Weekly Report - 18 March 2010 (WR-10-11)

The ruling left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí­ para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) celebrated the first anniversary of the electoral triumph of El Salvador's first left-wing president on 15 March. Conspicuous by his absence was the man actually elected on that day one year ago - President Mauricio Funes. Vice-President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a veteran guerrilla, publicly reminded Funes that “we won the elections together and together we will change El Salvador", adding that the FMLN would always “work with" Funes. At the moment, however, it is working with the right-wing Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena), the very party whose 20-year stranglehold on power it was celebrating having broken, to overturn a presidential veto.