The fourth victory of ARENA

The elections and the democratic perspectives in El Salvador

The results of the presidential elections do not admit any further discussions. The electorate decided, and an overwhelming majority of people voted for ARENA, a party that will remain inside the Executive power. The Salvadoran population wanted Antonio Saca to be the fourth president of the dynasty created by ARENA and its followers, since that first election of Alfredo Cristiani as President of the country, back in 1989. Now it is convenient to reflect upon the meaning of these results, and what are the consequences that can be expected.

The first interpretation of this whole matter could be that the opposition has been set aside. ARENA won the elections with approximately 58% of the popular support, while the FMLN appeared in a distant second place with only 36% of the popular adhesion (to its platform of transformations). The rest of the parties, that is the Coalition and the PCN, did not find a place of their own in the middle of a battle fought by the main political rivals. The Coalition will probably disappear, while the PCN keeps waiting for a miracle not to be erased from the national political map.

From a personal interpretation, Saca has been the actual winner of these elections. The least that can be said is that his bet to bring out his individual success, his sympathy, and his humble beginnings as the main features of the campaign worked out just fine for him. His party was also rewarded, probably for knowing how to operate in a extraordinary fashion the fear against Communism. ARENA spent nine months telling the electorate about how to take care of the freedom for which they had fought so intensely to achieve.

The FMLN, on the other hand, ended up fustigating the arrogance of ARENA. The adversaries were not loyal. This little democratic profile of the opponents, who walked together to prepare a general boycott against the left wing is enough to explain the electoral behavior of the Salvadorans. To shamelessly manipulate the events of the war and to use a dirty campaign against the left wing are two aspects that can be useful to examine the reasons why the FMLN was defeated on March 21st .

The rest of the parties from the opposition have not offered yet a coherent analysis of its negative electoral results. As for the PCN, which keeps fighting to stay afloat and keep the status of a political party, silence is golden. The Coalition, on the contrary, has been more open about the electoral issues. On the one hand, it blames the left wing for its humiliating defeat. The candidate of the Coalition thinks that the reason why they might disappear as a political party has to do with the fact that the leaders of the FMLN are, according to him, blinded by their orthodox beliefs. At the same time, he proposes to the Salvadoran population to try another political adventure that could be completed wit the organization of a political party of the center-left-wing, a party capable to compete with the FMLN.

The implications of the electoral results
Beyond the reality of the overwhelmingly successful triumph of ARENA, the electoral debacle of the FMLN, and the political disappearance of the other political parties, the results of the elections are connected with a series of elements, and it is important to notice what is the composition of those elements in order to understand the present political reality of the country.

The triumph of ARENA will hardly contribute to ease the confrontation between the political actors. This party is usually arrogant when it comes to deal with its detractors. Evidently, the result of the elections will not help the leaders to moderate themselves. It is necessary to remember that this victory has been accomplished based on all kinds of stratagems and an anti-democratic extortion. The businessmen participated in the political battle. They did not only made their workers vote in favor of the official party, but, in some cases, they pressured them to become part of the party in order to guarantee that they would support the right-wing party.

The most important news media also played a key role in the electoral battle. Since the beginning of the campaign, certain news media defended the cause of the candidate from ARENA as if that were their only commitment. Others, instead, basically became the echo of the businessmen’s agenda. This is how the media promoted the already existing polarization and the discredit of the opponents.

The victory obtained by Saca during the first round, far from contributing to create more certainty inside the political life, it only darkens the perspectives about the reactions of the social and the political actors. The FMLN announced a restless battle to defend the interests of the population. It is possible that the leaders of the FMLN are offended because they are trying to recover from the humiliation they went through on the day of the elections. There is no doubt that their reaction is a clear sample of their irritation before the fourth triumph of ARENA.

Many things can be said about why the FMLN was defeated; however, the most important aspect of this situation at the moment is to analyze the transformations that an election brings along, and what are the mechanisms that will strengthen the democratic process. The abrupt disappearance of the small political parties does not necessarily guarantee that the democratic system will become stronger. On the contrary, the country seems to move towards a bipolar system with a predominant party. The overwhelming results obtained by ARENA found this fear.

The people would not be suspicious about the fourth administration leaded by ARENA if this were a different country, with a strong democratic tradition and competitive governmental institutions. However, given the shameless alliance between the business groups of pressure and the most important political party of the country, there are enough elements to imagine the worst sceneries for the young Salvadoran democracy. In addition, these businessmen got directly involved in the electoral campaign spreading lies and scaring the population about the possibility to lose their jobs in case that the opposition would win the elections.

The anger of the FMLN should be analyzed in this context. ARENA and its allies did not respect the democratic principles at all. That is why they will not be able to convince the FMLN to adopt an exemplar behavior regarding their triumph. The official party used an impressive repertoire of low blows to win the elections. The FMLN feels that as a party it has the right to act irresponsibly. In this sense, the electoral results of the small parties do not contributed to untie the knot of the political irritations.

The idea to create an important left-wing party, launched by Hector Silva the day after the disastrous results were revealed, seems to be a proposal aimed to end with the catastrophic and the sterile confrontation between ARENA and the FMLN. From that perspective, Silva’s proposal can be seen as a good idea. Silva would not only create a project of personal vindication, but he would also try to offer a new hope for those who sympathize with the left wing and who do not feel that they identify themselves with the political proposal of the FMLN. At the same time, he might be creating a credible option to replace ARENA.

However, both the good intentions and the attractive proposal of Silva have to be analyzed through three basic lines sketched by the presidential elections:
1. The business elite and all of the sectors that surround ARENA are not willing to respect the rules of the democratic game, they are not willing to respect the dignity of the adversary or the loyalty to the system. They have shown that they are capable to break with all of the democratic principles and disrespect the citizenry, as long as they are able to keep the power under control. This fact was plain to see in the campaign launched against the FMLN, as well as in their attempt to make Silva responsible for the alleged money laundering inside the City Hall of San Salvador. They have gone beyond their rights to show their sympathy for a specific political option. They interpret any political change as a direct threat against their privileges inside the corporative system created by ARENA.
2. The results of the last elections show that, in these political conditions, the parties of the “center” do not have any options to play an important role inside the political life. The message of moderation, without a clear political identity is doomed to failure. The coalition is seen as an altered version of the right wing. The Salvadorans decided to follow ARENA, the original version, before taking a chance with unstable politicians who do not have a clear ideological definition.
3. The FMLN, despite its internal problems and the rejection of the highest circles of the business elite, is still the only option available. The analysis of the information made public after the elections indicates that the FMLN is the party that gained the highest level of acceptance (113.84%) since the elections of 1999. In this sense, the victory of the official party would have to be understood more like an overwhelming triumph over the smaller parties. In fact, if the smaller parties had obtained better results, in the worst of the cases, the right wing party would have been defeated.

With these words, this article does not intend to justify the defeat of the FMLN. In these political conditions, it is clear to see that there are no alternatives outside the left-wing party. That is why it is necessary to pay quite a bit of attention to the results of the present internal struggle inside this party. The main problem of the FMLN is that its most important leaders have not been able to gain the trust of the citizens. As long as their present internal renovation process includes a serious analysis of this problem, they will be eventually ready to replace the official party, and just then there might be a better perspective for the Salvadoran democracy.

The eternal challenge of the left wing

The last elections had a historic sense, given the considerable amount of participation that characterized them. The strategy that led the official power to its fourth administration period –no other party has ever been inside of the Executive power for so many years- is also a historic set of tactics by now. The recent electoral triumph of ARENA rests over a media attack without precedents. The defamations against the candidate of the FMLN that were displayed through the press, the radio, and television, as well as the visits of both the Cuban and the Venezuelan opposition, and an endless number of other resources turned the media into a platform to attack the left-wing party.

The left wing was not able to answer to the storm created by the media. It is not enough to say that the victory of the official party is an illegitimate triumph because it was based on fear. What is at stake here is that the FMLN has to face a challenge that was not able to face before, because here is where the success of the campaign of ARENA is at: the lack of capacity that the FMLN had to transform the perception of reality that most of the electorate has, which is not, not even from afar, part of the “faithful” vote that the FMLN counts with.

The challenge: to break the hegemony of the right wing
The electoral results show that the majority of the population does not identify itself with the transformation project of the left wing. It is necessary to say that the people did not only succumbed to an empty campaign but that the aspirations personified by the official party are the ones of the electorate.

Leaving aside the possible fraudulent maneuvers that might have taken place during the elections –there are those who mentioned the participation of the foreign people who were brought to the country to vote for the official party, although there were not too many evidences of these complaints-, the truth is that the amount of votes that made ARENA win the elections says a lot about the capacity that this party has to make its ideas prevail in the conscience of the electorate. That capacity to create a favorable consensus for its interests will be called “hegemony”, which can be distinguished from a plain imposition in the sense that it manages to present a situation favorable for the image of ARENA. The objective is to make ARENA look as the best party for the country.

The hegemony of the right wing became a reality through the news media that are always available for ARENA. The candidate suddenly occupied a powerful position inside the party, and this allows us to see what will be the profile of his administration. It is not a coincidence if the future president is a businessmen of the communication field and the owner of a corporation of radio stations.

The dirty war through the media was something that many people saw coming. However, the party of the left wing could not do much to neutralize the dangers. They thought that with the visits “home by home” they would be able to reduce the effects of a mechanism that attacked them from every angle.

The territory of the media is at present a decisive field for the hegemony of a social and a political group. The left wing was not only incapable to neutralize the attacks, but it also lacked the necessary political astuteness not to fall into several traps that would later discredit its image before the eyes of the press. This situation created an environment that made the people believe that the accusations against the left wing were true.

The question about how the values represented by the left wing can have an influence over the population remains unanswered. The left wing attached every responsibility to the political party. They did not see that even if in the past they did not have the advantages granted by the law (as they do today), their values, and their way to look at things were strong enough to organize the population around its political project.

The Peace Accords were an important opportunity for the left wing because they allowed it to participate in the political life without the fear of being persecuted. Their proposals would be, theoretically speaking, reaching most of the sectors of the society thanks to the media. The reality was different. Politics usually depend on the media, and that is why many times the decisions are made based on a problem of images, and not because it is necessary to resolve the structural conflicts. The right wing knows this very well, and it has played the game “wisely”. On the contrary, the left wing got into the game between the elections and the media assuming that the ideological transformations and the political background of their candidate were the winning cards. They underestimated the defamatory skills of their adversary and the power of the fear against “Communism”.

On the other hand, the “alternative” news media, for many different reasons, were not able to deliver a different message. This was the case of a couple of radio stations that formerly belonged to the ex guerrilla, their “alternative journalism” did not know how to resolve the issue about how to act in times of peace. Because these radio stations did not know how to combine the need to broadcast a political message with the need to reach the audiences, they ended up giving more importance to the transmission of messages, and they lost their identity.

Beyond a simple press strategy
The last electoral campaign, based on a psychological war and the threatening advice about firing the employees of several companies, allows us to see what could be the environment for the next legislative elections and for the municipal administrations. It is necessary to dismantle this machinery of fear, which is now evidently replacing the strategy of the electoral fraud.

That effort goes beyond the reformulation of the left wing’s media strategy. It is necessary to examine all of the steps that were taken along the campaign and to restructure the configuration of the party in order to place them at the height of the present times.

The left wing needs to see that the party is neither the beginning nor the end of everything. Beyond all of the efforts as a party, the left wing has to consider the political education and the integral knowledge as a serious concern in the long term. It is true that the left wing does not own gigantic mass media corporations, but it is also true that they can accomplish many goals by getting closer to the people in order to strengthen their critical capacity. On the contrary, the weapons of the right wing –fraud, coercion, disinformation, and fear- will always be ready to attack.