What Is Behind the Controversy in El Salvador’s Recent Elections? · Global Voices
A voter casting their ballot in El Salvador’s 2009 presidential elections (Amber / Creative Commons)
This article by <PERSON> was originally published on NACLA's website.
I t is already past midnight in Nejapa, El Salvador. Poll workers at the Jose Matías Delgado School voting center, exhausted after having arrived at 5 a.m., are still arguing over how to fill out the new count sheets introduced for this year’s electoral process. Scenes just like this were repeated all across El Salvador during the March 1 elections.
Salvadorans took to the polls in relative calm to cast their ballot for mayors, National Legislative Assembly representatives and Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) legislators. Delayed openings, allegations of vote buying in rural areas and isolated confrontations between voters or poll staff did little to impede the active exercise of suffrage throughout the country. The process was declared broadly transparent by visiting international observation delegations, including that of the Organization of American States (OAS).
So why did it take almost a month to get elections results in a system that has been lauded as one of the most democratic and transparent in the region? The answer partly lies in the interventionist role played by the nation’s Supreme Court.
The road to the elections and the Supreme Court’s controversial rulings
As the Farabundo Martí Liberation Front (FMLN) has consolidated its legislative and executive power, the Constitutional Chamber of the country’s Supreme Court has demonstrated growing loyalty to El Salvador’s political right. They have issued increasingly controversial rulings to undercut elections and curtail legislative decisions.
In 2013, the Constitutional Chamber ruled that the election of <PERSON>, head magistrate of both the Court and the Chamber, was unconstitutional because he belonged to the FMLN. A year later, the Chamber ruled the same way in the case of <PERSON>, then-president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and a member of the FMLN’s Political Commission. In both cases, the Court claimed that party membership compromised performance and determined that people with party affiliations could no longer be elected to the TSE or any other national courts. For two decades, court officials routinely had maintained strong political party affiliations, making both of the Court’s rulings most likely politically motivated, as they came when the FMLN is governing and months before elections were held.
Before the 2015 elections, the Chamber had transformed the country’s electoral system. Ever since the signing of the 1992 peace accords, El Salvador has had a multi-party system with a very polarized left-right divide. 1017
This arrangement was rarely questioned by the right-wing National Republican Alliance party (ARENA) until it lost the elections in 2009. Ever since, the Salvadoran right has pushed for electoral reforms, some of which have gained approval by the Supreme Court.
In 2012, the Court mandated that the country replace its closed list of candidates with an open one, and then allowed independent candidates to run for the first time. However, the most controversial ruling was made just three months before the elections on November 5th 2014. It permitted the cross-party vote. Salvadorans had previously voted for their preferred party by simply marking a party’s flag, given that only the parties’ logos, and not individual candidates, appeared on the ballots.
The new cross-party vote allows voters to select individual candidates from any party rather than just vote for a single party with an established candidate list. Proponents argued that the ability to vote for individual candidates is a basic right, and would contribute to political pluralism. <PERSON>, a jurist who was part of the lawsuit requesting the cross-party vote, said the decision “is a win-win situation. Citizens take back their freedom, elected officials will have the support of the people, and everyone wins with the plurality of opinions.” The ruling came after the Supreme Electoral Tribunal had already officially convened the elections, creating, according to the OAS delegation, administrative chaos and delays that reverberated through to the final count.
Right-wing candidates ran more individualized campaigns with independent financing, uncoordinated from other candidates from their same party. In contrast, the FMLN chose a strategy of calling on its supporters to simply vote for the party’s flag as a symbol of the political platform, and ran a unified campaign.
After the controversial November ruling, the magistrates declared they would make no more electoral decisions with regards to the March 1st vote. But just nine days before Election Day, the Constitutional Chamber released a statement saying that even though voters could still opt for one party, votes for party flags would not be counted as preferential votes for the party’s ranked list of candidates. 609