El Salvador Perspectives

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...

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...

Recent polling by La Prensa Grafica indicates that Nayib Bukele, as a candidate for the GANA party, leads the race towards the February 2019 presidential elections in El Salvador.   These are some of the first major polling results released since Bukele found his way onto the presidential ballot as the candidate of the GANA party.  Asked for whom they would vote in the presidential elections if they took place today, less than 50% responded to the pollsters.  Those who answered the question, expressed the following preferences: 21.9% -- GANA (Bukele) 17.6% -- ARENA (Carlos Calleja) 8.6% --  FMLN (Hugo Martinez) (The preferences are expressed by party rather than candidate, because presidential election ballots in El Salvador involve a choice among party names, not a choice among individually named candidates). Other questions asked by pollsters give Bukele more strength, however.  When asked their impression of various political figures, 58.7% s...

The 2019 presidential election outlook changed again today as El Salvador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE)  announced that it would de-register the party Cambio Democratico (CD) so that CD cannot place a candidate on the presidential ballot for 2019.   The decision relies on a provision in Salvadoran law which requires parties to be decertified if they did not earn 50,000 votes in national legislative elections.  Nayib Bukele, the former mayor of San Salvador and the country's most popular politician, had made an alliance with CD to be its candidate, since his own party, Nuevas Ideas, has not been registered by the TSE in time to participate. Moments after the TSE's decision was announced, there was another major development.  Stories began appearing that  Bukele has been allowed to enroll as a candidate in the internal primary elections of the GANA party which will take place on Sunday.   Yet leading figures in the party, Guillermo Gallegos ...