Caribbean & Central America - March 2013 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Former president Elías Antonio (Tony) Saca (2004-2009) has officially launched his presidential campaign for March 2014. Saca was elected on the ticket of the right-wing Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena) in 2004 but now is seeking to break the political duopoly which has maintained a stranglehold on El Salvador’s political system since the end of the 1980-1992 civil war at the head of a right-of-centre coalition. Coming to power as the chosen candidate for Arena, with its powerful electoral machinery and broad support base, is one thing; defeating Arena and the ruling left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional (FMLN), who between the two of them tend to squeeze out those who pursue a third way, is quite another.

Saca became El Salvador’s youngest president in 2004, at just 39, and the fourth to have been elected democratically - as well as the fourth consecutive Arena president. His background as a broadcaster and radio entrepreneur ensured a greater emphasis on communication with the public than his Arena predecessors had managed. He also broke the mould of traditional party stalwarts in top positions. The FMLN learnt from his election to rally behind Mauricio Funes, himself a popular television presenter in 2009 with left-wing sympathies but not a member of the party.

Saca fell out with the Arena hierarchy, the executive leadership committee (Coena) when the party struggled to readjust to life in opposition in 2009. He was expelled from Arena because he was closely associated with the 12 dissident Arena legislators who dramatically broke away from the party shortly afterwards to form a splinter group called Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Gana). Saca was widely considered to have encouraged the breakway. Gana defined itself as a more moderate, “centrist” option, aiming to promote “modern capitalism with social justice”.

Saca formally declared his intention to run for election on 25 February, for the newly formed Unidad coalition that includes Gana, and two right-wing political parties, the centre-right Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC) and conservative Partido de Conciliación Nacional (PCN).

Gana’s decision to team up with the PDC and PCN, long-established parties with a decent following and established structure, means that it stands a far better chance than previous splinter groups of making a splash in the elections. The PCN held the presidency between 1962 and 1979 and the PDC between 1984 and 1989. And in Saca the new Unidad coalition also has a candidate who has been there and done it rather than a political neophyte. Saca drew attention to this fact himself, arguing that El Salvador could not afford to elect a president without experience when it was faced with serious economic difficulties (stagnant GDP growth) and security problems.

Saca will certainly take some votes away from the Arena candidate, Norman Quijano, the mayor of San Salvador, and this division on the Right will benefit the FMLN candidate, veteran guerrilla and Vice-President, Salvador Sánchez Cerén. Roberto Lorenzana, the FMLN spokesman, gleefully noted that “the only certainty brought about by Antonio Saca’s candidacy is that the Right is divided”. His candidacy also means that the election is likely to go to a second round as it will be very difficult for any single candidate to amass 50% plus one of the vote required to win at the first time of asking.

On 21 February Coena made the slightly bizarre choice to select René Portillo Cuadra, a little-known academic (he is the secretary general of El Salvador’s private Universidad Tecnológica [Utec]), to run as Quijano’s running mate. Sánchez Cerén, meanwhile, chose the popular mayor of Santa Tecla, Oscar Ortiz, a move which unified the radical and moderate wings of the party, at least for the purpose of the elections, and might attract swing voters who would not have voted for Sánchez Cerén.

The selection of Portillo Cuadra had caused a rift within Arena between those who wanted a party loyalist and those who wanted a party outsider to run as Quijano’s running mate. Two days before he was selected, the president of Coena (and former president of the Republic), Alfredo Cristiani, stepped down, an indication of the divisions plaguing the party. He was replaced by Jorge Velado. A CID-Gallup poll published at the end of January put Saca on a respectable 17% of the vote, with Quijano out front on 33% and Sánchez Cerén on 28%. The poll, which surveyed 1,208 people nationwide, was carried out between 16 and 21 January, just before Saca confirmed his candidacy.

Mourning the loss of Chávez

The FMLN held a mass on 8 March in honour of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez who died three days earlier after succumbing to a two-year battle with cancer. FMLN deputies and mayors and senior party officials attended the mass, which was followed by an event in Simón Bolívar park to coincide with the funeral of Chávez in Caracas which was shown on a giant screen.

  El Salvador’s national assembly decreed a day of mourning for Chávez, although, in a sign of how politically polarising a figure Chávez was, neither Arena nor the PDC voted in favour of it.

  The FMLN was keen to cultivate a close relationship with Chávez and would almost certainly have joined his integration movement Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Alba) if it were not for the opposition of President Mauricio Funes who decided that this would jeopardize El Salvador’s pivotal relations with the US, where more than 2m Salvadorean expatriates live.

Alba Petróleos to be investigated

Venezuelan cooperation vis-a-vis El Salvador has recently come under scrutiny. Last month El Salvador’s competition regulation agency, Superintendencia de Competencia (SC), announced that it would investigate whether Alba Petróleos, a joint Salvandorean-Venezuelan venture, was infringing the competition regulatory framework. Comprising Enepasa, a fuel distribution company, and PDV Caribe, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa), Alba Petróleos was set up in 2006 to operate a fuel terminal and distribution centre in El Salvador.

  The SC’s announcement follows a request by the main private sector lobby, Asociación Nacional de la Empresa Privada (Anep), which argues that the company, which has expanded its activities in recent months, failed to request authorisation from the SC to set up these new ventures. Anep is closely aligned with Arena. PDV Caribe was formed by FLMN mayors. Ahead of the next general election in 2014, the opposition suspects that these ventures, whose funding sources are not transparent, are FMLN campaign vehicles.

  Last year Alba Petróleos set up Alba Alimentos, which provides loans to small peasant farmers and since then has launched a string of other new ventures. These include ‘Tu Financiera’, created on 15 January, which provides small and medium sized businesses with loans of up to US$50,000; Alba Becas, launched on 6 February with US$2.2m to provide scholarships for 3,400 young people in 44 of the country’s 262 municipalities; and Funda-Alba, a non-profit foundation launched on 4 February with the rather vague aim of contributing to the country’s development.

  Private sector representatives cited in the conservative national daily, La Prensa Gráfica complain that Alba Petróleos has not updated its general balance and results with the national companies’ registry (CNR) since 2010.

• Bible and the Constitution

Tony Saca’s main campaign promises are to create more jobs and to maintain the social programmes implemented by the administration of President Mauricio Funes. Saca said he would “govern with the Bible and the Constitution as guides”. He also promised to provide financial support for sports programmes in order to give El Salvador the best possible chance of reaching the football World Cup finals in Russia in 2018.

• Migrant vote approved

On 24 January El Salvador’s 84-member national assembly passed a bill allowing nationals living abroad to vote. The new law was a campaign promise by President Mauricio Funes, whose left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) took office in June 2009 and takes effect ahead of the next presidential election in 2014. The initiative, which dates back to 1994, was approved by 82 votes in a show of cross party support (the FMLN has 31 seats).