Caribbean & Central America - February 2008 (ISSN 1741-4458)

There may be 10 months to go until the legislative elections in El Salvador, and a full year until the presidential elections, but the two main political parties have well and truly got onto an election footing and the mud is already flying. President Tony Saca accused the leftwing opposition Frente Farabundo Martí­ para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) this month of allegedly accepting funding for its electoral campaign from Venezuela. The FMLN denied the charge. The FMLN, meanwhile, presented a motion in the legislative assembly challenging the legality of a large salary increase which Salvadorean deputies recently awarded themselves. This left the ruling Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena) facing some very bad press.

Saca based his accusations against the FMLN on remarks by the US Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell, in his annual threat assessment presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee. McConnell had said that Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez would provide the FMLN with "generous campaign funding" for the presidential elections in March 2009. Saca said that the government would launch an investigation into Alba Petróleos de El Salvador - the joint venture between Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Pdvsa, and 58 FMLN mayors, whose municipalities benefit from Venezuelan oil imported under the Petrocaribe scheme. He said that if it were found to benefit the FMLN's electoral campaign it would constitute "a clear intervention in the internal affairs of my country".

The founding stone in the Alba Petróleo de El Salvador oil storage facility in the port of Acajutla, south-east of San Salvador, was placed in late January. The company says that it will build a series of tanks capable of holding 350,000 barrels of fuel in order to undercut the inflated prices being charged by transnational companies. Since the end of last year, Alba Petróleo has imported 21,000 barrels of diesel distributed mainly to the capital. The imported diesel is currently being transported to the port of Corinto in Nicaragua before being moved on to El Salvador by road. The company wants to start importing regular and premium petrol from Venezuela shortly.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez emphatically denied funding the FMLN's electoral campaign. Speaking on 9 February he said that even if he had wanted to fund the FMLN it would be completely unnecessary, as the party is "solid, established and well organised". The FMLN, meanwhile, lashed out at Saca for inconsistency. "Only a fortnight ago he said that this (Alba Petróleos de El Salvador) was a project that was helping Salvadoreans and welcomed it," the party spokesperson said. "Saca should be more serious and responsible in his comments."

Saca has made similar comments before. Last November, he claimed that Venezuela was funding "Bolivarian circles" in El Salvador "linked closely to the FMLN", adding that this amounted to "a very serious interference in El Salvador's domestic affairs". He was slightly more cautious this time, insisting (despite strong indications to the contrary) that his government enjoyed good relations with Venezuela and that the investigation was solely for the purposes of clarification.

The security minister, René Figueroa, has been less guarded in his comments. He has previously accused the FMLN presidential candidate, Mauricio Funes, of being determined to impose a Chavista model on El Salvador and of funding his campaign with Venezuelan petrodollars. Funes, for his part, said the US intelligence report had "no credibility".

Salary dispute

The government's efforts to denigrate the FMLN's image is a clear sign that Arena is running scared at the growing support for Funes in the polls. Further evidence of this was supplied in Arena's handling of the FMLN's cynical manoeuvre in the legislative assembly regarding the sizeable salary increase that the deputies agreed to give themselves.

The FMLN presented a motion challenging the legality of the increases, which were approved last September in a "salary law" but only came into effect on 1 January. The salary of the president of congress, Rubén Orellana, increased by 50% to US$8,682 a month; the nine members of the congressional leadership committee saw their salaries go up by a similar amount to US$7,725 per month; the 74 legislators, by 48% to US$5,886 a month. Arena deputies accused the FMLN of hypocrisy, insisting that it too approved the increases as part of the wider "salary law" for the budget. The head of the FMLN's legislative bloc, Salvador Sánchez Cerén (Funes' running mate) denied this.

The salary increases were staunchly defended by Arena's ally, the rightwing Partido de Conciliación Nacional (PCN). "We have the lowest salaries in the world. Why is it a sin to increase them?" a PCN deputy, Roberto Angulo, said. He defended the increases on the grounds that some of the money would go towards helping the constituencies represented by the deputies.

The domestic media stirred up righteous indignation over the salary increase. It argued that the average salary in El Salvador is just US$260 a month and that the government is currently giving only US$15 a month to people living in the country's 77 poorest municipalities.

Aware of the public backlash stoked by the media, Arena's party leadership (Coena) was forced to calculate the political cost and order Arena deputies to drop their support for the increases (infuriating the PCN in the process) and return to the "salary structure of 2007". It was an embarrassing U-turn for Arena. The leader of the party's legislative bloc, Guillermo Gallegos, had said previously that it was "unthinkable" to go back on the decision.

• Arena candidate

The former head of El Salvador's Policí­a Nacional Civil (PNC), Rodrigo Ávila, is seeking the candidacy of the ruling coalition, Arena. In a slightly convoluted primary election process, the Arena party leadership (Coena) will trim the number of pre-candidates down to three on 29 February. They will then be presented to the party membership before a candidate is chosen in late March. Ávila would make an interesting candidate, not least because he has expressed reservations about the "mano dura" (firm hand) security initiatives pursued under the current government.

• Saca on salary increase

President Tony Saca insisted that he would not be drawn into the controversy over the salary increases for legislators, for fear of compromising the separation of powers. However, his concern that the FMLN was trying to steal a march ahead of the elections by denigrating Arena deputies unjustly prompted him to claim that he personally disagreed with the salary increase. Now that the increases have been reversed, the legislative finance commission will have to decide how the money received by deputies in January is to be returned.