Repression or repression

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Paul Muddle reports on the presidential election in El Salvador, where the votes are now being counted.

ELECTIONS in El Salvador have always been characterised by fraud and coercion.

In the Assembly elections of March 1982, voters were given a choice of the Right or the extreme Right. They had to vote with numbered ballot papers which corresponded with numbers registered for each voters at polling stations. Ballot papers fell into a clear perspex box presided over by a soldier, usually sporting an armband of the far-right ARENA party.

When the votes were all counted up in 1982, it was clear that there had been extensive ballot-stuffing. The claimed turnout exceeded the size of the electorate by several hundred thousand.

And yet this huge fraud was pronounced a 'return to democracy' by US Secretary of State Alexander Haig.

Opinion polls in the US indicated that for many Americans the growing US military involvement in El Salvador was too reminiscent of the bloody and inglorious defeat suffered by imperialism in Vietnam. To US policy-makers it became clear that to pacify the oppositionists at home, imperialist intervention would have to be dressed up as defence of the democratic process rather than support for a teetering military tyranny.

As the elections aroused a blaze of international publicity, Reagan testified to Congress that El Salvador's human rights record had improved, and Richard Stone was sent to Central America to initiate 'dialogue' between the dictatorship and the FDR -FMLN. (On February 17 this year Stone was sacked by Reagan for favouring negotiations).

Since 1982 the military strength of the Salvadoran regime has declined. In the past few months the FMLN have inflicted major blows on government troops.

In December the military complex at El Paraiso in Chalatenango was overrun. In January the strategic Cuscatalan bridge was destroyed.

Whole army units are surrendering without a fight. A major counter-insurgency initiative by the army has ground to a halt.

More than ever, the US policy-makers need a propaganda victory. Hence the rush to get the presidential elections in El Salvador going by March, even though the Salvadoran central elections committee complained that it could not possibly draw up a new electoral register in time.

In an attempt to overcome criticisms of fraud, the US Agency for International Development provided the Salvadoran elections committee with a computer on whịch a proper register could be compiled. However, complaints are already being voiced about the election.

The ballot papers used at 'national' polling stations (those stations at which refugees are required to vote) are so complex that few can understand them. This favours the extreme right, because the refugees are more likely to vote for the "moderate' Christian Democrat candidate.

It is also reported that on the agricultural cooperatives ARENA members who work for Agricultural Reform Institute have been using bribery and coercion to ensure that the peasants vote for ARENA leader and death squad organiser Roberto D'Aubuisson.

The Guardian on Monday 26th reported that many areas have not received ballot papers in time because of the haste with which the election has been called.

The election has been a farce. Thatcher endorsed it by sending two observers -one ot them an Oxford geographer described by an assogovernment officer. If they are anything like the last lot of British observers, they will spend two days shut up in a hotel and return to announce that the elections were a moael of fair play.

Although the FMLN declared that this year they would not physically disrupt the elections or promote a boycott as they did in 1982, they still managed to keep up

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