Via the BBC: Left-winger wins El Salvador poll
Leftist Mauricio Funes of El Salvador’s former Marxist rebel FMLN party has won the country’s presidential election.He defeated his conservative rival, the Arena party’s Rodrigo Avila, who has admitted defeat.
Arena had won every presidential election since the end of El Salvador’s civil war 18 years ago.
[...]
The FMLN won 51.3% of the vote against Arena’s 48.7%, Reuters news agency reported.
[...]
Mr Funes, a former television journalist, marks a break of tradition for the party as he is the first of its leaders not to have been a combatant in that war, says the BBC’s Stephen Gibbs in El Salvador.
He stressed his moderate policies during his campaign and says he intends to maintain good relations with the United States.
He strongly rejected suggestions put forward by his political opponents that El Salvador under his watch would become a Venezuelan satellite state.
One expects that there will be some hand-wringing in some quarters regarding the continued “leftist wave” in Latin American elections (a concept that is poorly defined and misses quite a bit of nuance from case to case, I would note). However, I think that the far better way of looking at this election is that underscore that belligerents in a bloody armed conflict can transform that conflict (and El Salvador’s civil war was quite brutal and led to roughly 70,000 deaths) into a civil, democratic process.
The ability for opposition parties to win the presidency is a key step in the democratic development of any state. Not only does it underscore that free and fair elections can have real consequences, but it also allows for different parties to have to shoulder the burdens of governance.
I had intended to blog about the elections in advance of them over the last several days, but failed to do so. For some background, I would recommend surfing over to Matthew Shugart’s1 Fruits and Votes, as Matthew had written several posts on the subject over the weekend.
Also check out Tim’s El Salvador Blog.
Sphere: Related Content- I know that Matthew’s interest in the subject (as does mines) dates back to the civil war itself (and when a resolution was far from on deck), back when he was finishing/had finished his Ph.D. and I was an undergraduate student in two of his classes. Of course, I won’t mention that since that was over twenty years ago and so mentioning would make us both sound old. [↩]
March 16th, 2024 at 12:35 pm
Yeah, thanks for reminding me how long ago that was.
March 16th, 2024 at 1:11 pm
I figured you’d appreciate it!
March 16th, 2024 at 1:35 pm
One expects that there will be some hand-wringing in some quarters regarding the continued “leftist wave” in Latin American elections (a concept that is poorly defined and misses quite a bit of nuance from case to case, I would note).
I’d be curious to see you elaborate on this since it seems most every country in Latin America has left-of-center leaders these days.
It also seems–just from the rhetoric of folks like Morales, Chavez, Ortega, Bachelet, Vazquez, Lula, Funes, Correa, etc…–all are (to varying degrees) a) skeptical of the neoliberalist agenda and b) critical of excessive US interference in Latin American affairs.
Are you critical of the “leftist wave” characterization from the standpoint that something other than ideology may be the source of their support?
March 16th, 2024 at 1:50 pm
I will endeavor to come back to the point, but am pressed for time at the moment.
Mostly I am critical of casual observers who view these things through either Cold War era lenses or who assume that anyone who is vaguely “leftist” is a Chavista or part of some pro-Cuban, anti-US bloc.
Beyond that, there is substantial difference between, say, Bachelet and Lula and someone like Correa. Then there’s Morales example, which is very much about indigenous rights as well as a host of other issues.
I concur that criticism of neoliberalism a common thread, as is criticism of US intervention.