Saca Wins El Salvador Presidential Race

[Freddie Stubbs]

JOHN RICE

Associated Press


SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - Former sportscaster Tony Saca easily won El Salvador's presidential race, promising to continue the direction of one of the most pro-U.S. governments in the hemisphere.

But the former Communist Party guerrilla leader who lost accused Saca of resorting to "lies, fear and blackmail" to win and warned that his party would fight a proposed free-trade agreement with the United States.

With about 73 percent of ballots counted, Saca's conservative ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, or ARENA, had 57.6 percent of the vote Sunday, easily avoiding a May 2 runoff for the five-year term, which begins June 1.

Schafik Handal of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, had 35.7 percent and two small parties took the rest.

more: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/8244642.htm

[David__77]

1. That's too bad.

I would have campaigned for Handal. It should be pointed out that the Democrats in Washington are also opposed to FMLN and FSLN by and large, despite that fact that they are the only credible democratic campaigners in those countries.

[brads]

2. Bush admin threats & fear campaign turned the election

This was an election that was thoroughly manipulated by fear-mongering and lies from the Bush administration.

While it went almost entirely unnoticed in the US media, the Bush administration sent officials & friends like Otto Reich and Jeb Bush, and some right wing congresspeople to carry out a concerted campaign to distort the will of the people in El Salvador by threatening to cut relations to El Salvador, deport Salvadorans from the US and cut off 'remesas' -- the money Salvadorans in the US send to their families in El Salvador -- if the FMLN won the election.

The FMLN had been steadily gaining in each election since 1994. In last year's elections the FMLN won the majority in the Legislative Assembly for the first time and also won the mayors offices in all of the major cities of El Salvador. They were clearly on the cusp of winning the presidency this year -- until the US government stepped in with these threats.

In a country that experienced a brutal civil war from 1980 - 1992, in which the US was supporting the death squad government to the tune of $4 million a day, threats from the US are not taken lightly. And money sent from Salvadorans in the US to their families in El Salvador makes up the largest part of the economy in El Salvador.

The bright side is that the FMLN actually received more votes this year than they did in the last presidential election in 1999, but the dirty campaign of fear brought out huge crowds to vote against getting their remesas cut off and against the US returning the country to civil war. I don't think the ARENA victory can be interpreted as support for ARENA's program as much as a vote to not have the US government immediately fomenting conflict.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Yup, and ARENA is the party that ran the death squads in the 1980s

They actually ran TV ads about poor old ladies losing their remittance checks if the FMLN won, and that scared people, because thanks to decades of virtual feudalism in El Salvador, the only way for non-elites to make any money is to emigrate.

I forget what percentage of El Salvador's total economy is made up of remittances from the U.S., but it's huge.

And Otto Reich and Eliot Abrams and their equally reptilian cohorts in the Bush Administration are just mean-spirited enough that they would have cut off the remittances if the FMLN had won.

This was NOT a victory for democracy, but a victory for extortion.

[JCMach1]

4. Same operation as the last Nicaraguan election

I have no doubts that the CIA was involved.