March Election Seen as Key to Salvador Reforms

The latest joke being told around this capital has it that Salvadorans so love to vote that they have two election laws.

The joke underscores a struggle between President Jose Napoleon Duarte and his rightist opponents in connection with elections scheduled for March.

To be elected are all 60 members of the National Assembly and 261 mayors. The assembly election is regarded as especially important because it will go a long way toward deciding whether Duarte’s Christian Democratic Party will be able to carry on with reforms it has undertaken.

Moreover, it may well determine how far Duarte will be able to go in his efforts to persuade leftist rebels to lay down their arms.

Election Day is not until March 17, but the jockeying for advantage is already intense. Campaigning officially begins Thursday.

In an attempt to weaken Duarte’s strong base in this capital city, the rightist Arena Party and its allies in the assembly--who together control 34 of the 60 seats--have pushed through an election law that forbids relatives of the president and other government officials to seek public office. The law is aimed at Duarte’s son, Jose Alejandro Duarte, who is mayor of San Salvador and had planned to run again in March.

The rightists included in the law a section that allows every party to have its emblem on the ballot, even if a party is part of a coalition. This is designed to dilute the strength of the Christian Democratic Party, which would appear on the ballot as one of many parties rather than as one of a relatively few political coalitions.

“Control of the assembly must be kept out of Duarte’s hands,” Roberto D’Aubuisson, the Arena leader, has said. “He could become a dictator.”

Duarte responded to the rightists’ tactics by vetoing the sections of the law dealing with party emblems and with relatives seeking office. He then promulgated the rest as law. The angry National Assembly cried foul and promulgated its own version.

Hence there are two laws. The Supreme Court, which is also dominated by the right, is expected to rule on which of the two is valid.

Arena and its allies clearly had their eye on Duarte’s bastion in San Salvador when they passed their election law. It was the president’s margin of victory in the capital that gave him his victory over D’Aubuisson in last year’s presidential election.

Duarte’s popularity dates from the 1960s, when he was mayor of San Salvador. His jobs and development programs are well remembered, and his son had been considered a certain victor in March.

Arena, on the other hand, did well in the provinces last spring. Duarte’s forces hope that Arena’s strength will be eroded by electoral neutrality on the part of the armed forces.

“If any military commander engages in politicking, he will be dismissed,” a high official of Duarte’s Christian Democratic Party said. “Duarte is, after all, commander in chief.”

Since Duarte took office last June 1, the National Assembly has frustrated his government in several key areas. By law, the assembly appoints the attorney general and members of the Supreme Court, and rightist domination of both institutions has effectively blocked prosecution of death squad cases. Also, the assembly has greatly weakened land reform.

In the peace talks with the rebels, Duarte is offering an amnesty that depends on approval by the legislature. Economic and legal reforms under discussion will also need assembly approval.

The importance of the mayoral races centers on the matter of patronage. Control of town halls is fundamental to building and maintaining grass-roots support for political parties.

Under a 1982 agreement, the mayors’ offices are now divided among the Christian Democrats, Arena and the National Conciliation Party, a right-of-center group that ranks third among El Salvador’s political groups.

Even though the campaign is not yet officially under way, there has already been a measure of violence that could be related to it.

In one incident, Duarte’s chief corruption investigator and an Arena mayoral candidate were killed in a shooting that took place in a small town in the eastern part of the country. In all, five people were killed.