Left wins in El Salvador

Left wins in El Salvador

Miami Herald: Nearly 30 years after it was born as a leftist insurgent movement, El Salvador’s FMLN has won through the ballot box what it failed to capture by force of arms — political power. At one time, an FMLN victory would have signaled a sharp turn to the left, but if President-elect Mauricio Funes sticks to his promises, he will govern from the center and avoid the rhetoric and hard-left agenda that has kept the FMLN on the margins of power since the end of the civil war in 1992.

Funes is a former TV journalist who ran as a moderate with a centrist agenda. That’s how he persuaded El Salvador’s voters, who over the years had repeatedly rejected FMLN presidential hopefuls, to give his party a chance.

On Monday, Funes stuck to the script. He rejected score-settling, property confiscations and policies that repel foreign investors. This is a good start, but he will soon come under pressure from FMLN militants to make common cause with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in an attempt to remake the political map of Latin America.

Holding the line

That would be a mistake, obliging Funes to turn his back on voters who took him at his word when he said he was a moderate. It would represent a political step backward for an organization that has evolved from a collection of Marxist rebels to a political party that understands the value of coalitions and compromise.

El Salvador holds a special place in Cold War history. It was here that the Reagan administration decided to make a stand against Cuban-backed insurgencies in the 1980s by giving military and financial aid to the government and its right-wing supporters. The war claimed 75,000 lives before it was ended by a U.N.-brokered treaty.

The meaning of Sunday’s election is that, in a genuine democracy, voters will eventually make other choices. The center-right party, ARENA, emerged as the strongest political force after the war and has held the presidency ever since, but El Salvador’s voters demanded change, a theme Funes successfully used.

El Salvador is plagued by significant social and economic problems that Funes has vowed to tackle. These include poverty, joblessness and a lack of social justice, along with a raging crime wave — an agenda mistakenly downplayed by ARENA.

Funes will find willing partners in Washington and elsewhere if he sticks to a democratic agenda, but he must not let the ghosts of El Salvador’s past suffocate its future.