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Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad
Election Observer Mission Bulletin no. 3 - "Painting and Pasting"
by Joe DeRaymond
January 9, 2009
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On January 18, 2009, Salvadorans will go to the polls in a nationwide election to elect all 262 municipal mayors and city councils, as well as all 84 members of the National Assembly. As a member of the international election observer mission of the Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad (CIS), I have been alarmed by a series of events that have been front page news here in El Salvador in the last week, and are being labeled as “electoral violence”. For example, on January 6 the national newspaper El Diario de Hoy featured the following headlines: “EUROPEAN UNION (EU) CONDEMNS ATTACKS AND REQUESTS AN INVESTIGATION”; “EU CONDEMNS ELECTORAL VIOLENCE”; “ATTORNEY GENERAL INVESTIGATES SIX CASES OF POLITICAL ATTACKS”; “HUMAN RIGHTS OMBUDSMAN WILL MEET WITH THE LEADERSHIP OF THE POLITICAL PARTIES”. On the 5th, the front page of this paper had been: “PARTIES URGED TO STOP VIOLENCE – The Catholic Church and Chamber of Commerce urged them to take measures. Political leaders agree, but continue frictions.”
Similarly, the newspaper La Prensa Grafica on January 6 featured a front page with the headline “PARTIES WILL NOT RENOUNCE ‘PAINTING AND PASTING’”. (“pinta y pega”). The bottom half of the page is filled with photos of women weeping and a shocked young man, both from Gaza. Every day brings more screaming news of the phenomenon of “electoral violence”.
The violence that has engulfed these last days and weeks before the election has been attributed to this practice of “pinta y pega”, which involves painting every available light pole or post with party colors and insignia, and filling every wall with graffiti of the same nature. Many people have been hurt, both party activists who fight over the pole and wall space, and police officers responding to disturbances. There have been murders that authorities and political leaders have suggested are part of this violence, many injuries and arrests from rock throwing and fighting with sticks as partisans dispute pole and wall territory.
Elections are projected as civil events that are exercises in democracy, not as physical battles over neighborhood territories. As tensions rise in the campaigns leading to the hotly contested elections scheduled for January 18, and then March 15, when the nation will vote once more, this time for President, the state of civil society in El Salvador reveals itself in this series of incidents that cannot be dismissed as simply “electoral”.
The CIS has sponsored international election observer missions in every election since the Peace Accords of 1992. 2009 will be the eighth CIS international election observer mission. The goal of each mission has been to accompany the Salvadoran citizen and voter in an electoral process that is safe, transparent, and free of violence and intimidation. The promise of the Peace Accords is that El Salvador will move toward a society that turns away from violence and war as a way of resolving the deep divisions in Salvadoran society. The Peace Accords’ goal of a government that promotes social and economic justice has not been achieved. On the contrary, the political parties that have governed since the Peace Accords have used their positions and power to control and dominate both the electoral process and the economy to maintain inequality and privilege for a few.
The election cycle of 2009 has been no exception. The ruling parties of ARENA, the PCN and PDC have been manipulating the law and the process since 2007 to change the electoral playing field to their advantage. They first separated the elections at great expense to the Salvadoran taxpayer and citizen. Then, they used their legislative and executive power to implement a series of “reforms” that have only cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process. They even removed the requirement that ballots be sealed and signed by the local voting table authorities (JRVs). None of the reforms increased security or addressed the concerns of Salvadorans.
I observed elections with the CIS in 2003, 2004, and 2006, and each year electoral violence has been an issue to investigate. The issue of crime and violence has been the number one concern of Salvadorans over the years. Despite the “mano dura” and “super mano dura” policies of the ARENA Presidents in the last decade, El Salvador is besieged with crime and violence. Its homicide rate is among the highest in the Americas, and everyday life here is affected greatly by concerns with security. The government conflates overall crime with gang violence and crime, while corporate crime and white collar crime, such as tax evasion, does not receive attention. This is happening with the electoral violence as well, as the National Police have suggested publicly that gang members are being used by political parties in an illegal fashion, as actors who commit violence in the course of “pinta y pega”. This is not the job of the police, who should be concentrating on doing their job of providing unbiased security for the elections, not on making public conjecture on the roots of street violence. The recent police remarks that imply that political parties are working in concert with gangs has become part of the campaign of fear that discourages participation and trust in democratic processes.
CIS recognizes that the practice of “pinta y pega” is legal and has become an accepted part of the Salvadoran electoral process. It is a method of propaganda that can be employed by those with few resources. It is for this reason that a change in the practice must come from those with the most resources. ARENA has dominated in painting and posting different areas of the nation. The FMLN is a close second in covering polls and walls with propaganda. (This is from personal observation, and is not based on any scientific study.) All the parties participate. All the political parties, beginning with the parties of the government, which have the most power within the process, have a responsibility to control their partisans and discourage attacks and vandalism.
El Salvador confronts many issues in 2009; shortages of clean water, nutrition, education, healthcare; crime, violence, unemployment, an economy at the mercy of global forces. It is an insult to the Salvadoran citizen and voter that a process that is supposed to be a hallmark of democracy has devolved into a series of violent disputes over party colors on light poles and the graffiti on walls. The 8th International Election Observation of the CIS calls on all those involved in this election to make a good faith effort to orient themselves toward the issues that will lessen the potential for violence in Salvadoran society at large, and to cease tactics of violence, to cease acts of violence that affect their fellow Salvadorans in ways that only increase tension and decrease the chance that the elections will produce a government that will proceed on a path toward social justice, economic and political equality for all, and peace.
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