El Salvador Perspectives

Counting votes in Antiguo Cuscatlán In yesterday's election of mayors, Nuevas Ideas appears to have captured 28 municipal governments out of 44 in the newly-gerrymandered maps. (Two of those in coalition with CD).   This total probably came as a surprise to many, in light of Nuevas Ideas dominating showing in last month's presidential and Legislative Assembly elections.  With 78% of the vote nationally counted as of 7:30 Monday morning,  other parties in the lead to win municipalities included GANA(6), PDC (4), PCN (3), Fuerza Solidaria (1), ARENA (1) and a coalition of PDC/PCN (1).  The FMLN was left out of control of any municipality for the first time since it became a political party at the end of the civil war in 1992. Turnout at the polls was low . Perhaps the reason was that people felt disconnected from the new mega-municipalities.  Or these elections may have had less energy without the charismatic energy of Nayib Bukele.  Bukele did not use ...

On Sunday March 3, Salvadorans will go to the polls for the second set of national elections in a month.   In these elections, Salvadorans will elect their mayors and will elect deputies of the Central American Parliament.  (PARLACEN). Three years ago Salvadorans elected mayors in 262 different municipalities.  However, in a measure passed 8 months ago, the Legislative Assembly consolidated those 262 municipalities into only 44 municipalities at the directive of Nayib Bukele.  The old municipalities are now "districts" within the 44 new mega-municipalities which have memorable names like San Salvador East and La Libertad South.   The new municipalities and the districts which make them up are shown at this link .   This reduction in the number of local government bodies was gerrymandering on a dramatic scale.   One analyst portrayed the impact of the change using results from the last elections in 2021. Using the votes cast for may...

El Salvador is a little more than eight months away from presidential elections.   Its enormously popular president Nayib Bukele is running for reelection in 2024 despite  multiple provisions  in the country's constitution that prohibit the immediate reelection of a president to a second term.  Up to now, one major question has been, would any party put up a candidate to compete against Bukele?  It appears today that a broad coalition of civil society groups are pushing a unity ticket to compete, and seek to make alliance with opposition political parties.     El Faro published on Tuesday an article by journalist Gabriel Labrador titled  Partidos opositores y sociedad civil a punto de concretar candidatura presidencial única.   ( Opposition parties and civil society about to finalize a single presidential candidacy ).  A shorter English version was published today under the title  Civil Society Leads Push for Unified Oppo...

El Salvador is less than a year from national elections. On February 4, 2024 the country will elect its president and all the deputies in the Legislative Assembly. That election will be followed a month later on March 3 with municipal elections and for delegates to the Central American parliament.  Since the president has a 5 year term and the rest of elected officials have 3 year terms, the conjunction of all officials being elected in the same year happens only once every 15 years. Opinion polling shows very strong support for the re-election of Nayib Bukele as president, despite the fact that legal experts state that re-election of the president is expressly prohibited by the  Constitution  of El Salvador.  However, the magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador’s supreme court, put into office when Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party summarily deposed the sitting magistrates in 2021, ruled that, clear language or not, the president may be re-elected. ...

Salvadorans go to the polls on Sunday, February 28 to elect legislators and mayors nationwide. But one name looms over all others, and he is not even on the ballot. Nayib Bukele, the highly popular president of El Salvador, has made it clear that he wants a clean sweep of El Salvador's legislature and to have his party members installed instead. That just may happen, and a populist president may be able to go forward in his presidency with few restraints on what he wants to do. Since taking office on June 1, 2019, Nayib Bukele has governed without members of his newly formed party, Nuevas Ideas, in the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly. Instead, he has battled with a congress dominated by opposition political parties which he has continually labelled as “the same ones as always,” “ thieves” and “those corrupt ones.” Those current members of the legislature were elected in 2018 when Bukele was not on any ballot and his Nuevas Ideas party did not yet exist. Bukele had pr...

In the current confrontation between the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and the country's Legislative Assembly, I have shared much of the criticism directed at the president.  That criticism involves his unilateral decision to convene the congress and his subsequent entrance into the chambers of the Legislative Assembly accompanied by troops in full tactical gear and sharpshooters on rooftops.   But the critiques of these actions, which reveal an authoritarian streak in Bukele, do not mean the Legislative Assembly gets a free pass.  In fact, that branch of government has a record of not addressing pressing needs of El Salvador. There are 84 deputies in the Legislative Assembly who serve three year terms.  The two post-war dominant parties,  ARENA on the right and the FMLN on the left, hold 37 and 23 seats respectively.  Bukele ran for president on the ticket of the right wing GANA party in a marriage of convenience, and that party holds 1...

This week in El Salvador, more than 400 members of MS-13 are defendants in a criminal trial.  The gang members were captured in country-wide raids called "Operation Cuscatlán" which targeted the gang's finances and money-making activities. From the  AP : El Salvador on Tuesday began a mass trial of over 400 alleged gang members, including 17 purported leaders of the feared transnational crime group Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.  Sixteen suspects were in court while the rest watched via video conference from prisons. Nearly 100 defense lawyers are on the case, which could last until November given the volume of witnesses and evidence. One of the witnesses in the Operation Cuscatlán trial is a high ranking MS leader who reached a deal with prosecutors for his testimony.   Using the pseudonym Noé, this witness testified not only about the criminal activities of his gang, but also about the deals politicians made with the gangs. Noé  testified that MS-1...

After being on a vacation for a few weeks, here are some short news pieces to catch you up on what is happening in El Salvador. International Women's Day was commemorated yesterday.   Many organizations issued statements or held activities.  A march to commemorate the day proceeded through San Salvador.   Leading up to International Women's Day there had been some good news as three more women, imprisoned after suffering miscarriages and then prosecuted for abortion/murder had their sentences commuted by El Salvador's Supreme Judicial Court.  Many groups pointed out how far El Salvador falls short on women's rights with high rates of femicide, abuse, discrimination and failure to value women's work. Bukele resolves Chicas defamation claim .   President-elect Nayib Bukele appeared in court with a stack of cash to settle the defamation claim of Eugenio Chicas.    Bukele paid $50,000 to resolve the matter , saying that he did not want...

All the presidential candidates had events this weekend to mark the close of their election campaigns.  Carlos Calleja, the candidate from ARENA, held a series of 15 rallies around the country in three days.   On Sunday the FMLN brought in the party faithful on buses from every corner of the country to a rally filling one of the major boulevards of San Salvador for blocks.   Nayib Bukele, the candidate for GANA/Nuevas Ideas, held a campaign rally Saturday night in front of the old National Palace.    The location was in the midst of one of Bukele's accomplishments as mayor of San Salvador -- the renovation of the historic center of San Salvador. The hatred of El Salvador's largest newspaper La Prensa Grafica for Bukele was on full display in its Monday edition.   The paper covered  the campaign closing events of ARENA and the FMLN with multiple page spreads.   The paper even covered the closing event of the tiny VAMOS party i...

It has happened before.   It will happen again.   When a local city government attempts to relocate the places where informal vendors hawk their wares in the crowded streets of a city, conflict develops.   This time the location was the city of Santa Tecla, a middle class suburb to the west of San Salvador.   When the ARENA led city government of Roberto D'Aubuisson, Jr. announced that it wanted to relocate informal vendors from one street in the center of Santa Tecla, violent protests ensued.  It was not immediately clear who was to blame for the violence.  At the end of the day, more than 50 people had been wounded and one killed, as protesters threw rocks and security forces responded with force including bullets.   This report from LaPagina offers photos from the disturbances as well as links to video on Twitter where you can hear gunshots and see people running away.  #AlertaSV Disturbios en centro de Santa Tec...

The National Republican Alliance ("ARENA" for its initials in Spanish) is the major right wing political party in El Salvador.   Its candidates won the presidency in El Salvador in 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004 before losing to the left wing FMLN party in 2009.  The party currently has the largest number of deputies in the National Assembly.  For the 2019 presidential elections, ARENA has nominated Carlos Calleja as its candidate for president. Roberto D'Aubuisson ARENA's founder, ex-major Roberto D'Aubuisson, is venerated by the party.   So much so that when you visit the ARENA official party website, clicking a link for "ARENA History" delivers you to a page titled " History of Major Roberto D'Aubuisson ".   His image adorns the party headquarters.  The party and D'Aubuisson are inextricably linked. But D'Aubuisson was the author of numerous high crimes and atrocities. Multiple investigations by international bodies identified...