El Salvador Perspectives

There were elections being held in Central America on Sunday.   In Guatemala and El Salvador, past charges against candidates linked to corruption or human rights abuses did not seem to matter. In Guatemala, voters cast their ballots in the first round of presidential elections on Sunday.   The two candidates garnering the most votes and who will compete in the second round are former first lady of Guatemala Sandra Torres and former prison chief Alejandro Giammattei.   Neither candidate has a spotless record.  Torres has been under investigation in the past for campaign finance impropriety.   Giammattei was arrested and charged with crimes relating to killings of prison inmates by security forces while he was in charge of the prison system.  Also on Sunday, party members of the FMLN in El Salvador participated in internal elections for new party leadership.   The old party leadership stepped aside following the left wing p...

It may be getting tougher to get away with corruption in El Salvador.    Investigative journalism by online journalists like those at El Faro and RevistaFactum  are regularly describing corruption.    The Probidad division of El Salvador's Supreme Court has open investigations against at least 9 high public officials including two former presidents.   El Salvador's new attorney general Douglas Meléndez has shown a willingness to pursue cases of corruption involving figures on both sides of the political spectrum.    In twelve years of writing this blog, I don't think the amount of corruption has changed over that time.   But the amount of news coverage and the number of possible prosecutions certainly has increased in the past few years.   That's a good thing. As the most recent example, the online periodical El Faro is one of the periodicals world wide participating in the disclosure of the so-called "Panama Papers."   Th...