[Cispes-update] Thousands march in Salvadoran Mayday, to celebrate victory and demand change

[CISPES National Office]

Thousands march in Salvadoran Mayday, to celebrate victory and demand change

CISPES update

May 4, 2009



 

Also in this update:

*	Pacific Rim Mining to sue El Salvador in CAFTA <>  arbitration court
*	Attorney General <> ’s term ends with Assembly divided over
successor; Adjunct defies Constitution in assuming office without
legislative approval
*	Social organizations demand reforms <>  to Supreme Electoral
Tribunal
*	Assembly bans same-sex marriage, adoption <>  rights; LGBT
organizations present counter-proposal to further civil rights

 

On Friday, May 1st, thousands of workers, campesinos, union activists,
students, and social organizations marched in San Salvador to commemorate
International Day Workers’.  The marchers brought with them a spirit of hope
as they celebrated the FMLN victory in the March 15 presidential elections
and also demands that president-elect Mauricio Funes complete his campaign
promises and provide ample space for workers and members of the social
movement in the new government that will take office on June 1st.  One of
the principle demands put forth by speakers, banners, and posters in the
march is the creation of the Social and Economic Coordination Forum.  The
creation of such a forum, which would provide a space for workers and
members of the social movement to participate in drafting government
policies alongside government official and the private sector, was
stipulated.  “President-elect Mauricio Funes must remember that it was the
people that brought him to power,” said Wilfredo Romero, Secretary of the
Water Workers Union (SETA).  “Which is why we expect a greater commitment
from him, and for him to choose capable functionaries,” he added.

 

Funes, who spoke along with Vice-President-elect Salvador Sanchez Cerén and
various leaders of social and popular organizations at the end of the march
in the Plaza Cívica, reiterated his commitment to govern for the workers and
the most vulnerable sectors of society.  In a meeting he had with union
leaders two days before the march, Funes stated that “I want to end this
history in which there is a permanent confrontation between the government
and the social movement
whom have not had a possibility of influencing
public policies [in the past].”  He added, “The social movement has
something to say and the government is obligated to listen.”  View Pictures
<http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=563&Itemid=
89>  of Friday’s march HERE.


Pacific Rim Mining to sue El Salvador in CAFTA arbitration court


 

Canadian mining company Pacific Rim, acting through a U.S-based subsidiary,
announced this week that it will sue the Salvadoran government over the
government's refusal to issue mining permits for the El Dorado silver and
gold mine in the department of Cabañas. The case will be heard by a special
international arbitration court established by the 2006 U.S.-Central America
Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

 

Pacific Rim Mining has yet to announce the amount it plans to sue for, but
it claims to have already invested over $75 million in exploration for the
mining project. CAFTA laws allow companies to sue governments not only for
lost investments, but also for lost anticipated  revenues that could have
resulted from those investments. Legal analysts estimate that Pacific Rim
could potentially seek hundreds of millions of dollars from the Salvadoran
government.

 

Metals mining in general, and the El Dorado mine specifically, has been
fiercely opposed by Salvadoran civil society, including the Catholic Church.
Key civic organizations maintain that the environmentally-responsible mining
techniques (called “Green Mining”) that Pacific Rim claims to practice are a
farce, and that a silver and gold mine at El Dorado would result in cyanide
contamination of drinking water. 

 

The El Dorado site is located in the basin of the Lempa River, the country's
most important source of water. The Lempa provides invaluable irrigation
water for much of El Salvador's agricultural industry, as well as drinking
water for over half of the population of the greater San Salvador
metropolitan area.

 

Please stay tuned to the CISPES website for updates on this situation and
actions you can take: www.cispes.org <http://www.cispes.org/> .  And for
more information on the Pacific Rim Mining case, please read this
<http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=496&Itemid=
28>  previous CISPES update. 


Attorney General’s term ends with Assembly divided over successor; Adjunct
defies Constitution in assuming office without legislative approval


 

On April 19, Salvadoran Attorney General Félix Garrid Safie's term in office
ended before the Legislative Assembly had voted to elect his successor,
opening the door for Adjunct Attorney General Ástor Escalante to assume the
top position in defiance of El Salvador's constitution.

 

The Salvadoran Constitution stipulates that the election of the Attorney
General requires the votes of 56 out of 84 Legislative deputies. In a
narrowly divided Assembly, and without a compromise candidate having
emerged, the right-wing and left-wing parties have been in a stalemate over
the confirmation of the nation's top law enforcement official. 

 

Escalante's attempt to take on the functions of Attorney General have
created a furor in Salvadoran political and legal circles. “Escalante
doesn’t have constitutional permission, and no person can substitute himself
for the exiting Attorney General in this manner,” declared Supreme Court
Magistrate Marcel Orestes Posada. “In these moments, the Office of the
Attorney General of the Republic is headless, and everything that Escalante
does will be null, as he is not a legal functionary.”

 

Various judges throughout the country have suspended cases until an Attorney
General is chosen, noting that criminal charges cannot legally be introduced
in the absence of an Attorney General.

The Legislative Assembly has been debating the names of potential Attorneys
General since several weeks before the end of Safie’s term, but no consensus
has been reached.  The right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA)
rejected the ten names presented by the legislative subcommittee responsible
for the matter, and is now backing Escalante to continue as the new Attorney
General.

 

The leftist deputies, led by the FMLN, have rejected this possibility,
arguing that Escalante’s demonstrated allegiance to the ARENA party violates
the constitutional requirement that Attorneys General be non-partisan.
Eliseo Ortíz of the Institute for Legal Studies of El Salvador (IEJES)
echoed the FMLN's concerns about Escalante, saying “Previous Attorneys
General have maintained a role of guaranteeing impunity for white-collar
criminals and organized crime, and this would be precisely the role of Mr.
Escalante – that [the Office of the Attorney General] continue this
practice.” Ortíz went on to call ARENA’s support for Escalante a deliberate
attempt to keep the Attorney General's office vacant, a move intended to
“cover their backs in terms of all that [crimes] they have committed.”

 

In an analysis of the FMLN’s presidential victory on March 15 written
shortly after the election, economist Agosto Villalona predicted a series of
conflicts over appointments to government offices, including the Attorney
General, due to lack of consensus between legislative factions. “It is
necessary to take into account that what has been won [by the FMLN in the
elections] is simply the Executive Branch, and the Right maintains its
dominance in other branches and institutions of the State,” stated
Villalona.

 

Villalona went on to predict that the Right’s strategy over the next five
years would be one of sabotaging the FMLN government, particularly through
legislative tactics that would create a situation of ungovernability.


Social organizations demand reforms to Supreme Electoral Tribunal


 

Last week, the Social Initiative for Democracy (ISD) and the Foundation for
the Study of the Application of Law (FESPAD), two Salvadoran
non-governmental organizations, presented a proposal to the Legislative
Assembly to pass a constitutional reform to make the electoral process more
fair and transparent. The proposal calls for changes to be made to the
make-up of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). Currently, the TSE is
composed of five magistrates – three magistrates represent the three
political parties that received the most votes in the most recent election,
and two magistrates are proposed by the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) and
approved by a two-thirds vote in the Legislative Assembly.

 

According to Ramon Villalta, the executive director of ISD, during the past
elections in January and March of this year, “it was spoken of a TSE acting
and failing to act at the convenience of the political parties,
marginalizing the interests of the population, a climate of electoral
violence was experienced, a lack of transparency in the process and of
arbitrary decisions, where the electoral system was seen seriously
debilitated to the point of not completing its principal role.”

 

The executive director of FESPAD Silvia Guillén said the proposed
constitutional reform would separate the jurisdictional and administrative
functions that the TSE currently possesses.  It would create a National
Electoral Board that would carry out the administration of the electoral
process so the TSE would only be charged with jurisdictional functions. “It
is also necessary that the magistrates of the TSE be elected, no longer
proposed by political parties but by the CSJ, the National Judicial Board,
and legally inscribed Universities,” said Guillén. The proposed reform would
make this change and then require all magistrates to be approved by a
two-thirds majority in the assembly.

 

The FMLN, which won both the presidency and the most legislative seats in
the 2009 elections, promoted an electoral reform of this type in its
campaign platform. In addition to instances of foreigners voting, electoral
violence, vote buying, and other types of fraud, national and international
election observers denounced the partisan composition of the TSE and its
failure to fulfill its role as neutral arbiter of the electoral process.

 

In a report by the International Observation Mission of the Salvadoran
Foundation for Local Development and Democracy (FUNDASPAD), it was found
that, at all levels of electoral administration—from the TSE to the
Municipal Electoral Boards to the Voting Tables, conflicts were consistently
resolved in favor of the governing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).

 


Assembly bans same-sex marriage, adoption rights; LGBT organizations present
counter-proposal to further civil rights


 

(Excerpted from reporting
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/maggie-von-vogt/2009/04/el-salvad
or-bans-same-sex-marriage-and-lgbt-adoption-rights-last-mi>  by Alexandria
Soleil and Maggie Von Vogt in San Salvador.)

 

After weeks of public debate and protest, El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly
on Thursday approved an amendment to the constitution that bans marriage and
adoption rights for same-sex couples. The amendment was passed in the final
hours of the outgoing 2006-2009 Legislative Assembly, which ended April
30th. Newly-elected Legislative Deputies took office on May 1st.

 

“Marriage is only for men and women, born that way. It remains consecrated
in our country that this is not possible for same-sex couples,” announced
Legislative Deputy Rodolfo Parker (Christian Democrat Party), the major
proponent of the amendment.

 

In the period of time leading up to this ratification, the amendment lacked
4 votes to pass. Those votes needed to come from deputies of the leftist
FMLN. On Monday, April 27, the party announced that it would not support the
amendment because of concerns that it was discriminatory. The wording of the
amendment was subsequently negotiated to include the phrase, “The State
shall foment marriage, but the lack of it will not effect the enjoyment of
the rights established by law,” after which it attained the number of votes
needed to pass.

 

Politicians had experienced pressure from The Church to ratify the
amendment. Various Catholic and Evangelical leaders publicly targeted the
FMLN for not supporting the amendment, particularly San Salvador’s
Archbishop, José Luis Escobar Alas. On April 20th, Alas presented the
Assembly with 300,000 signatures in support of the reform and made various
public statements urging the FMLN to cast the necessary votes for it to
pass.

 

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists – who have focused
their work on providing education, services, and human rights accompaniment
to LGBT Salvadorans – immediately mobilized in response. “Here the Church
has taken a position that does not respect that El Salvador is a secular
state. It has wanted to dominate and get involved in situations that are not
its duty. We have maintained that, if the reform passes, El Salvador
loses
in terms that, first, we are a secular state, and second that the
Catholic Church does not represent 100% of the citizens, in religion, nor in
quantity,” said William Hernandez, Executive Director of the organization
Associación Entre Amigos (Between Friends), at an April 28th press
conference.

 

Hernandez and Entre Amigos are part of The Alliance for LGBT Diversity, a
network of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and
organizations. The Alliance has organized a variety of protests, press
conferences and vigils, and have written a counter amendment proposing the
expansion of Article 3 of the nation’s constitution to include sexuality,
gender identity, and disability in the non-discrimination clause. “We are
not asking for marriage, only equality” is the resounding message the
Alliance has put forth. 

 

 

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