Amid a sea of red, white, and blue flags and chants of "Homeland — yes, Communism — no", the right wing held its eerie celebration on the evening of March 21, election day in El Salvador. By an unexpectedly high margin, Tony Saca, the presidential candidate for the right-wing ARENA party, won the election and secured another five years of executive power for ARENA.
Although the first results of exit polls on March 21 had shown the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) leading a tight race, the first actual ballot counts painted a different picture. In ballot box after ballot box, observers watched as more votes were counted for ARENA than for any other party.
By 9pm, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) released the first official results. With 36% of the ballots counted, ARENA had received 59.9% of the vote and the FMLN 32.9%., the centrist CDU-PDC (Centro Democratico Union-Partido Democratico Cristiano) 3.6%, and the nominally right-wing PCN (Partido para la Conciliaci¢n Nacional) 3.6%.
By 10.30 at night, the FMLN held its closing rally. Hundreds of people chanted, waved flags and cheered as Schafik Handal took the microphone. While recongnising that ARENA was winning the election, he refrained from congratulating Saca, explaining that "the real winner of the election is fear".
Three days before the election, a US congress member Thomas Tancredo offered a threat to the El Salvadorean people. He said that, if the FMLN won, remittances from US residents to El Salvadorans would be prevented. Many depend on the money that relatives working in the US send home.
Many international election observers were detained at the airport and prevented from assisting, and many FMLN campaigners complained of harassment from ARENA representatives.
Although FMLN activists across the country were sad and disappointed at the election result, the election rally served to lift people's spirits. Schafik assured the crowd that this is not a step back for the FMLN, which would continue to be a party of resistance. It is, he claimed, already preparing for the struggles to come.
A central one of those struggles will be to stop the Central America Free Trade Agreement The FMLN will continue to accompany the social movement in their struggles against privatisation and against neoliberalism.
[Reprinted from .]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, March 31, 2004.
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