Local elections in El Salvador

Local elections turn out to be a veritable massacre of the small parties. Six out of eleven will be disappearing, as they did not succeed in getting the three percent required.

By Lisbet Elvekjær

26. February 2003

It’s six o’clock in the morning and its Election Day in El Salvador; the 5^th time since the signing of the peace accords in 1992. 262 local governments and 84 parliament members are to be elected, and the 55 election committees are opening the cardboard boxes with the voting papers and other material necessary for the complicated and bureaucratic procedures to follow in a young democracy where electoral fraud is still suspected. I’m participating in a group of international observers from ten different countries, organized by my workplace Consorcio de ONGs de Educación Cívica de El Salvador (COCIVICA), and with funds from MS.

Complicated, but necessary

We start the day observing the opening procedures in Santa Tecla near the capital San Salvador. In general the opening procedures are followed correctly, but they are time consuming, and the election process starts half an hour late. A group of around 50 voters are queuing up, and next to them a group of scouts is waiting, offering their help to handicapped and elderly people. Finally, the polling station opens and the people are allowed in to give their vote. There are not so many voters, but the process to go through is elaborate.

First the voter has to hand over his electoral id–card to the president of the electoral committee who checks its authenticity and that the voter doesn’t have ink on one of his fingers indicating that he already voted. Then the president hands over the id-card to the secretary of the board who finds the person in the list of voters of that particular election committee, and puts a stamp next to the name of the voter, indicating that he has voted.

The president signs and stamps the voting paper, cuts the upper right corner and gives the voting paper to another member of the electoral committee who hands it over to the voter. When the person has given his vote he has to put his finger print and his signature on the list, have one finger painted with non-removable ink, and finally his or hers electoral carnet will be returned. This bureaucratic procedure is necessary in a country without any reliable register of the voters, and where the polarization and mistrust between the two major parties makes electoral fraud a hot issue.

Consolidation of Salvadoran democracy

During the day our group visits four municipalities, and in all four places we draw the same conclusions. In general the day of the elections went off peacefully and according to the rules established. The pre-electoral campaign though, included many incidents of confrontation, mainly between the two rivaling parties The National Republican Alliance (ARENA) and The National Liberation Front Farabundo Martí (FMLN), and cost six activists their lives. However, asking experts who also have followed the previous elections closely, there are signs of a consolidation of the Salvadoran democracy: The campaigns are getting less dirty and violent, and the mutual respect between the rivaling parties seems to be increasing.

But although the democracy in general seems to be going in the right direction, there are still deficits to overcome, for instance:

• The infrastructure of most polling stations was insufficient, creating a lot of pushing, difficulties for the voters in finding their exact voting place, and last but not least made it impossible to guarantee the secrecy of the votes
• There was electoral propaganda inside the polling station, and a massive presence of party representatives wearing the party color or logo
• The electoral register is not accurate, so many people did not find themselves in the list of voters, or were registered to vote in another municipality whereto they had never had any relation. The register is estimated to include around 50,000 dead people, and exclude many more who should be in the register but are not
• The lack of residential vote means that many people have to travel long distances to vote, especially in the rural areas, and this obstacle strongly discourages the participation. Furthermore, the voters are distributed between the polling stations according to their family name, meaning that you can live right next to a polling station but will have to go to the other end of town to vote. And different members of a household might have to go to different polling stations
• Finally, around 30 percent of the Salvadoran population does not have the possibility to vote because they are living abroad, mainly in the United States. Although their money transfers to relatives in El Salvador are contributing with 13,5 percent of the GNP and thus counts as the most significant source of foreign income of the country, they do not have the possibility to influence the politics of the country of which they are still citizens

The need for electoral reforms and civic education

The Salvadoran democracy is a young democracy. Generally, the elections of 1982 are considered as the first real democratic elections, marking a shift from military rule to civil governments. With the signing of the peace accords in 1992 the democracy advanced one step further, and the document itself included promises of necessary political reforms.

However, most of the promised reforms have never been executed, although the civil society has being pushing for these reforms. And the reforms that have actually succeeded in being approved have been out of a mathematical logic – if they could benefit specific party interests – not out of consideration for the democracy. COCIVICA has proposed and promoted several reforms to try to overcome the deficits of the present system, for instance that of the residential vote and the introduction of a single identity card valid for all legal transactions, also the emission of the vote, so that people are not discouraged to vote because of unnecessary bureaucratic reasons. The introduction of residential vote would surely help to bring down the high absentee rate, too, although it would far from eliminate it, as the lack of confidence in the political parties and institutions is widespread and has been revealed to bear a large part of the responsibility as well. And when it comes to confidence in the electoral process in itself, 48.2 percent of the Salvadoran population thinks that it will be fraudulent.

Furthermore, it will be necessary to educate and motivate the citizens, so that they know their political rights and their possibilities of influencing the decisions that affect their own lives. Thus, COCIVICA is also working in the area of civic education, organizing people at the local level around activities such as the elaboration of citizen platforms, based on the most urgent needs of the population and signed by many of the candidates for the local government, helping to convert the election promises into real work to the benefit of the people.

Results of the elections

Now, two days after the elections, there are still doubts about a few of the results, for instance where the distance between number one and number two was only 10-15 votes. Even one of the seats in the parliament is still disputed. But the main results are there: FMLN maintain 31 of the 84 seats in the parliament, beating ARENA, which lost two seats winning only 27. However, with the 16 seats of PCN (The National Conciliation Party), the political right still holds the majority in the parliament. Furthermore, the elections have been a veritable massacre of the small parties, as six parties out of eleven will be disappearing, as they did not succeed in getting the three percent required.

Concerning the election of local governments, ARENA still hold the majority of the municipalities although they were reduced from 126 to 109, FMLN goes from 78 to 74 municipalities, but succeeded in keeping the important San Salvador, although the opinion polls before the elections were indicating a small advance to the former minister of education, candidate for ARENA.

The general valuation of the day by the international observer team was positive. The general spirit was positive, and the impression is that the democracy is maturing, with less violence, and more mutual respect between the different parties. However, there are some accusations of electoral fraud to be investigated: Not so much fraud during the day of the elections, but rather before that. Thus, several political parties are accused of moving voters from one municipality to another where their position was weak, and some parties, mainly on the right wing of the political spectrum, are accused of buying votes or threatening people to vote for them.

An important development is that the electoral participation has raised a few percent from 38 in 2000 to 41.5. This is still a very low participation rate, but with the statistics of the last three elections showing a steady drop in the participation, this is an important step in the right direction, although the sustainability of this trend is to be proven at the presidential elections in 2004. According to the plan the residential vote is to be introduced for this coming election, and if this promise is not broken once again, there is a good chance of bringing up the participation. But there is still work ahead for COCIVICA in the area of electoral reforms and civic education to secure that in the future the winner is not only the one that obtains most votes, but also a candidate that indeed represents the will of the majority of the population.

Lisbet Elvekjær is a MS-cooperant stationed with the MS partner COCIVICA