltway. This idea obviously goes against the environmentalists’ perspective, and against the people who suggest that there is a better solution for the traffic problems during the rush hours in San Salvador.

Considering these aspects, the strategy of the FMLN might not work. The FMLN’s congressmen keep saying that they do not agree with the construction of a beltway of such proportions. Most of the Salvadorans, besides the directly affected ones, are not in the mood for such subtlety. It is very probable that, in the end, they see the construction of the grand road as one more evidence of the country’s modernization process. Only very few people take the discussions about the cost of such construction seriously because they do not consider the long-term solutions. On the other hand, the arguments of the environmentalists are not even considered. It is no secret that this issue is not a relevant problem for a good part of the population. Some authors say that those are post-materialistic worries, which, without a doubt, are not important in our context.

In addition, the FMLN vindicates the denunciation against corruption in its campaign strategy, as well as the deterioration of the life standards of the Salvadoran population, and the increase on the electricity and the telephone service, a result of the privatization process. It is probable that most of the Salvadorans share the same worries of the left-wing party. However, the question is if those denunciations will be enough to capture the attention of the voters for the next elections. This is a question that the FMLN’s strategists have to ask themselves when they evaluate the results of their electoral tactic.

For the moment, it would be convenient to remember that the strategy is not new, and from an objective point of view, it has not been a very effective one. It is not convincing to sustain that the FMLN has gained an electoral sympathy after such denunciations. On the contrary, there is a growing apathy against the parties and the electoral campaigns. Contrary to the expectations, the public opinion rates the FMLN members as it rates the right-wing politicians: they are all inefficient and incapable of understanding the needs of the population. The left-wing party is not considered as a better alternative, not better than ARENA, despite that the FMLN does not have the same share of responsibility for the privatization process or for the economic measures that it denounces as the main cause of deterioration of the Salvadoran life standards. That is why it is necessary to examine the strategy and adapt the messages to the reality of the voters.

On the other hand, the National Conciliation Party (PCN, in Spanish) is also involved in the electoral campaign. Those who represent the party in the Congress launched, somehow, a campaign to get the attention of certain sectors of the population. This is the case of the transportation business’ owners: the expiration date term of the license plates will be extended for them. The PNC is also supporting the steadiness of school fees. Their strategy is obviously not overwhelming as the ones of the other parties. The objective of the PCN is to get the attention and the support of specific sectors that might be willing to support the party during the next elections. Until now, the PCN does not seem to aspire to obtain more positions inside the Congress, but to keep the ones it already has in order to remain as the third political force.

In summary, the elections are getting closer and the Congress is now working on that event. The main motivation of the congressmen at the time is to improve the image of their parties in order to increase the electoral support. There is no doubt that such situation is legitimate and responds to what happens inside any competitive political system. However, it is important to ask if the agendas of the different political leaders include the main demands of the Salvadoran population. In those agendas we can find an important debate issue which, without a doubt, goes beyond the sympathy and the discourse operations of the propaganda.

The independence of the truth

The official activities to commemorate the Central American Independence from the Spanish Crown –and those events parallel to it- always show different convictions, beliefs, and ideologies, with the risk of staying on a shallow ground. The colorful patriotic symbolism, which is a characteristic of the festivities, can confer a purely formal identity to the countries by presenting unrealistic initiatives. In the same way, the activities and the parallel discourses –mostly protests- can lead to equally unrealistic positions, which might even fall into illegal actions. In El Salvador, the defenders of one and another posture think of themselves as the exclusive bearers of the truth, when the truth actually slips through their fingers.


Independence, freedom, union, and truth are magnanimous values that guide –at least in theory- the actions of the nations, its governments, and the citizens, although its indiscriminate use can turn them into empty words. The three first values (independence, freedom, and union) continuously appear in the Salvadoran governmental discourses. The last value (truth) is not even mentioned: it is taken for granted. According to this perspective, anything that might be different from this “truth” simply belongs to the “kingdom of the mistakes”, it belongs to the dark ages, lie, terror, and why not say it, to Communism.

That is why President Flores’ discourse, during the 181st Anniversary of the Central American Independence, seems to include many comments about the first three values. During the only occasion in the year in which the President and several public officials crossed the frontier of poverty and went down into the heart of San Salvador, the President said that he came to “reaffirm his compromise with the remaining tasks, with the purpose to promote justice, safety, and prosperity”. Justice, safety and prosperity will become a reality if there is freedom, independence, and union. It would be interesting to explore what does the President understand (and what do those who conduct the country understand) by such concepts.

In the first place, independence, according to the Spanish Royal Academy, designates “freedom, autonomy, specially the autonomy of a state that does not depend from another”. What does the government understand as freedom? Evidently, during this “global” era, with the liberalization of the markets, and the reduction of the role of the state, Flores and his government cannot conceive a real independence. In fact, Flores reminds us that without the Free Trade Agreement with The United States, the country will hardly be able to find prosperity and safety.

Without the lifesaver of the family remittances that thousands of Salvadoran immigrants annually send to the country, the national economy would have collapsed already. Without the loans of the multilateral organisms and the friendly nations –a priority for the government-, the country would have not been able to begin with the reconstruction after the Mitch and the earthquakes. The country is not completely independent neither socially nor economically speaking.

In the second place, the freedom that the President mentioned refers to the Neoliberal discourse, which considers that the people are free as far as their purchasing power is concerned. That is why it has been impossible for the President to separate his speech from the free trade agreements and the Central American economic integration. According to this perspective, the freedom would only be effective in a proper environment for the free competition and the commercial openness. However, Flores is right when he considers that “we cannot invoke freedom to justify crime, to predicate intolerance, or to spread uncertainty”. We would have to demand an explanation from the President about his intolerance policy towards the political opposition and the social organizations that demand, for example, a fair increase on the minimum salary –which has been frozen since three years ago-.

Finally, the most difficult aspect of them all: union. If the political, the social, and the economic events of the Flores administration are examined, the “union” value has been absent, although it would be irresponsible to blame it all on the government. If we go outside the national borders, the so called Central American union is also an illusion. After 181 years of independent life, the nations of the region have not been able to consolidate an integration scheme strong enough to be heard as a single voice at an international level. That is why the conversations about a commercial agreement with the European Union have not been substantially materialized. The European Union demands that the region starts to negotiate the settlements as a single voice.

However, the conscience exercise of the President is valid, mostly because the radical groups are still proliferating and using violent methods, intending to impose “their truth” with threats, returning to an inadequate conception of democracy. The violent scenery of the celebrations was imposed by the members of the so called Labor and Social Union of May First –a group integrated by college students, union representatives, and workers of the Social Security System-. This group attacked the public and the private property, during a demonstration for the anniversary of independence. The police and the Attorney General’s Office declared that they had identified fifteen people who participated in the acts of vandalism.

In the mean time, there were those who connected the disturbance with the so called orthodox line of the FMLN, a party that, according to this version, would be behind such actions. The spokespeople of the right-wing, always willing to pay attention to the rumors, did not hesitated to exploit the electoral advantages of that day by discrediting the FMLN’s aspirations for the next municipal and legislative elections.

The most vociferous news media, suffering from an intense FMLN-phobia, recalled the last events in which the left-wing party has been apparently involved: “An offensive against the freedom of speech comes from different areas. One of them is the streets, another one can be spotted on the document that the FMLN made public about two months ago, and the third one is the circus that took place on Channel 21 against El Diario de Hoy and TCS (The Salvadoran Television Corporation)”, (El Diario de Hoy, Tuesday September 17th , 2002). From its editorials and the “articles of the day”, that newspaper has attacked (between September the 2nd to the 17th) the left-wing party and some of its most important members. Without a doubt, this is a relevant piece of information for the main opposition party.

On the one hand we have the authoritarian and the excluding patterns; and, on the other hand, the violent and ideological strategies. Such actions definitively do not lead to the truth. Some people want to hide the truth, but it is not as simple as it might seem. There is a common sense among the collectivity that helps it to perceive the bad intentions. However, it has not been enough for some people to just “believe” in certain “truths” that are predicated from the Salvadoran ideological pulpits. In any case, we would have to conclude as Aristotle once did referring to his master: “Plato is my friend, but the truth is more than a friend to me”.