The Leftists Get Out the Vote : Surprising--and useful--showing in recent Salvadoran election

While the results of the latest elections in El Salvador are in dispute due to troubling allegations of fraud, they may have already opened up the nation’s troubled political system just enough to help end the civil war that has dragged on for almost a dozen years.

In voting last Sunday for 84 members of the National Assembly, several mayors and other local officials, most Salvadoran voters divided their ballots between the two major parties that have participated in governments (the rightist Arena party and the Christian Democrats) that the United States has supported against a tough, persistent guerrilla insurgency. That much was expected.

But voters also cast a surprisingly large number of ballots for leftist candidates who made no secret of their ties to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front guerrillas. They got anywhere from 8% to 17% of the vote. The exact amount is the focus of the fraud allegations and, sadly, is not likely to ever be agreed on in such a polarized political environment. But no matter how many votes candidates of the so-called Democratic Convergence and the other leftist parties got, they are now officially a third force in the politics of El Salvador.

The FMLN has always been a political factor, of course. It controls a large portion of the nation’s territory and has shown an unnerving ability to inflict serious casualties on the armed forces and to damage the national economy. But, with these election results, candidates representing the FMLN viewpoint are now entitled to at least a handful of seats in the National Assembly. That means some of the rebellion’s spokesmen have now come into the system to fight for change peacefully rather than trying to win power on the battlefield.

That’s a big change in El Salvador. And if the rightist government of President Alfredo Cristiani, and its paymasters in Washington, give the left some political space and leeway, it could be a major step towards undermining the popular support the guerrillas still fighting the system have. It’s worth a try.