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Caribbean & Central America - April 2014 (ISSN 1741-4458)

EL SALVADOR: Sánchez Cerén allays fears; opts for continuity

Salvador Sánchez Cerén wasted no time in announcing his key cabinet ministers, and embarking on a tour of Central America, after being proclaimed president-elect by the supreme electoral tribunal (TSE) one week after the desperately closely contested presidential run-off on 9 March against Norman Quijano. Both moves sent out powerful statements of intent.

Sánchez Cerén, a veteran guerrilla, will become the first member of the left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) ever to hold the presidency, the present incumbent President Mauricio Funes being an independent. The right-wing opposition Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena) accepted defeat after less than three weeks. Arena shifted progressively from a radical position of denouncing the FMLN victory as “illegitimate” and “illegal”, and even frenzied calls from Quijano for the military to “make democracy”; to a more moderate position pursuing every legal channel open to it to enforce a recount or to annul the elections; and finally to a stoic acceptance of defeat and a promise to provide a constructive opposition.

The TSE threw out six petitions by Arena to try and annul the elections, and the constitutional chamber of the supreme court, on 26 March, rejected the party’s call for a full recount. Arena had nowhere left to turn, especially after US Secretary of State John Kerry recognised Sánchez Cerén’s victory on 25 March, saying that the US “looks forward to working with [him] and to continuing joint efforts to promote security and economic development”.

Arena subsequently released a statement promising to provide “a democratic and serious” opposition to uphold the country’s “constitutional institutionality”. Irrespective of whether it is true to its word Arena demonstrated, through this statement, a degree of political maturity which eluded, for instance, Andrés Manuel López Obrador after two narrow defeats in presidential elections in Mexico. In 2006 López Obrador refused to accept the results, organising mass protests, and set about undermining the country’s democratic institutions, notably the electoral authorities.

In such a highly polarised country as El Salvador, a call for large-scale protests had the potential to be very serious. While Arena was disparagingly dismissive of the democratic credentials of the TSE, in the face of widespread plaudits for the body from international observer missions for the most efficient and accountable elections ever seen in El Salvador, the party eventually appears to have accepted that its initial refusal to accept TSE resolutions was incompatible with its professed commitment to defend democratic institutionalism in El Salvador. Not to mention the fact that Arena had representatives on every departmental, municipal and local electoral council and in polling stations and, as such, was effectively casting doubt on its own members’ work with its allegations of fraud.

It is almost inconceivable that Arena will not attack Sánchez Cerén’s legitimacy at a later date, but its decision to accept the result now, however begrudgingly, prevented an escalation of tension. Sánchez Cerén certainly played his part too, making it easier for Arena to swallow the bitter pill of defeat by his conciliatory rhetoric and overtures to the party to cooperate for the good of Salvadoreans.

Economic continuity

When Sánchez Cerén proceeded to stack his transition team with veteran guerrillas, there was a fleeting concern that he might not govern quite as moderately as his rhetoric suggested. But, when it came to naming his first cabinet ministers he made some big gestures to the private sector and potential foreign investors, and must have put some noses out of joint within the FMLN in the process.

Throughout the administration of President Funes there have been rumblings of discontent within the FMLN that the key economic and finance ministries were controlled by technocrats. Sánchez Cerén, however, followed suit. When he takes office on 1 June, Carlos Cáceres will be kept on as finance minister, signalling continuity of economic policymaking, and Tharsis Salomón López, a former vice-president of the Asociación Salvadoreña de Industriales (ASI), will become economy minister.

This was clearly designed to send the message that Sánchez Cerén is placing the emphasis on preserving economic stability: there will be no sudden departures from economic orthodoxy or risky gambles such as opening a debate into de-dollarising and reintroducing the colon. These two appointments constitute a big gesture to the business sector. The ASI is a prominent private group which along with the umbrella Asociación Nacional de la Empresa Privada (Anep) has been critical of the Funes administration for failing to do enough to drive economic growth and would pounce on the slightest hint of a drift leftwards by Sánchez Cerén.

Within López’s purview will be the promotion of trade and investment in national industry with the aim of converting it into a locomotive of growth. This should play well to the ASI and, in theory, Anep. Part of the reason for the poor relations between the present government and Anep can be attributed to the personal acrimony between Funes and the president of Anep, Jorge Daboub. However, the business association is also decidedly pro-Arena, and whether it is prepared to meet Sánchez Cerén halfway is a moot point.

There must be a concern in the medium-term (after legislative elections in March 2015, for instance) that Sánchez Cerén could take a more radical turn if Anep refuses to play ball. Sánchez Cerén is keen to offer incentives to small and medium sized businesses but it will need cooperation from Anep and ASI to improve the investment climate in El Salvador. Sánchez Cerén will be looking to Anep to acknowledge that tax reform is necessary to raise funds to maintain and enhance the social programmes which are at the heart of the FMLN’s plan of governance (see sidebar).

Foreign policy focus

The appointments of Cáceres and López also suggest that in the foreign policy arena, El Salvador would be unlikely to seek membership of the highly politicised, radical leftist integration bloc Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Alba). An idea of the foreign policy focus of Sánchez Cerén was suggested by his naming of Hugo Martínez as foreign minister. Martínez served as foreign minister under Funes for the first four years of his term before taking over as secretary general of the Central American integration system (Sica) last year. In conjunction with his pre-inauguration tour of Central America, which was not conducted by Funes in 2009, this suggests Sánchez Cerén’s foreign policy priority will be on deepening Central American ties. He is also aware that the foreign investors which El Salvador craves would look askance at Alba membership, a move which would also alienate the Anep and ASI.

* Sánchez Cerén’s inner circle will be composed of trusted former guerrillas, as presidential advisers rather than cabinet ministers per se: Deputy Roberto Lorenzana will take over as technical secretary of the presidency, and former justice & security minister, Manuel Melgar (2009-2011), as private secretary to the presidency.

  • Oscar Romero

President Funes marked the 34th anniversary of the assassination of the archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, on 24 March by unveiling a plaque naming the capital’s international airport after the iconic champion of the poor. Funes sought to draw parallels between Romero’s “challenge to the established powers, uncovering the truth of authoritarianism, corruption and exclusion” and his government, which he said has had to face “the same forces, the same intolerant spirit”. Arena refused to vote in favour of renaming the international airport in the legislative assembly, arguing that it was a political act. Arena’s founder, Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, was named as the mastermind behind Romero’s assassination in a UN truth commission report published shortly after the end of the country’s civil war (1980-1992), but the subsequent passage of an amnesty law has ensured that his murder has never been investigated in El Salvador.

  • Tax reform

Tax reform is one of the big challenges for President-elect Sánchez Cerén. Sánchez Cerén’s principal promise during his victory speech was “to eradicate poverty and inequality”, but with the economy stuttering he will need a tax reform to begin to reduce the gaping divide between the haves and have nots; Arena, however, fears that more tax revenue would provide Sánchez Cerén with the wherewithal to increase the FMLN’s popularity by rolling out more and more social programmes. The FMLN would prefer to tax business rather than increase value-added tax, but Arena is closely allied to big business. Any tax reform must also be carefully weighed against the need to revive the economy, which has been growing more slowly than the population for years.

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