http://www.guardian
El Salvadoran presidential candidate walks line between right and left
* guardian.co.
At a raucous rally in Santa Tecla, El Salvador, the banner hanging behind
journalist-turned-
heart of his campaign: Cambio. Change.
Employing a buzzword from this year's US election, the leftwing Funes has
become a political phenomenon by promising a new direction for one of the
staunchest American allies in the region, a country that adopted the
dollar as its currency and is the only Latin American nation to still
have troops in Iraq.
The former television host has tried to deftly manage a growing challenge
in the politically polarised region - vowing to remain friendly with both
the US and leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez while implementing
the same formula of government-funded social programs backed by Chavez
and his leftist allies.
But an equally daunting challenge for Funes, arguably El Salvador's most
respected journalist, is his effort to shake up his own party, the
Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.
The party began as a 1980s guerrilla movement and evolved into the
country's second-strongest political force but has failed to win the
presidency with more traditional leftist candidates.
Funes wants to remake the FMLN into a pragmatic party that, if
victorious, would join El Salvador with Guatemala and Nicaragua as former
Cold War-era battlegrounds where voters are trying leftist leaders for
the first time since their conflicts ended.
Not that those ideological battles are over. With 10 months to go before
the March vote, conservative critics have painted Funes as a Trojan
horse, a moderate face for a party whose leaders still wear fatigues and
whose supporters brandish pictures of Che Guevara and Soviet flags at
campaign rallies.
"The main challenge we face is convincing the public, especially the
undecided, that my presence isn't just a formality, that I haven't merely
arrived to apply varnish on the image of the FMLN," Funes said in an
interview at his campaign office. "We must convince the public that the
party has moderated."
Funes won fame as a crusading journalist who took on the government and
other institutions on his television show. He won respect for his
persistent style of questioning and even became a sex symbol in some
quarters.
When Funes was fired in 2005, many viewers were outraged for what they
saw as political reprisal. His television station's new owners, however,
said they simply wanted a change in programming.
But as Funes' stock was soaring, fortunes were fading for the FMLN. The
group waged a military campaign against a US-backed, rightwing government
in the 1980s, and both sides were implicated in human-rights abuses.
After peace accords in 1992, the FMLN evolved into a political party and
has had success at the ballot box but never a presidential victory.
After two decades of El Salvador letting the free market run its course,
Funes is promising greater government social spending to help many
citizens left out of prosperity.
Funes has tried to make symbolic and substantive breaks from the FMLN. At
rallies, he doesn't sing the party's anthem or wear the traditional red
colours, preferring to campaign in a crisp white guayabera shirt.
He backs the party's call to pull Salvadoran troops from Iraq but does
not agree with its traditional stance that El Salvador should end the use
of the dollar and return to its previous currency, the colon.
Funes said "dollarisation" and the adoption of the Central American Free
Trade Agreement in 2006 have had negative effects, such as inflation and
unfavourable competition for small-scale farmers, but that it is too late
to scrap those policies.
Dagoberto Gutierrez, a liberal political analyst at Salvadoran Lutheran
University, said Funes should try to maintain the perception that he can
be independent of party orthodoxy.
"One of his strengths is that he didn't develop through links to the
party," Gutierrez said. "His main links need to remain with the
people."
The campaign still is in its early days, but newspaper polls published
last month showed Funes with an advantage of 7 to 9 percentage points
over rival Rodrigo Avila of the ruling rightwing Arena party. And Funes
already is drawing huge crowds.
Oscar Ortiz, mayor of Santa Tecla and a member of Funes' party, said he
is confident that Funes' personal traits will overcome any concerns about
his ideology.
"We have watched him develop for 20 years, acting with honesty and with
courage," he said.
But Funes said he is facing doubts that he is a moderate outsider,
especially after the selection of Salvador Sanchez Ceren, the party's
veteran secretary general, as his running mate.
President Antonio Saca, whose term ends next year, has questioned the
FMLN's supposed moderation. "If it flies like a duck, swims like a duck
and eats like a duck, it's a duck. The FMLN is a communist party. Its
ideas haven't changed," he told local reporters.
The election is already drawing international scrutiny, especially after
neighbouring Nicaragua returned its former Marxist leader, Daniel Ortega,
to power last year.
While keeping open channels with the US, Ortega has moved firmly into
Venezuela's political and ideological orbit.
In February, US Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell
warned Congress that he expects Chavez to provide "generous campaign
funding" to Funes. But Funes denied any links, and Chavez called Saca to
pledge not to interfere in the elections.
Funes said he would be friendly with Venezuela, especially if cheap oil
is offered, but that his priority is a cordial relationship with the US,
especially because El Salvador receives nearly $4bn annually in
remittances from its citizens there.
To reassure Washington, Funes met with state department officials and
members of Congress recently to insist that he is no radical.
So far, he says, he doesn't regret leaving the airwaves for the
rough-and-tumble campaign trail.
"Up until now, I haven't been the hunter being hunted," he said. "But if
I myself say that public figures need to be scrutinized, how can I reject
that same scrutiny?"
------------
Progchat_action is a non-partisan and progressive political news weblog,
chat, and action discussion alternative in cyberspace:
http://groups.
------------
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great
moral crises maintain their neutrality" - Dante
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe