El Salvador Perspectives

El Salvador's 2015 national elections have finally concluded.   The recount of votes for National Assembly in San Salvador that had been ordered by the Constitutional Chamber finished at last and the court lifted its ban preventing deputies from San Salvador taking their seats .   Although the recount produced an increased vote count, the results did not change any of the seats awarded in the original tallies. The election mess this year has produced legislative attempts to reign in the power of the Constitutional Chamber.   The court started by requiring that cross-party voting be allowed in this election, then refused to delay the effective date of its ruling until the 2018 elections, which led to the court requiring a manual ballot-by-ballot recount in San Salvador, and then ordering all deputies from San Salvador not to take their seats for almost two weeks until the recount was done.   While the Constitutional Chamber should be respected for its actions to pro...

On Wednesday, April 22, election officials will start the process of opening 2872 ballot boxes from the department of San Salvador to re-count ballots vote by vote to determine the 24 seats in the National Assembly from San Salvador.   The election originally took place on March 1. The recount was ordered by the Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Court.  The court found that there were sufficient irregularities in the vote tally sheets from San Salvador that the only remedy was to examine all of the individual ballots from the country's largest department. The recount process may take a few weeks.  Because the balance of power was evenly split based in the initial vote count, this recount still has the possibility of changing who controls the majority in the National Assembly. El Salvador's longest, most complicated election process continues on.

After almost a month of vote counting, you can see all the final results of El Salvador's March 1 elections here at the TSE website .   Two things are worth noting in my final post about those elections: the country is evenly split between left and right, and Nayib Bukele, not the FMLN, won the mayor's office in San Salvador. In the 2014, presidential elections, Salvador Sanchez Ceren and the FMLN defeated Norman Quijano and ARENA by only 6000 votes out of 3 million votes cast, a difference of 0.22%.   That even split continues to show itself in the votes cast in 2015.   In races for the National Assembly, ARENA had 38.77% of the vote and the FMLN had 37.28% of the votes.     When you include the normal alliances among parties, ARENA and its allies have 42 seats in the National Assembly.   The FMLN and its ally GANA also have 42 seats.     In the races for the Central American Parliament, ARENA and the FMLN each won 8 seats and the minor parti...

El Salvador's national elections were March 1, but we still don't know who won the final seat in the National Assembly.   Currently the parties have won the following seats in the 84 seat National Assembly: FMLN -- 31 deputies GANA -- 11 deputies  ARENA -- 34 deputies PCN -- 6 deputies PDC -- 1 deputy   The FMLN and GANA often vote together, and have 42, or half the deputies, but need 43 for a simple majority. ARENA, PCN and PDC often vote together, and they have now 41 deputies. The remaining seat is being disputed between ARENA, and CD (Democratic Change).   CD typically allies itself with the FMLN.   So the outcome of this seat will determine whether the left gains a majority in the National Assembly, or if the country has a legislature split evenly in half. The votes which will determine the outcome are from San Salvador department.  For the past week, the parties have been struggling over the scrutiny of tally sheets and ballots to deter...

I think if there were a hashtag to describe the work of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in El Salvador since Sunday's elections it would be #EpicFail.  Three days after the elections, no results have been announced, and a "final scrutiny" of the vote tally sheets is just beginning.  It might take as long as two weeks before there are results. From the TICO Times :  The delays are fueling suspicions and stoking harsh criticism toward the country’s voting authority, the Supreme Electoral Tribune (TSE)...  El Mundo, one of the country’s morning newspapers, wrote Tuesday in an editorial that the TSE had failed all tests regarding the vote count.  “Chaos…has reached such a level that not even when votes were counted by hand was there as much delay as there is now,” the paper wrote.  The editorial also criticized the electoral authorities for what it said was a lack of communication with the public regarding problems with the vote count. David Morales, ...

Here is a round up of what we know about the results of Sunday's elections in El Salvador for mayors and legislators: The official computer system of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) for compiling and disseminating preliminary results completely broke down.  The TSE has announced that it is giving up on the process of even having preliminary results.   The process of the final scrutiny of some 31,000 vote tally sheets (actas) will begin Tuesday afternoon in San Salvador.   That process could reportedly take two weeks. Although the TSE has not published any results, the major political parties, through their networks of vigilantes and poll workers at every polling table, have their own vote tallies.   Based on those tallies, we know who won the race for mayor in several cities after the losers conceded. The biggest prize was the capital San Salvador which was captured, as expected, by the FMLN's Nayib Bukele, the current mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlan. ...

El Salvador is voting on Sunday March 1 for: 262 mayors 84 deputies to the National Assembly 20 deputies to the Central America Parliament (PARLACEN) There are 4.9 million eligible voters, voting at 1595 voting centers across the country, assisted by 278,125 poll workers, and watched by, 1800 international election observers 1900 Salvadoran election observers according to statistics from the  Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) During election day,  I will be tweeting @TimMuth , and then check back to the blog to see the election results and analysis.

Here are a list of some of the questions I'll be watching as El Salvador goes into national elections on Sunday to select mayors, and deputies to the National Assembly and Central American Parliament: How challenging is this first election to allow " cross voting " where voters can choose legislators from multiple parties?    Two things to watch for:   delays in counting the ballots and an increased number of "impugned ballots" where the ballot is void because a citizen voted incorrectly. Does the FMLN win back the cities surrounding San Salvador such as Apopa, Ilopango and Soyapango that it lost in the 2012 elections ?   Does the trash crisis in the streets of Mejicanos lead to a replacement of the City's ARENA mayor? How does the percentage vote for Nayib Bukele as mayor for San Salvador under the FMLN banner, compare to the percentage of votes for deputies in the National Assembly which the FMLN receives? This will be an indication of just how...

First he was one of El Salvador's most popular and independent television journalists.   Then he became El Salvador's first president elected from the left wing FMLN.   Now, Mauricio Funes has taken to social media to express his opinions about politics and issues facing El Salvador.   And he's not mincing any words. Funes makes his comments available on Facebook and Twitter.   His Facebook page is titled  Mauricio Funes Sin Censura -- Mauricio Funes Uncensored.   On Twitter his handle is @FunesCartagena .     In addition, Funes broadcasts weekly  60-75 minute long commentaries on his YouTube Channel .     One subject Funes constantly returns to is the corruption case against former president Flores, accused of misappropriating $10 million in earthquake relief funds from the government of Taiwan.  Funes had initially revealed the allegations against Flores while Funes was still president.   Not surprisingly, much o...

DISCLAIMER -- I am about to write on a topic on which I know nothing: the Central American Parliament .   But according to a recent poll , 85% of Salvadorans don't know much about it either.  Still on March 1, voters will cast their votes for El Salvador's twenty deputies in the Central American Parliament, known by the acronym PARALACEN. The member countries of PARLACEN are Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic and Panama. (Costa Rica has not joined). It is the political arm of the Central American Integration System (SICA), founded in the late 1980s to "strengthen the dialogue, the common development, democracy and pluralism as fundamental elements for peace in the region and for the integration of Central America." From the website of the parliament: Parlacen acts as the regional and permanent organ of political and democratic representation of the SICA with the aim of realizing the Central American integration.  It seeks to achie...

Several public opinion polls were released last week looking at El Salvador's March 1 elections.   While there is variation among all of the polls, I think the consensus view of the polls would be: Salvadorans view crime as the top problem facing the country. The FMLN will have the most votes for deputies in the National Assembly (somewhere around 35-40%), but will not achieve a majority.   ARENA will have the next highest vote total.    Nayib Bukele will win in San Salvador, allowing the FMLN to retake the mayor's office in the country's largest city for the first time in six years. Most voters will vote for deputies by marking the symbol of their preferred political party, but a measurable number (10-20%) will engage in newly permitted "cross-voting" for candidates of multiple political parties. You can view all the poll results at the links below. IUDOP-UCA La Prensa Grafica   UTEC-CIOPS UFG El Diario de Hoy CID-Gallup La Pagina published...

On March 1, Salvadorans will go to the polls for national elections.   They will be electing mayors, deputies to the National Assembly, and deputies to the Central American parliament. Due to rulings by the Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Judicial Court, for the first time Salvadorans will be able to select deputies from different parties.   In the last election, if you selected a candidate from one party, you could not vote for any candidates from another party.   This year for example, voters in the department of San Salvador will choose 24 deputies from a menu of 173 candidates -- 24 candidates from each of 8 parties and one independent candidate.   The Supreme Electoral Tribunal is in the midst of a public education campaign to explain these changes to voters.  The TSE ha set a tutorial on the rules for voting for citizens here  with the caption "VOTAR ¡ES FÁCIL! -- Voting is Easy!" You can see samples of the ballots when you ...

When I was in San Salvador last week, I knew immediately that the FMLN was running a different kind of candidate in a different kind of campaign for mayor of El Salvador's largest city.   All the campaign signs for Nayib Bukele, the FMLN's candidate are in blue and white -- no sign of the red which has always signified the left, nor is there any sign of the party logo.   The signs say simply "Nuevas Ideas -- Nayib 2015". Taking a page from the playbook of Mauricio Funes, who always campaigned in a white shirt -- never in red, Bukele has simply elected to use the colors of the country's flag.   (Although to my mind, his color scheme really seems more like the corrupt, right-wing PCN party).   He is hip -- a candidate to appeal to the younger voter in the capital city.   The young businessman turned mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlan almost never wears ties with his suits, but always open neck shirts.   The contrast with the traditional politician -- E...

It was inevitable that the recent progress towards the beatification of slain archbishop Oscar Romero by the Roman Catholic church would become embroiled in politics as El Salvador approaches the March 1 national elections.   I say it was inevitable, because one of the main political parties, ARENA, was founded by Roberto D'Aubuisson , the man identified as the intellectual author of the assassination,   The politics of Romero began with the announcement of outgoing San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano, that he would rename a street in the capital city after D'Aubuisson.   This generated an outcry of protest, leading some to speculate that Quijano had taken the step to spite the party who had pushed him out of the candidacy to return as mayor.   The FMLN denounced the plan and attempted to link it to the party leadership. Quijano was replaced as an ARENA candidate by Edwin Zamora.  Zamora has proposed that if elected mayor of San Salvador, he would erect a...

El Salvador is in the middle of election campaign season as the country heads towards a March 1 election day where the country will elect deputies to the National Assembly, mayors for every municipality, and representatives to the Central American parliament. The country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) has compiled the roster of citizens eligible to vote in the upcoming election and provided a statistical picture of the electorate. There are a total of 5,096,035 voters on the roll for the March 1, 2015 election.   52.7% of those voters are female. It is a young electorate --  a majority are under 40 years old and 30% are less than 30, and 766,000 voters were born after El Salvador's civil war ended in 1992. 28% of the voters are located in the department of San Salvador with the remainder spread over the country's 13 other departments. There are 184,363 persons on the election roles who are living outside of the country.   The 2014 presidential election was ...

The Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Court has struck again in favor of increasing the rights of individual voters in opposition to the power of political parties.   The Chamber handed down a ruling  on November 5 striking a provision of the electoral code which prohibited "cross voting" in elections for deputies in the National Assembly.    Before the court's ruling a voter who voted for one candidate could not cross over to vote for any other candidates of the other parties or an independent candidate. The FMLN criticized the ruling as weakening political parties, and called for its members to vote a party ticket to vote for all deputy candidates of the FMLN.   A deputy from ARENA said her party would not oppose cross-voting and would not tell their sympathizers that they must vote "por bandera".   Edwin Zamora,  the ARENA candidate for mayor of San Salvador said he favored an even bigger step in which each deputy had a single dis...

A poll released last week by CID-Gallup, showed the FMLN's candidate Nayib Bukele with an 18 point margin over his closest challenger, Edwin Zamora of ARENA.   Bukele led 43% to 25% with 32% of respondents expressing no opinion. I think it is a little too early to assume that the FMLN has an easy path to retake the capital city.   Zamora has to catch up after a late start when current mayor Norman Quijano bowed out of the race at the last minute.   The political leaning of San Salvador is not easy to predict.  The current lead of the FMLN contrasts with the landslide victory of ARENA and Norman Quijano in the mayoral race in 2012.  Earlier this year, Norman Quijano garnered an 11% advantage over Salvador Sanchez Ceren among votes cast for president in San Salvador. There are four months to go before the March 1, 2015 elections of mayors and deputies to the National Assembly.

Incumbent San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano has decided to withdraw from running for a third term.   Quijano, from the right wing ARENA party, was the party's presidential candidate earlier this year and lost in the second round of the presidential elections by a scant six thousand votes.  He has been the mayor of San Salvador since 2009. In the announcement of his decision on Wednesday, Quijano simply stated that everything had its own cycle and it was time to close this cycle of his life. ARENA party officials announced that Quijano would be one of the party's candidates in the 2015 elections for deputies in the National Assembly. Former president Mauricio Funes speculated that Quijano must have been forced out of the race by ARENA party "oligarchy", and that the oligarchs wanted someone who would protect their particular interests.    ARENA indicated it would name a new candidate for mayor of the country's largest city withing 10 days.  Ana ...

El Salvador held close and polarizing presidential elections in March; now the country is heading into the campaign season for mayors of every municipality and for deputies in the National Assembly.  The elections will be held on March 1, 2015. Already a couple of races look interesting. The FMLN announced that its candidate for may of San Salvador will be Nayib Bukele, the popular 33 year old mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlan.   Bukele will be competing against current San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano who will be running for a third term after his unsuccessful presidential bid.  Also announced as a candidate is Walter Araujo, a former member of ARENA who quit the party and will now run under the GANA banner. Nayib Bukele Equally interesting will be the race for mayor of Santa Tecla.   Until the past year, the mayor of Santa Tecla was Oscar Ortiz, the popular FMLN politician who is now the country's vice president.   With Ortiz out of the picture, ARENA is p...