Elected Opposition Tests Its Strength in El Salvador

Standing proudly, hands raised--some in fists--opposition party legislators voted recently to defy President Armando Calderon Sol. The issue was federal revenue-sharing. Calderon’s 1998 budget proposal contained $330 million for El Salvador’s cities. The National Assembly voted the mayors $700 million, which required a redrawing of the entire federal budget.

But the lesson went far beyond government budgets. For the first time, 56 members of eight political parties banded together against the president. Together, they had exactly enough votes to overturn a presidential veto, a clear message to Calderon that they must be reckoned with.

“This is an important and positive change,” said Rep. Oscar Ortiz of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

The leftist guerrillas-turned-politicians now have the second-largest congressional delegation, with one representative less than the president’s extreme right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as Arena. “The legislature always had the responsibility of challenging the president but never exercised it,” Ortiz said.

The change is the result of elections earlier this year that left Arena with one-third of the seats in the National Assembly. The party had previously dominated the executive and legislative branches of government since 1992, when El Salvador’s 12-year civil war ended.

“The National Assembly was nothing more than a place to bless the president’s projects,” said Rep. Jorge Villacorta of Democratic Convergence, a small but influential leftist party.

The 84 representatives work in cubicles in a six-story office building. Twenty share a secretary and two phone lines. Constituents must dial an average of 10 times to get a call through--and then the representative may be out. With an annual budget of $14 million--less than 1% of federal spending--the National Assembly hardly has the resources to independently evaluate presidential proposals, much less present its own legislation.

Still, legislators have begun to take steps toward independence. First came what Villacorta termed “tactful” negotiations among the eight opposition parties that range from ex-guerrillas to ex-military supporters. They found common ground in their opposition to the way the administration was handling revenue-sharing, farm debt and the sell-off of the government-owned telephone company.

So far, Calderon and the legislators have tried to avoid confrontations. The National Assembly sent the proposals for farm debt and the telephone company back to the appropriate ministries for renewed study. Calderon returned the revenue-sharing bill to them with comments, rather than an outright veto. No postwar Salvadoran president has ever vetoed a bill.

“This is good for democracy but has its risks,” said Rep. Orlando Arevalo of Arena. “The process becomes slower.”

For example, he said, while the National Assembly has debated the sale of the telephone company, other nations have put their companies on the market. That has increased the competition to find buyers and could drive down the price. As the National Assembly debates the issue of farm debt, the agricultural crisis drags on, he noted.

Further, Arevalo fears that the president’s reluctance to use the veto and openly challenge the opposition parties to override him could be interpreted as a sign of weakness rather than tolerance.

Some Salvadorans, however, look forward to an eventual presidential veto as a sign that relations between the executive and legislative branches are evolving. Villacorta foresees a time--perhaps in this three-year legislative term--when representatives will propose laws, open offices in their home provinces and respond to constituents.