[Cispes-update] President-elect Funes prepares to take office on June 1, makes official visit to Venezuela

[CISPES National Office]

President-elect Funes prepares to take office on June 1, makes official
visit to Venezuela

CISPES <http://www.cispes.org/>  update

May 20, 2009



 

Also in this update:

-         Case <>  against Salvadoran officers accused of 1989 murder of
Jesuit priests begins in Spain

-         Right-wing <>  legislative faction rushes through reforms, critics
fear a crisis of “institutionality”

 

 

On June 1, Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sánchez Cerén will formally take
their positions as President and Vice-president of El Salvador. The former
FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) candidates who triumphed at
the polls on March 15 will be sworn in at a ceremony attended by foreign
delegations and heads of state. Presidents Lula da Silva of Brazil and Hugo
Chávez of Venezuela, as well as U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, have
already confirmed their attendance at the official ceremony.  Following this
ceremony, a public celebration will take place in Cuscatlán Stadium, where
Funes and Sánchez Cerén will celebrate the victory with the people who
elected them.

 

Since March 15, Funes, Sanchez Cerén, the FMLN, and an executive transition
team have been working to put together a cabinet, determine the policies to
put in place during the first 100 days of the presidency, and visit
neighboring countries to discuss foreign aid and mutual collaboration.
Shortly after his election, Funes visited Brazil as a guest of President
Lula to study the local development projects that have succeeded in the
country. President Lula promised financial collaboration with El Salvador
over the course of Funes’ 5-year presidency. Funes also attended a meeting
in late March with Central American presidents and U.S. Vice-president Joe
Biden in Costa Rica, as well as the April 17-19 Summit of the Americas in
Trinidad and Tobago, where he had the opportunity to meet with U.S.
President Barack Obama.

 

On May 18, Funes, Sanchez Cerén, and members of the FMLN leadership visited
Venezuela to meet with President Chávez and investigate the possibility of
implementing Venezuela’s subsidized fuel project, ALBA Petroleos, on a
national level in El Salvador. Many FMLN-governed municipalities already
enjoy low cost fuel through this bilateral cooperation. However, outgoing
Salvadoran president Tony Saca rejected Venezuela’s offer to extend the
project throughout the country. On the trip to Venezuela, the transition
team explored other areas of collaboration between the two countries,
including El Salvador's participation in the regional Bolivarian Alternative
for the Americas (ALBA) initiative.

 

President-elect Funes has yet to announce his cabinet, though he says it is
80% determined. The remaining 20% will be determined in the week leading up
to the inauguration, and the entire cabinet will be announced on June 1.
Based on statements made by Funes, FMLN leaders, and other members of the
transition team, the cabinet will be made up of FMLN members as well as
people from other sectors. Many social movement organizations and
non-governmental organizations have submitted proposals to the transition
team for their ideal cabinet candidates. The transition team has said it
will carefully consider these proposals in making its decisions.

 


Case against Salvadoran officers accused of 1989 murder of Jesuit priests
begins in Spain


 

The case against 14 Salvadoran army officials accused of assassinating six
Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter in 1989 begins on May 20
in Spain. The murders are considered one of the most infamous acts of
violent political repression in El Salvador’s history. Judge Eloy Velasco,
the magistrate who has accepted the case under the Spanish legal doctrine
that crimes against humanity can be tried in any country, will hear the
testimony of three legal experts that visited El Salvador to investigate the
crime at the time it occurred. Several of the army officials were initially
found guilty of the crimes and imprisoned, only to be released when El
Salvador's right-wing dominated Legislative Assembly passed an Amnesty Law
in 1993 granting immunity to all individuals accused of crimes committed
during the Salvadoran Civil War.

 

The
<http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=482&lang=en
>  original case also accused then-President Alfredo Cristiani of the ARENA
party (Nationalist Republican Alliance) of covering up the atrocity. This
charge was not admitted to the Spanish court by Magistrate Velasco. Human
rights organizations have expressed hope that justice will finally be served
to those responsible for the assassinations, and that further investigation
will bring about enough evidence for the judge to hear the case against
Cristiani.

 

The trial begins as ARENA finds itself amidst a tumultuous restructuring
process after losing the presidential election in March for the first time
in 20 years. ARENA recently named Cristiani as its new General Coordinator,
drawing renewed attention to the party's repressive history. ARENA found
Roberto D’Aubisson is widely recognized as the intellectual author of the
assassination of Archbishop Monseñor Oscar Romero. Romero’s 1980 murder by
Salvadoran military snipers is considered a catalyst of the 12-year
Salvadoran Civil War. 

 


Right-wing legislative faction rushes through reforms, critics fear a crisis
of “institutionality”


 

In mid-May, the right-wing coalition in the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly
passed reforms to the law governing the National Registry of Naturalized
Persons (RNPN) and the Law of Administrative and Municipal Careers. The FMLN
refused to vote for the reforms and denounced them as an effort by the right
to hold onto power and disrupt the functioning of certain state
institutions. The changes made to the RNPN endow the Supreme Electoral
Tribunal with the task of naming a National Registrar who directs this
institution (currently, the President is charged with this task.) The lack
of transparency of the Electoral Registry—which is generated from the
RNPN—along with its inaccessibility to all political parties as stipulated
in the Constitution, was repeatedly denounced by international election
observation missions (including those from the European Union and
Organization of American States), political parties, and non-governmental
organizations. 

 

According to Norma Guevara of the FMLN, “This will make it more difficult
for the new government
to be able to audit and correct the problems that the
RNPN currently presents. Some might say they are trying to cover up or hide
the processes that made it possible to have an inaccurate Electoral Registry
containing deceased people, absent people, foreigners, double identities,
and who knows what other defects.” 

 

The changes to the Law of Administrative and Municipal Careers that were
approved add an additional 42,791 public employees on the list of posts with
job stability protection during changes of administration. The FMLN contends
that this is an attempt to keep high-level government functionaries in
office after Funes’s June 1 inauguration. FMLN legislative deputy Daysi
Villalobos explained that, “ARENA does not want to accept that it will no
longer be in the Executive and is resisting giving up power. They want to
continue controlling things from the outside.”

 

Both of these legislative reforms were passed in the Assembly with 47 out of
84 votes.  The FMLN won 35 deputies in the January Legislative, the most of
any party, while ARENA was reduced to 33 seats. Still, the two other
right-wing parties with legislative representation, the PCN and PDC,
together give the right-wing bloc the additional 14 votes necessary to pass
such reforms in a simple majority vote.  

 

The 47 deputies from right-wing parties also managed to confirm PCN deputy
Ciro Cruz Zepeda as president of the Legislative Assembly, a position
traditionally given to the party with the most seats.  All three right-wing
parties voted for Cruz Zepeda, while the FMLN abstained in protest. The
president of the Assembly has a large amount of influence in what
legislation gets voted on, and the party that holds this position is also
given the presidency of several important legislative commissions.
Protesters entered the legislative session on May 1 to protest Cruz Zepeda’s
election, temporarily disrupting the proceedings of the Assembly.

 

These moves come on the heals of ARENA’s successful effort to block the
election of a new Attorney General—effectively leaving the post vacant—as
well as blocking the election of new Supreme Court Magistrates.  Some
political analysts, therefore, are referring to the situation as leading to
a “crisis of institutionality” in the country.  Guevara explains that while
the Right and ARENA continue with a discourse of reconciliation, their
actions show “the same nature of this party, the calculating nature, the
cynicism, the concrete demonstration that they plan to continue with
midnight legislative sessions, surprises, and avoiding proper debate.” The
editorial board of the Diario CoLatino newspaper described these actions as
demonstrating that ARENA, “has launched into an absurd strategy of
demonstrating its power without concerning itself with the fact that it’s
endangering the institutionality of the country.”

 

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