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El Salvador Political Parties
By 1988 El Salvador had a number of inscribed political
parties participating in the democratic process. Only three,
however, had significant followings: the PDC, Arena, and the PCN.
Christian Democratic Party
The ideological position of the Christian Democratic Party
(Partido Democrata Cristiano--PDC) was more liberal than that of
most Christian democratic parties elsewhere in Latin America or
in Western Europe. In the Salvadoran context, taking into account
the existence of radical leftist groups such as those
constituting the FMLN-FDR, the PDC could be characterized as a
party of the center-left. The party was born out of the
frustration of urban middle-class professionals who felt
themselves excluded from the political process in El Salvador
(see
The Christian Democrats: A Centrist Alternative? ch
, . 1).
From its founding in 1960 until the early 1980s, the party and
its leaders showed considerable tenacity and staying power in the
face of right-wing repression, the adamant refusal of the
economic and political elite (with the backing of the military)
to allow broad-based popular participation in government, and the
eventual defection of some of its members to the radical left, in
the form of the FDR. The year 1979 was a turning point for the
Christian Democrats, as it was for the country as a whole. Party
leaders' participation in the junta governments established after
the reformist coup gave them an opportunity to organize and
prepare to participate in the democratic process initiated in
1982. Their involvement also attracted the support of the United
States. Despite its failure to win a majority of the seats in the
1982 balloting for the Constituent Assembly, the PDC nonetheless
emerged from that election as the leading political party in the
country, a position it went on to demonstrate in the 1984 and
1985 elections.
The PDC reached the peak of its power after the 1985
elections. At that point, Duarte was still a popular figure. The
party's absolute majority in the legislature was seen by him and
his fellow Christian Democrats as a mandate for the continuation
and extension of reforms. The opposition was weakened and
divided. Resentment among the areneros over their
unsuccessful coalition with the PCN provoked a rupture between
the two conservative parties. Subsequently, the PCN became more
supportive of the PDC and its political program.
Duarte and his party used their control of the executive and
legislative branches to further the agrarian reform program first
established by decree in 1980, to draft a new Electoral Code, to
approve an amnesty for political prisoners, and to pass
additional economic reform measures. The momentum that had seemed
so compelling in the wake of the March elections, however, was
eroded by events and was eventually lost in the tumult of
politics and insurgency. Perhaps the first of the blows to the
PDC's position was the kidnapping of the president's daughter,
Ines Guadalupe Duarte Duran, in September 1985. This incident
preoccupied Duarte personally, so that his support within the
armed forces weakened, and a leadership vacuum developed in both
the government and the PDC
(see Left-Wing Extremism
, ch. 5).
Another major dilemma for the PDC government was the
direction of a war-ravaged economy. Although it could be
justified on an economic basis, Duarte's 1986 package of
austerity measures drew political fire from most major interest
groups
(see Interest Groups
, this ch.;
Role of Government
, ch.
3). The associated currency devaluation, always a controversial
step, was especially unpopular. The impression that the president
implemented the austerity measures largely in response to
pressure from the United States also did little to enhance his
prestige or that of the party.
For most Salvadorans, the civil conflict and its attendant
violence were the problems of uppermost concern, especially
insofar as pocketbook issues such as inflation, standard of
living, and employment were seen as closely related to the war
against the leftist guerrillas. Duarte's personal popularity was
boosted after the October 1984 meeting in La Palma with
representatives of the FMLN-FDR; a war-weary population began to
believe that a resolution to the conflict might be in sight.
These optimistic expectations, however, were dampened
considerably as the negotiating process bogged down and stalled.
The kidnapping of Duarte's daughter further hardened the
president's attitude and rendered the prospect of a negotiated
settlement during his administration highly unlikely. Although
the majority of Salvadorans had little sympathy for the FMLN,
Duarte's failure to achieve peace nonetheless undermined his
popularity and diminished the public perception of the PDC as a
viable mediator between the extremes of left and right.
Another issue that tarnished the reputation of the PDC was
corruption. Rumors and allegations that had become common in El
Salvador came to a head in March 1988 with the publication of an
article in the New York Times indicating that as much as
US$2 million in United States economic aid might have been
embezzled. One of the individuals named in the article was an
associate of Alejandro Duarte, the president's son. Although the
president himself was never linked with corrupt practices of any
kind, the apparent failure of other members of the PDC to resist
the temptations of office was a blow to the image of a party that
had throughout its history protested and decried the abuses of
power perpetrated under previous governments.
The post-1985 decline in the fortunes of the PDC government
closely paralleled a general popular disillusionment with the
democratic process. By 1987 polls conducted by the Central
American University Jose Simeon Canas showed that slightly over
three-quarters of the electorate felt that no existing political
party represented their interests. Of those respondents who did
express a party preference, only 6 percent identified with the
PDC and 10 percent with Arena.
Given the lack of clearly demonstrable progress in the
economic, political, and security spheres, most observers
correctly predicted that the PDC would lose its legislative
majority in the March 1988 elections. The scale of that loss,
however, was greater than most had anticipated. The final
official vote count yielded thirty Legislative Assembly seats for
Arena, twenty-three for the PDC, and seven for the PCN. Arena's
leaders initially protested the results, claiming that they had
captured at least thirty-one seats and thus a majority in the
legislature. The protest was rendered academic in May 1988, when
a PCN deputy switched his party allegiance to Arena. A September
1988 ruling by the Supreme Court awarded the contested seat to
Arena, raising its majority to thirty-two. In a stunning
turnaround, the Christian Democrats had dropped eleven seats in
the assembly and lost more than 200 municipal races to Arena. A
particularly sharp blow to PDC pride was the loss of the
mayoralty of San Salvador, a post the party had held continuously
since Duarte's election as mayor in 1964. Ironically, Duarte's
son Alejandro was the PDC candidate who was forced to concede
defeat to the Arena candidate, Armando Calderon Sol.
The internal cohesion of the party had begun to erode well
before the 1988 elections. While Duarte was struggling to deal
with affairs of state, his own party was polarizing into two
personalistic, competitive factions. One of these factions was
led by Julio Adolfo Rey Prendes, a longtime party member and
associate of Duarte's. The other faction supported Fidel Chavez
Mena, a younger technocrat who had disrupted a seemingly
harmonious and supportive relationship with Duarte by opposing
him for the 1984 presidential nomination. Rey Prendes's faction
was commonly known as "the Ring" (La Argolla) or "the Mafia." The
latter designation, used by members of the faction themselves,
perhaps reflected Rey Prendes's reputation as a backroom
political wheeler-dealer. Chavez's followers were referred to as
institucionalistas or simply as chavistas.
Through his accumulated power within the party, Rey Prendes
was able to influence the nomination of PDC legislative
candidates in the 1988 elections. These deputies served as his
political power base. The chavistas, although frozen out
of the nominations to the Legislative Assembly, rallied to have
their man nominated for president at a party convention in June
1988, but only after an earlier convention dominated by members
of the Rey Prendes faction was ruled invalid by the Central
Electoral Council. Not surprisingly, the earlier convention had
nominated Rey Prendes as the party's standard bearer.
Judging by his public inaction in the matter, Duarte awoke
fairly late to the trouble in his own party. In an effort to
settle the conflict between the two contentious factions, the
president proposed in April 1988 that both Rey Prendes and Chavez
renounce their campaigns for the presidency in favor of a unity
candidate, Abraham Rodriguez. Rodriguez was a founding member of
the PDC who had run unsuccessfully for president in 1967. The
fact that Duarte's attempt at reconciliation was rejected
immediately by both factional leaders demonstrated the
president's diminished status and authority among the party's
ranks.
The decline in the fortunes of the PDC was tragically and
almost symbolically accentuated by the announcement in June 1988
that President Duarte was suffering from terminal liver cancer.
The illness might have explained to some extent Duarte's
faltering leadership of both the government and his party. In any
case, the announcement seemed to punctuate the end of an era in
Salvadoran politics.
Data as of November 1988
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