Divided El Salvador Congress Finds Room for Cooperation

Congratulations on this spring’s orderly midterm elections here in El Salvador were quickly supplanted by apprehensions over the divided Legislative Assembly that voters had chosen.

For the first time since the peace agreement that ended this nation’s 12-year civil war was signed in 1992, no political party had a clear congressional majority.

The former leftist guerrillas-turned-politicians of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front got only one seat less than President Armando Calderon Sol’s right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, or Arena, which had dominated previous postwar legislatures.

Pundits predicted three years of wrangling that would address none of the country’s urgently needed reforms on issues such as farm debts and government ownership of firms.

Seven small parties, some with only a single seat in the 84-member Congress, waited to be tapped to form an alliance that would create a majority--or even to be offered the Legislative Assembly chairmanship as a compromise.

Instead, when the legislative session began in May, Arena and the FMLN hammered out a power-sharing agreement that included giving the smaller parties five of the 11 seats on the assembly’s board of directors and six of the 14 committee chairmanships.

Francisco Flores, a 37-year-old academic who is considered a moderate Arena member, will head the legislature.

“Arena has not been isolationist, nor has the [FMLN] been intransigent,” stated an editorial in the daily La Prensa Grafica. “On the contrary, what one sees is an intelligent and very responsible understanding of the times, which implies, besides, a shared respect for the will of the people as manifested at the voting booth.”

In the weeks that followed, representatives have confronted thorny issues with the same spirit of cooperation. For example, when the FMLN and several smaller parties complained that the proposal to sell the national telephone company did not guarantee an honest bidding process, the vote was suspended for six months so the plan could be reworked.

“Arena clearly counted the votes” and realized the proposal would not pass, said Geoffrey Thales, who follows El Salvador for the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank based in the U.S. capital. “They decided to be part of the process rather than be obstructionist,” which led to a compromise.

The conciliatory attitude of the new Salvadoran Assembly has drawn attention throughout Central America, where Costa Rica has long been considered the only reliably democratic country.

“It is the first time in Central American history that antagonistic forces have managed to get along in a parliament,” said Alvaro Cruz, a Nicaraguan who is an editor at the Salvadoran daily El Diario de Hoy.

In contrast, in Cruz’s own country, the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front has expressed its opposition to the extreme right-wing Liberal Alliance in recent weeks by sending protesters into the street in demonstrations that have ended in violence.

“Salvadorans are more worried about working and improving their country’s economy, while Nicaraguans are passionate about politics,” Cruz said. “In addition, the Salvadoran [left] has key leaders who are more moderate than the Sandinistas.”

Instead of paralyzing the legislature, as feared, dividing the power in the Legislative Assembly has had a positive effect, observers said.

“The political process is encouraging people to engage in rational discussion,” Thales said.