EL SALVADOR_
The two sides of imperialist policy
Legislative and municipal elections took place on March 31 in El Salvador. The Party of National Conciliation (PCN) and the National Republican Alliance (Arena) who represent the ruling oligarchy, presented joint slates. They held the majority of seats in the previous parliament. Contrary to most predictions, which assumed that they would emerge the victors, it was the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) of Napoleon Duarte, the Salvadoran president, who eventually won.
According to the first estimates, they won 33 deputies out of a possible sixty and two hundred municipalities out of 262. El Pais, the Spanish daily newspaper states in its issue of 10 April, 1985, that although not all the results had by then been counted, no fundamental change was expected in these figures.
This is the first time that the Christian Democracy has obtained an absolute majority. Napoleon Duarte was only elected on the second round in the May 1984 presidential elections and then only with the support of the other parties.
Out of 2.7 million registered to vote, one million people voted which represents a smaller turnout than in previous elections (according to Le Monde, the French daily newspaper of 4 April 1985). The elections took place in a country torn apart by terror and war, where barely 40% of the voters turned out because of, according to El Pais of 3 April 1985, 'the general climate of insecurity'; they took place in a situation where whole regions did not vote at all and where there was no contest from any left-wing parties (the FMLN having called for a boycott). None of this prevented president Reagan's spokesperson, Larry Speakes from welcoming 'the fourth free election in three years' (El Pais, 2 April 1985). He was followed by the international press who heralded the 'democratic' functioning of the ballot.
In Nicaragua, in the November 1984 elections, the turnout was nearly 80% with the FSLN obtaining 67% of the votes and the bourgeois parties together gaining 30%. Out of the hundreds of observers and journalists present, not one detected the slightest irregularity or contested the legitimacy of the ballot. But according to democracy Reagan-style, these elections were undemocratic and the Nicaraguan government, unlike the Salvadoran government, does not represent 'true democracy'.
This argument is all that is needed to justify sending aid to the contras, a policy which certain eminent people in Europe (see box on next page) have chosen to support.
Nevertheless, whatever the outcome, for the time being the Christian Democracy does hold the absolute majority in parliament and at the municipal level.
Janette HABEL
As a result of this victory, Duarte and his party will not have any further excuse for failing to implement some of the reforms he promised after the last elections. Such measures include the agrarian reform policy, which is currently in a stalemate; the bringing to justice of members of the death squads; respect for basic democratic rights. All these pledges have, until now, remained a dead letter.
On the other hand, it must be remembered — as Guillermo Ungo, spokesperson of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) pointed out - 'the election does not change the situation because in El Salvador the power is not with the assembly, it is with the military. (quoted in the British daily newspaper the Guardian, 3 April, 1985). And this is a military force that even the imperialists try to keep their distance from.
The imperialists, in fact, have several means at their disposal. They are employing repression, mass murder and torture in an attempt to bring the guerillas and the FMLN to their knees. But at the same time, they are trying to disguise this policy behind the mask of democracy and peace seeking.
Duarte and the PDC are also masqerading as democrats and peace lovers in diplomatic manoeuvres in El Salvador and International Viewpoint 22 April 1985 internationally, trying to make FMLN fighters appear to be extremists, responsible for the continuation of the war and for the increasingly horrific massacres and bombings.
These elections and the victory of the so-called peace candidate were intended to make people forget the massacres of the civilian population and the killings, which have been on the increase under Duarte.
A report issued by the Salvadoran Commission for Human Rights shows that for the first two months of 1985, 474 people were murdered by government forces or death squads (see FMLN bulletin, 15 March, 1985).
The United Nations Human Rights Commission has also just dealt the regime a blow by recording in a resolution published on March 13 that, 'violations of human rights are continuing in El Salvador'
The same UN commission recognised the efforts of the FMLN towards a more humanitarian approach, in accordance with pledges made during negotiations in La Palma and D'Ayagualo, commitments, on the other hand, that were openly flouted by the army.
On the military level, the objective of the imperialists is to do everything possible to isolate the enemy. In order to cut the FMLN off from its popular base, the air offensive has been expanded, in accordance with the strategy adopted by the air force at the end of 1983. The massive bombardments are aimed at forcing the population to flee the areas controlled by the guerillas.
In particular the tactics of using small helicopter-borne units able to strike unexpectedly at selected points and move in quickly to reinforce positions could alter the outcome of future confrontations.
In less than eight months, from January to July 1984, 100,000 people had to flee their homes.
By these means, the imperialists are trying to demonstrate to the people of Central America, that their defeat in Vietnam cannot be so easily repeated. They are combining mass slaughter of civilian populations with encirclement and militarisation of settlements through the civilian defence patrols, which are similar to those operating in Guatemala. The aim of this is to isolate and then eliminate the bases of support for the FMLN. This is the objective of the Conara plan.
The stepping up of military activity in the towns by the FMLN has coincided with a new rise of strikes against increases in the cost of living and for the defence of trade union and human rights.
Since the beginning of the year, work-
ers have been entering into struggle for wage rises. Teachers have called a national strike involving 29,000 people. And struggles have broken out in the banks, demanding the release of the general secretary of the Bank Workers Union who, with his brother, has been captured by the death squads.
So despite the repression and the killings, workers are fighting back and advancing their own demands. But, as part of their platforms, they are also taking up the issue of the release of political prisoners and the continuation of negotiations.
For this reason, despite the conditions under which it came about, the vote for the PDC does, to some extent, represent an aspiration for a continuation of talks, which Duarte had committed himself to if his party won.
The victory of the Christian Democracy has several consequences. On the one hand, it will facilitate the imperialist operation by giving an apparent legitimacy to a repressive regime that only remains in power thanks to US support. It offers a facade of democracy to a country where war has already taken 60,000 lives. A particularly negative consequence of the PDC victory could be to defuse American public opinion and, in the process, make it possible to bring more pressure to bear for the granting of war credits.
On the other hand, the vote for Duarte, in a limited way, reflects the real aspirations for peace to which the FMLN has sought to respond through its own proposals. And a very intense political battle is going to be fought over this issue. Yet, because it is true that control of the executive and legislature is not the real source of power in the country, differences between sections of the ruling oligarchy and the army opposed to any reform or negotiation, on the one hand, and Duarte, on the other, are likely to grow and open up a period of political tensions and instability.
The test of strength unleashed by Arena and d'Aubuisson on the Central Electoral Council (CCE) is a storm signal of such conflicts between the bourgeois and the military diehards and Duarte. The withdrawal of the PCN (1) and the Arena representatives from this specially tailored electoral authority was intended to challenge the legitimacy of the electoral process. They even hoped that they might forcean overturning of the elections. The CCE is made up of representatives of the three parties, the Arena, the PCN and the PCD. It is the final body of appeal to resolve disputes in the elections. Appeals to the supreme court are not provided for. They would, at any rate, be pointless since the court is also controlled by the same parties.
On April 4, d'Aubuisson appeared to be aiming to cut down the DC's seats by three, to a total of thirty, thus preventing the Christian Democrats from obtaining an absolute majority in parliament and thereby provoking a constitutional stalemate, before even the vague Duarte reforms could be adopted.
The American ambassador, T. Pickering temporarily put a stop to this blackmail represented by d'Aubuisson's attack on the election board, warning about a 'coup d'etat that would be fatal for the future of the country and for the aid provided by the American government' (quoted in the Spanish daily El Pais, 3 April 1985).
Not long afterwards, the defence minister, Eugenio Vides Casanova and the commander in chief of the army called on all parties to 'respect the will of the people as expressed through the ballot box' (El Pais, 5-6 April 1985).
Such moves, in fact, only confirm the small importance attached by the real holders of power to universal suffrage, except of course when it comes to invoking it as a pretext for decrying the 'gulag' in Nicaragua.
On the regional level, the Reagan government will try to use the example of the Salvadoran elections to make false comparisons with Nicaragua in order to attain its objectives there. Its tactic will be to campaign for 'truly free' elections in Nicaragua, that is to say elections in which the contras can participate following negotiations and a ceasefire.
Currently engaged in reorganising forces in the region, the imperialists are stepping up military, economic and political pressures. They are refining their tactics, waging a war of attrition and preparing the political conditions for intervention justified by the existence of 'democratically elected' regimes. 1. The executive committee of the PCN later disassociated themselves from the move of their general secretary.
The forces of reaction line up
2921 against the Nicaraguan Revolution
The following paid advert appeared in the French daily newspaper, Le Monde of 21 March 1985. Headed The International of Resistance, the Resistance International, it was signed by well-known personalities from nine European countries. The future of democracy is currently being threatened in Nicaragua. After four years of dictatorship (from May 1980 to November 1984) a totalitarian party — the FSLN — has not succeeded in breaking the resistance of a people. As the elections demonstrated, more than half the electorate of Nicaragua, despite pressure from the FSLN, refused to vote.
The declaration of the state of emergency shows that despite the comparative opening represented by the elections the FLN's political project remains to establish a totalitarian state.
That is why we consider that aid to all sections of the opposition is essential for the Nicaraguans to be able to smash the dictatorship of the totalitarian party and to exercise, finally, the right that seemed to have been guaranteed with the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship; the right to choose freedom as their political future.
In a spirit of democratic solidarity we must therefore ask the US congress to renew aid to the Nicaraguan resistance.
The renewal of this aid is necessary from a strategic point of view. The Sandinista junta has never concealed that its goal is the integration of the Central American region into one Marxist Leninist whole. In this eventuality, the USA would be compelled to retreat from one of its main overseas commitments. This is precisely the objective of Soviet strategy -to force the United States to withdraw from the areas that represent a vital importance to it and to the free world. In this respect, the issue of Central America, Europe's fifth frontier, is also a problem.
The aid is equally necessary from a moral point of view. The West must support those who struggle to gain those rights which your own Declaration of Independence proclaims inalienable and which, consequently belong to us all.
We say to the US Congress that to refuse aid to those who seek to exercise their rights is equivalent on your part to renouncing the spirit of your country. If you should fail in Nicaragua, the strategic situation in which the US would find itself would be less serious an issue than the betrayal of the very principles on which your country was founded.
The freedom of Nicaraguans is your freedom and our freedom. In this sense we are not divided. If you fail in Nicaragua we are right to ask you where you will fail next time? If freedom and democracy are not worth defending in your own hemisphere where are they worth defending? The free world awaits your response. So do its enemies. Signatories include: Eugene Ionesco; Bernard-Henri Levi; Leonid Pliouchtch; Vladimir Boukovsky; Winston Churchill, Member of Parliament (GB); Lord Hugh Thomas, historian; Lord (sic) Frank Chapple, ex trade-union leader; Malcolm Fraser, ex Australian prime minister.
International Viewpoint 22 April 1985
SOUTH AFRICA...