Source: FMLN. All Rights Reserved.
This article forms part of the series "Persistent inequality: the controversial legacy of the pink tide in Latin America" produced in partnership with the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Institute of Sociology of the Freie Universität Berlin.
On the night of March 15, 2009, a
red-coloured tide flooded one of the most emblematic squares of San Salvador,
the Masferrer roundabout.
Thousands celebrated the electoral victory of
Mauricio Funes, the candidate of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
There was exultation, tears of joy, people hugging each other.
All were united in
a euphorically welcoming embrace after the end of 20 years of the traditional
right-wing party ARENA’s rule, "the hour of change".
On June 1, Funes
officially took office as head of the first ever government of the left in El
Salvador and pronounced one of his most famous sentences: "We do not have
the right to blunder, I repeat, we do not have the right to blunder".
Expectations were high, and hopes
even higher. Five years later, the FMLN won the presidential elections again. It
did so in the second round by a tight margin. Its candidate, Salvador Sánchez
Cerén, a former guerrilla commander, won 50.11% of the votes.
A survey published on August 31 shows that the FMLN has fallen to the third place in voters’ preference polls. What happened in these nine years?
Today, a few
months before the next presidential election, the left appears to have lost the
opportunity to win a third term. A survey published on
August 31 shows that the FMLN has fallen to the third place in voters’ preference
polls. What happened in these nine years? Why is the FMLN no longer a majority option?
According to some observers, what
is happening here, as has happened in several other Latin American countries,
is a turn to the right.
The population disappointed by the FMLN’s unfulfilled
promises have decided to turn again to ARENA. The numbers, however, do not seem
to back these assertions.
On March 4, Salvadorans went to
the polls to elect their congressional representatives and mayors. These
elections were the clearest indicator to date of the decline of the Left.
The
FMLN won only 23 out of the 84 congressional seats – eight less than in the
outgoing Congress. But the most overwhelming fact had to do with the total
number of votes: the FMLN lost 44% of its voters compared to the 2015 legislative
elections.
This, however, did not translate into a higher number of voters for
the right-wing party. In fact, ARENA also experienced a decrease – albeit
slight – in the number of voters.
Most of the votes lost went into abstention,
which was around 60%, but also into null votes. According to the Supreme
Electoral Tribunal’s (TSE) data, null votes tripled compared to the previous
election.
So, if it is not a turn to the right,
why has the left lost more than 40% of its voters in less than a decade? If we
are to understand it, we must look back at the process that the FMLN followed
to reach power in 2009 and what it has done with that power in the last nine
years.
The left stumbling with power
Between
1994 and 2009 the FMLN’s role was "the opposition." From there it
acted as a government containment front, but it also witnessed some important
reforms such as the privatization of the pension, electric power and
telecommunications systems at the end of the 1990s.
It saw the opening up of
the economy to the global markets through the attraction of foreign investment,
based on tax incentives for Asian capital and the establishment of textile maquilas – sub-contractor, manufacturing operations which used certain material and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis for
assembly, processing, or manufacturing and then export the assembled, processed
or manufactured products.
It saw also an increase in migrant
flows to the United States and of remittances to Salvadoran households. It also
witnessed the emergence of the phenomenon that marks current Salvadoran
reality: gangs.
At the beginning of the new millennium, it became powerless
before the dollarization of the economy and the start of anti-gang violence repressive
security policies.
In the eight years that followed, it observed how adopting the
dollar failed to deliver on its promises (increased domestic and foreign
investment, credit advantages, the strengthening of the banking sector), how
security policies increased gang violence, crime and killings, and how ARENA's
economic measures turned remittances from abroad into the anti-poverty strategy,
reducing households savings and increased the fiscal deficit.
In May 2009, a survey conducted by the University
Institute of Public Opinion (IUDOP) revealed that the two main problems of El
Salvador, according to the public, were the economic situation and crime. This
was the country that Mauricio Funes and the FMLN found when they came to power
and the one they promised to change. What prevented them from keeping this
promise?
The president of change, a
president full of smoke
Mauricio Funes’s main promise was to
make a clean break with the way things had been handled during the previous 20
years of right-wing governments. One of his first measures was the
strengthening of institutionalism.
The president mediated between the political
parties to unclog the election of the five magistrates who form the Supreme
Court of Justice’s Constitutional Chamber.
Four of the five judges which were
elected were jurists who held different opinions but were recognized for their
professional capacity and ethical behavior. Their election reinforced the separation of powers.
When the magistrates began to issue resolutions which were contrary to the president’s and the political parties’ interests, a crusade against the constitutional Chamber was launched that attempted to shut it down.
Shortly after, however, when the
magistrates began to issue resolutions which were contrary to the president’s
and the political parties’ interests, a crusade against the constitutional Chamber
was launched that attempted to shut it down.
The crusade was not successful,
but a tough, exhausting public confrontation between the State powers carried
on right up to the end of the magistrates’ term in August 2018.
Later, Funes turned a deaf ear to
his own words against patronage and influence peddling practices. Little by
little, his maneuvers in favour of relatives and acquaintances getting
government jobs or millionaire contracts for services were revealed. He also
became an enemy of transparency: he refused to talk to journalists and even
tried to freeze the Law of Access to Public Information.
In November 2017, Mauricio Funes
was convicted of illicit enrichment. The process was carried out in absentia because he managed to flee
to Nicaragua with the help of the FMLN. Funes is the third Salvadoran former president
to be prosecuted for corruption, after Francisco Flores and Antonio Saca, both from
ARENA.
The economic aim: consumption and
fiscal regression
The Central Reserve Bank’s data reveals
that under the ARENA and FMLN governments, the main economic aims for the
common citizen were very similar. ARENA sought to increase consumption through
public borrowing.
The FMLN, as Melisa Salgado points out, attempted redistribution
focused on consumption too, but covered this time by fiscal digression.
The
government continued with conditional transfers to low-income families and did
not increase VAT, while raising taxes – which it called "special
contributions" – on products such as gasoline and telecommunications. All
this did not touch on big capital, but it did affect the middle and the working
classes.
The results have not been very
encouraging. Economic growth barely reached 2.5% in 2016, the highest in the previous
seven years, but the lowest among Central American countries.
What did increase
was public debt which is at almost 60% of GDP since 2009. According to Carlos
Acevedo, former president of the Central Reserve Bank during the FMLN’s first
term in office, El Salvador needs to grow at least 3% or 4% per year, and
reduce the fiscal deficit to less than 2% of GDP, to avoid de-dollarization.
However, after nine years in
government and facing the prospect of an upcoming electoral defeat, the FMLN’s proposals
have changed very little.
A recent example is a bill known as the Special
Economic Zones Law (SEZ), which will almost certainly be passed, and which will
green light the creation of free zones in some coastal municipalities.
The main
idea is to attract investment with tax incentives and particular regulations –
something very similar to the policies of opening to global markets and
attracting investments of the late 1990s.
Despite this, the ECLAC data shows
that in the last decade, El Salvador has made some progress in fighting inequality.
According to the Gini coefficient, it is currently among the five countries
with the lowest inequality in Latin America (0.408 in 2017).
It must be pointed
out, however, that the role played by remittances from abroad – which represent
around 16% of the Gross Domestic Product – has been a major one.
In the last 20
years, this money inflow has become the strongest tool the country has against
poverty and inequality. Now, the effects of the suspension of the Temporary
Protected Status (TPS) in the United States, which will most probably force
many migrants to return, remains to be seen.
Regarding social spending, even though its increase
has been one of the main promises of the FMLN throughout both its terms of
office, in practice it has ranked low in the government’s priority list. An
example of this is education.
Whilst already president, Sánchez Cerén promised
a budget increase so that education spending would reach 6% of total public
expenditure. This has never happened. When ARENA lost its power, the budget of
the Ministry of Education was 3.4% of GDP. By 2016, the budget had barely risen
to 3.47%.
El Salvador is still one of the most violent countries in the world. To date, the FMLN government has not recognized this phenomenon. However, refugee requests for gang persecution in Mexico have quadrupled since 2013.
The war on gangs
El Salvador is still one of the
most violent countries in the world. One of the reasons for it, perhaps the
most important one, is gang violence, which has prompted a huge exodus of
Salvadorans. To date, the FMLN government has not recognized this phenomenon.
However, refugee requests for gang persecution in Mexico have quadrupled since
2013.
The FMLN's policy on this matter
has followed that of ARENA: strong handed and direct confrontation. It must be mentioned,
though, that in 2012 the government tried a different method.
Behind closed
doors, it negotiated with gang bosses and offered them prison benefits in
exchange for a reduction in homicides. This agreement, known as "The
Truce", had almost immediate effects: in the following three months,
homicides decreased by almost half.
The online newspaper elfaro.net discovered the pact and revealed
it. The agreement eventually broke down and homicides rose sharply again.
One
of its effects, however, remained: the gangs became legitimate political actors
after showing publicly that they shared the monopoly of violence with the
State.
With the accession of Sánchez
Cerén to power in 2014, any hope of dialogue was crushed and direct confrontation
with the gangs once again became the government’s strategy.
So, the State security
forces, the army and the National Civil Police (PNC), entered the circle of
revenge that feeds the gangs: "You kill one of ours, I kill one of
yours". And a conflict which before was exclusively between gangs, became also
one between the State and the gangs.
This has not been the result of
the leftist governments’ policies, but of the conjunction between ARENA’s and
FMLN’s policies, which have almost exclusively consisted in repressive
measures.
The most devastating consequence of this process is that the police,
one of the bastions of the peace agreements, is today a police force known for extrajudicial
execution, extermination and disappearance practices.
The eternal party leadership
One of the strongest complaints of
the FMLN rank and file is the lack of change in the party’s leadership. The
FMLN leadership, known as the Political Commission, has been chaired for the
last 13 years by Medardo González.
It was under González's leadership that
internal elections were scrapped and it was decided to entrust the course of
the party to loyal, traditional representatives of the former guerrilla.
Under
this premise, it has been possible to neutralize any questioning and any attempt
at changing the party’s structure. New voices, and even more so dissidents, are
practically banned.
One such dissident voice was that
of Nayib Bukele, a young member of the party who became known as mayor of the
municipality of Nuevo Cuscatlán in 2012 and who was elected mayor of San
Salvador in 2015.
With a strong following in social networks, he has become extremely
popular because of his direct confrontation with the mainstream media, with the
justice system and with the FMLN itself.
His image, however, has not been free
from controversy. He has been accused of being the head of a network of trolls,
of cronyism and of obstructing freedom of expression. In 2017, Bukele was expelled from the FMLN.
His expulsion is considered one of
the main causes of the decline of the party in the past elections. Bukele's
current aspiration is to compete for the presidency in the 2019 elections.
He
will do so as a member of the right-wing party GANA, a minority party in the
legislative assembly of several members which are accused of corruption. What
some observers foretold has thus become a reality: Bukele’s expulsion from the
party would not only weaken the FMLN, but end up breaking the prevailing two-party
system in El Salvador. As of August 31, Bukele and Gana are
leading the polls.
A left more to the right
The biggest disappointment for
traditional left-wing voters is having witnessed not only the lack of change in
El Salvador after the two FMLN mandates, but an FMLN not so different from its alter
ego ARENA.
After two terms in government, the
party on the left no longer seems to be an alternative. This is what has helped
the right to capture once again the legislative power. But it has also been a fertile
ground for the emergence of a third political force: Nayib Bukele, a politician
who currently leads the voters’ preferences.
Whether this renegade of the left will
be the change that El Salvador has been awaiting for so long, it is difficult
to say. However, his ability to break the traditional Salvadoran bipartisanship
could – hopefully – be an opportunity for both ARENA and the FMLN to question
and renew themselves as political parties.
Meanwhile, the most serious consequence of the FMLN’s decline is that it
is not only about to lose power, but, if it actually does, it will deliver to
its successor a different country than the one it received: a country with an
even weaker institutional framework, with an almost unsustainable debt, with
the majority of the population forgotten – a country that is discouraged with and
burnt-out by its political class.