From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: El Salvador: Proceso 528: Editorial
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 21:43:28 GMT

/** reg.elsalvador: 164.0 **/
** Topic: Proceso 528: Editorial **
** Written 11:39 am  Sep  5, 1992 by cidai@huracan.cr in cdp:reg.elsalvador **
From: cidai@huracan.cr (Centro de Informacion Documentacion y Apoyo a la Invest. - UCAJSC)
Subject: Proceso 528: Editorial

Center for Information, Documentation and Research Support (CIDAI)
Central American University (UCA)
San Salvador, El Salvador
 
PROCESO 528
September 2, 1992
 
EDITORIAL:
The president's strategy around the peace accords
 
     The daily propaganda shows us a president committed to peace
and democratization. The international shows of recognition awarded
exclusively to the president tend to shape the image of a great
statesman with a firm hold on the reins of the peace process.
     On the government side, the cabinet ministers and the military
are the first to step up to the political podium, and generally do
so in order to introduce elements of mistrust and anxiety,
demonstrating their lack of commitment to peace and the
modernization of the country. This lack of commitment is what has
prevented greater progress toward national goals. Meanwhile, the
president remains aloof from the controversies generated among the
two sides. His intercessions are calculated, but to a large extent
come in response to domestic and international pressures.
     Although President Cristiani enjoys fundamental support within
his own party, big capital and the Armed Forces High Command, which
is what allowed him to sign the peace accords, he has no blank
check to comply with the commitments, but is instead subjected to
pressures from these right-wing sectors. The most hard-line
elements have repeatedly tried to block fundamental compliance with
the accords; the more open-minded ones have tried to distort them
or achieve formal compliance. This helps to explain the two crises
to date in the peace accords, as well as the considerable
accumulated delays, to which the FMLN has also contributed by
refusing to comply unilaterally.
     Lacking enough power to comply with the text and schedule of
the accords, President Cristiani lets the right-wing opposition
express his views and struggle for his interests, until it runs up
against the FMLN's firm position and the not-so-firm position of
the nation's political and social forces, as well as rejection on
the part of the international community. When those opposed to the
peace accords lose a battle, only then does President Cristiani
intercede at the negotiating table which controls the schedule of
execution of the peace accords.
     These presidential interventions never manage to provide clear
solutions which could help the accords move forward. In marathon
sessions, the president discusses each one of the pending or
questioned accords down to the last detail, in an attempt to keep
from conceding everything. In the end, he accepts the commitments
made, but not before being subjected to the FMLN's forcible
arguments and international pressure. It thus becomes clear that
President Cristiani will comply with the accords only if strongly
and clearly pressured to do so.
     This complex posture on the part of the president must be
attributed, on the one side, to the lack of massive and total
support from his party, the Armed Forces and big capital, and on
the other, to the president's convictions and interests and those
of his inner circle.
     ARENA's primordial interest is not El Salvador, as one of its
most widely known slogans proclaims, but rather the interests of
the party. ARENA is not interested in compliance with the accords,
but rather in winning the next elections. Its triumph must be
total, because if not, it will be practically impossible to govern
without alliances and compromises. In such a scenario, its party
program would have to be substantially modified. From the party
perspective, it is understandable why ARENA orients its
administration toward winning an absolute electoral victory and
preventing the opposition not only from coming to power, but even
from making any progress in that direction.
     The Armed Forces as a whole is not in favor of the accords.
There is a sector within it which is representative enough to drag
the rest along with it. But even this sector does not appear
willing to take demilitarization to its final consequences or to
put an end to impunity. Maneuvers are taking place within the army
to prevent changes to the structure which traditionally permitted
military hegemony over civil society, and there is clearly a lack
of willingness to confess the truth about human rights violations.
     The capital represented by ANEP is refusing to participate in
the Forum for Economic and Social Consensus-Building, alleging that
the law is being violated; this infers a prerogative over political
life that it does not possess. The government and the president
himself have passively gone along with this posture, showing
themselves wholly incapable of defending the nation's legal
framework. On the other hand, the capitalist sector to which
President Cristiani belongs also does not fully agree with some of
the political and social aspects of the accords, in particular
those which contradict the prevailing neoliberal model and others
which may facilitate the consolidation of the FMLN's social base.
     In complying with the accords, the general interests of the
nation must prevail, as is written into the spirit and letter of
the peace accords. No one right-wing interest can be automatically
identified with the interests of El Salvador. Nor do the FMLN's
interests necessarily coincide, but its political program is closer
to the society projected in the peace accords. This affinity of
interests is correctly perceived by those who are opposed to full
compliance with the accords.
     The Salvadoran social movement must add its voice to the
pressures being applied by the FMLN and the international
community. President Cristiani and his government must be made to
feel that something more than an end to the armed conflict is being
demanded of them. A firm response on the part of the social
movement is fundamental to help contain the presidential strategy
around the peace commitments, and to help politically unmask and
isolate the right wing.
 

** End of text from cdp:reg.elsalvador **

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