[NYTr] Time for Change in El Salvador
 
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:26:11 -0600 (CST)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Granma Daily - Dec 28, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art105.html

Time for Change in El Salvador

FMLN finding ways to prevent the reoccurrence of electoral fraud, 
says parliament member Jorge Alberto Jimenez

By ARNALDO MUSA

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) may be closer than
ever from taking over the leadership of El Salvador, seized by the
extreme rightwing. Recent polls give the candidates of the former
guerrilla movement an eight to ten point advantage over the National
Republican Alliance (ARENA), in power for the last 18 years and lead
for the last 3 by current President Elias Antonio Saca.

"The rightwing hasnbt just governed for 18 years, but in fact 182, ever
since the Republic was founded," said FMLN parliament member Jorge
Alberto Jimenez who is in Havana as part of a visiting Salvadoran
legislative delegation made up of representatives from four political
parties.

Jimenez explained that the neoliberal model implemented by ARENA has
brought poverty, massive emigration, and a higher cost of living and
citizen insecurity. "In our country there are 13 murders every day and
more than 500 Salvadorans leave every 24 hours for the United States,
despite the risk of deportation."

"Our people are tired of this situation and see the FMLN and its
presidential candidate, Mauricio Funes, as an opportunity for change
and profound transformations in the 2009 presidential elections." Funes
is running along with vice presidential candidate, Salvador Sanchez
Ceren, head of the FMLN bench in the legislature and a follower of the
ideas of the late FMLN leader Shafik Handal.

Granma asked Jimenez about the main problems facing El Salvador.

"Unemployment, itbs above 40 percent, leading to an increase in the
insecurity of the population; the health and education systems, which,
in addition to not being free, are inadequate. The infant mortality
rate is 32 deaths per each thousand live births; there is a 32 percent
illiteracy rate; of each 100 kids that go to primary school only one
makes it to university. We donbt have lots of natural resources, or
industries, and agriculture is a disaster. The productive capacity has
been lost. All these things have taken peoplebs patience beyond the
boiling point."

EL SALVADOR IS THE ONLY LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRY THAT MAINTAINS TROOPS IN
IRAQ.

El Salvador has 5.8 million inhabitants and 2.2 million emigrants
living in the United States which contribute US $3.5 billion in family
remittances each year, the countrybs leading source of revenue. But
this situation has brought with it a high social and cultural cost, as
well as political blackmail used by Washington.

"Insecurity is fed by unemployment and the excessive influence of US
culture. From it certain reverberations have been felt in our society.
For example, the "Mara" gangs are a product of the emigration of
Salvadorans to the United States, where they were founded. bMara 18b is
named after 18th Street in Los Angeles. To defend themselves, the
Salvadorans created the Mara Salvatrucha gang."

"The other negative aspect of emigration is that it separates families.
The father and mother go to the US and the children stay in El Salvador
under the care of a grandmother or other relative or someone else. The
concept of a nuclear family is lost. They begin to depend on
remittances and donbt want to work, creating a terrible culture,
another type of Mara.

"To that can be added the general discontent of the youth and the
penetration of drug trafficking, because our country is a drug corridor
between Colombia and the United States. Some drug cartels employ
teenagers to commit murders.

"Officials of the US government have threatened to cut the family
remittances and end the emigration if the FMLN wins the presidential
elections. That had an effect on the 2004 elections when the rightwing
was expected to lose," said Jimenez.

The FMLN legislator notes that ARENA controls the media which carries
out aggressive campaigns to spread fear and terror among the population.

Nonetheless, and despite electoral fraud in 2004, Jimenez recalls that
the popular mobilization impeded ARENA from seizing the mayorbs office
of the capital San Salvador. In addition, the FMLN governs in 62 of the
countrybs 202 municipalities bincluding 12 of the 19 in the capitalb
and has 32 of the 84 members of parliament.

"We have learned the lesson. We are adequately prepared, not only to
obtain the votes, but to defend them. We have allied with parties with
progressive ideas, mainly labor groups, to throw out this servile
government that makes us the only Latin American country that
participates in imperialist wars, and that has people who helped and
sheltered the criminal Luis Posada Carriles and sent terrorists to
Cuba," said the FMLN legislator before concluding, "The people have
lost their patience, itbs time for change."

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