Leftist Declared Winner in Salvador’s Election
Source: Time Magazine
El Salvadors electoral court on Thursday declared leftist party candidate and a former rebel commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren the winner of the hotly contested presidential election.
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With 100 percent of the votes counted, the electoral court announced on its website shortly after midnight that Sanchez Ceren, the leftist candidate of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the FMLN, got 50.1 percent of the votes. Norman Quijano, of the Conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance party, known as ARENA, got 49.9 percent support in Sundays runoff.
With about three million ballots cast in Sundays runoff presidential election, Sanchez Ceren won by less than 7,000 votes.
He is the first former rebel commander to win the presidency in the Central American nation. Outgoing President Mauricio Funes was a journalist who was sympathetic to the FMLN rebels during the civil war but was never a guerrilla.
Read more: http://time.com/23322/leftist-declared-winner-in-salvadors-election/
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)gather such a high percentage of the vote
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Our government will of course support their efforts. And the usual lot here will play along.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)to a hypothetical 'destabilization' problem
awesomeness
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Arena has already started in on the first part, so that isn't even a prediction. Which of my two predictions do you find unreasonable?
1. our government will provide support.
2. the usual people here on DU will support the efforts to destabilize the elected government.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)some people use it to mean any expression of discontent with the leadership of any country.
and statements from the US government like "please don't crack the protestors' heads" is taken as support of that destabilization.
There are people here who think that any public protest against anti-US (Maduro) or pro-Russia (Yanukovych) leaders are per se CIA plots, because it is simply unimaginable that the people in those countries could be genuinely dissatisfied with someone who's aligned against the US and NATO.
So, of course your prediction will come true if people are willing to stretch the definitions of certain words
edited to add: if on the other hand you think the Obama administration will support a military coup because ARENA lost the election, you've lost the plot
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2011/0323/In-El-Salvador-Obama-lauds-Funes-as-a-model-Central-American-leader
Oops. Turns out the USG isn't the cartoon rightwing villain it's made out to be in some quarters.
Judi Lynn
(160,217 posts)for the side AGAINST the US-backed monsters there:
MILITARY ATROCITIES: El Salvador
By Megan Boehnke
Posted April 14, 2013 at 4 a.m.
In a 1981 civil war between the conservative government and leftist guerrillas, the United States backed the Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador, which rose to power following a coup detat two years earlier.
In December 1981, U.S.-backed troops visited the village of El Mozote, raping women and girls and interrogating the men using torture before slaughtering more than 800 people. The soldiers buried the bodies and burned down the buildings.
While The New York Times and Washington Post reported the massacre in January 1982, the U.S. and El Salvador governments dismissed the reports as biased and exaggerated and the journalists faced criticism from peers and conservative media-watch groups. In 1992, however, the Chapultepec Peace Accords included a United Nations-sanctioned Commission on Truth for El Salvador to investigate potential human rights abuses committed during the war. The Argentine forensic team began excavations that year, confirming the journalists earlier reports.
In 2011, the Salvadoran government formally apologized for the atrocity. In 2012, the inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the local government to investigate the massacre and bring those responsible to justice, ruling that amnesty laws do not apply.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/apr/14/military-atrocities-el-salvador/
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~snip~
The results of Salvadoran military training are graphically described in the Jesuit journal America by Daniel Santiago, a Catholic priest working in El Salvador. He tells of a peasant woman who returned home one day to find her three children, her mother and her sister sitting around a table, each with its own decapitated head placed carefully on the table in front of the body, the hands arranged on top "as if each body was stroking its own head."
The assassins, from the Salvadoran National Guard, had found it hard to keep the head of an 18-month-old baby in place, so they nailed the hands onto it. A large plastic bowl filled with blood was tastefully displayed in the center of the table.
According to Rev. Santiago, macabre scenes of this kind aren't uncommon. People are not just killed by death squads in El Salvador-they are decapitated and then their heads are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disemboweled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones, while parents are forced to watch.
Rev. Santiago goes on to point out that violence of this sort greatly increased when the Church began forming peasant associations and self help groups in an attempt to organize the poor.
By and large, our approach in El Salvador has been successful. The popular organizations have been decimated, just as Archbishop Romero predicted. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered and more than a million have become refugees. This is one of the most sordid episodes in US history-and it's got a lot of competition.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_ElSalvador.html
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)I am well aware of the horrors the Reagan administration sponsored in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Honduras. That does not mean that the US and Central America are doomed to repeat that pattern.
Judi Lynn
(160,217 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)I'm choosing Oct. 9 of this year, the anniversary of the execution of Che Guevara by US/CIA sponsored Bolivian fascists.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)"We are committed to respecting the official results that are issued by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal," Munguia Payes said. "We repeat that we are committed to strictly respecting the sovereign decision that the people of El Salvador expressed at the ballot box."
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala.... There isn't a pattern of this in Latin America at all. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)As it is, you're using a tired fallacy that ignores the past 30 years of history.
A person better versed in history might acknowledge that the US in the Cold War had a much different agenda and approach to Latin America than it does today.
Or that person would ask of what possible relevance El Salvador is to the Obama administration such that it would be willing to support a coup there.
But such a person would also ask for evidence that the military is planning a coup.
But, go ahead and blame the US government for the reaction it hasn't had to something that hasn't happened, if that entertains you.
Judi Lynn
(160,217 posts)Of course, you're right. It IS a pattern there isn't a prayer of a chance it isn't.
It's been done to DEATH. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of deaths, unfortunately, not to mention the tortures, the hellacious terrorism, and the 10's of thousands of disappearances, and who can forget, certainly not people of conscience, the GENOCIDE?
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Lugo was impeached and removed from office following all lawful procedures by overwhelming majorities (76-1 and 39-4) of Paraguay's elected parliament including all members from his own damn political party. And he was replaced by a leftist.
To call that a coup on level with the cold war abuses of Reagan and Nixon is utterly detached from reality.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/latin-america-views-the-u_n_3672000.html#
Not everyone is stuck in the cold war.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)Even though it has little or nothing to do with the actual subject.
Question: "Pedro, do you feel the USA has had any covert influence in your country's politics and government over the past decade?"
Pedro: "I love America".
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)place in the year 2014 or thereafter, and aftert that I in turn will prove the Obama administration had nothing to do with it.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)As evidenced recent events and revelations.
He's just there to defend them after they get caught.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)but not on Obama?
Zorra
(27,670 posts)could blame him for the pending coup attempt (not necessarily a military coup attempt) as well, but I don't think either would be accurate.
I'm in for October 9th. Pick a date anytime between today and a year from now to enter the pool, but my advice is to give them at least 6 months to set up the coup.
Odds of winning are 1 in 53,468.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Blaming him for something that did not happen.
Thanks for the laugh.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)that causes people to whine and piss and moan and bash the US government for doing something it not only didn't do, but over something that hasn't happened.
Just like your hero Maduro, if you don't have a legitimate reason to complain, you'll just fabricate one.
I suggest you grab your protest sign condemning the US for the 2014 rightwing coup in El Salvador and camp in front of the White House with it. And then find one person who thinks you 're being reasonable .
The good guys won in El Salvador this week, and your reaction is not celebration but a pathological need to find someone to blame, for what you have no idea.
Judi Lynn
(160,217 posts)That's as low and slimy as a person can get.
Democrats are not required to love the immoral, inhuman and inhumane actions which have been taken deliberately by certain people in this government. We are NOT obligated to love what we know to be evil in order to keep P.O.S.'s from labeling us as enemies of the state.
Take your dirty insults and relocate them to where the sun doesn't shine, which could be almost anywhere after your fellow climate deniers destroy our atmosphere.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)But that rather bloodthirsty sentiment explains your support for Maduro . . .
Remember this discussion is about you expressing outrage over the government's role in a FICTIONAL event.
When you start blaming people for doing something you admit that not only they haven't done, but hadn't even happened period, you are hopelessly and profoundly biased against them to the point if not being able to think rationally and objectively about them.
Here's a challenge: start a protest in front of the White House to denounce its role in the events you are imagining, and see if any sane people join you in protesting a make believe tale.
P.s. Your claim that I am a climate change denier is a blatant lie. Please retract and apologize (you can still wish me dead though)
Judi Lynn
(160,217 posts)[center]
And, of course, they make a pompous display of themselves while doing it. [/center]
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Judi Lynn
(160,217 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)Oh lawd, I didn't realize Bill Bennett posted here.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)for its role in the pending zombie apocalypse?
That is every bit as real as the rightwing coup against Ceren.
Go ahead and tell yourselves that bashing someone and blaming them for their role in events you wrote as fiction isn't evidence of bias.
And I'll take the "no us role in a rightwing coup against Ceren in 2014" bet. Not that the absence of said event will prevent you all from blaming the usa/NSA/CIA for that event's imaginary occurrence.
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)I'm still laughing at "reflexive anti-americanism", what was your point again?
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)is per se evidence of reflexive anti-Americanism.
There was no legitimate or honest reason to bash the US regarding the election in El Salvador this week, so people had to conjure up a fantasy in order to do so. Kind of like gun-humpers who blame Obama for taking away their guns.
Especially since the US has enjoyed very good relations with the FMLN over the past 4 years.
Judi Lynn
(160,217 posts)Last edited Fri Mar 14, 2014, 02:03 AM - Edit history (1)
There's no way you can hide behind your wild and reckless footwork, kicking up all the dust you can to cloud the issue. It's as plain as the nose somewhere on your body.
Quickly grabbed references from DU, already posted:
Lessons of the Paraguay Coup
Vinicius Souza and Maria Eugênia Sá
October 16, 2012
Co-opting nationalist soldiers to counter the "red threat" is no longer an essential condition for a successful political overthrow in Latin America. After the failed attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2002 and the long deadlock caused by the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, the usual conservative forcesrural and industrial oligarchies, the leadership of the Catholic Church, mainstream media, and U.S. commercial interestsmanaged to refine the new model for overthrowing popular progressive leaders: parliamentary/media overthrow.
Before removing elected politicians from office, it is necessary to deconstruct their public image through denunciations, whether they be truthful or not, in the mainstream media. Also, lawmakers are enticed by profit sharing in deregulated international businesses in order to ensure a "coating" of legality in the process.
The first victim of this new kind of coup d'état was Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, a former bishop linked to liberation theology, who received more than 40 percent of the vote in 2008 to remove the Colorado Party from office after six decades, which included dictator Alfredo Stroessner's 35 years. During his visit to Brazil for the Rio+20, Lugo was surprised by the opening of an impeachment process (the 24th attempt in four years) that discharged him from office on June 29, in about 36 hours.
The accusations against the president are surreal, ranging from "poor administration of military installations" (due to the cession of a barrack in 2009 for holding a youth event) to incitement of invasion of properties, supporting leftist guerrillas and "attack on sovereignty" (with the signing of the new treaty for the use of Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Plant energy, which was bombarded in Brazil by the local press). Worst of all, though, is that the accusations don't need to be proven true since they are "of public notoriety in conformity with the current public order," according to the Parliament's document.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11086537
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Paraguay's Forgotten Coup
Did a bloody confrontation over land rights lead to a coup against the country's former President Fernando Lugo?
People and Power Last updated: 26 Dec 2013 18:56
~ snip ~
By filmmaker Reed Lindsay
I first went to Paraguay in September 2002, and was shocked by the country's stark inequalities and seemingly brazen corruption.
One narrow street separated the Senate building from a vast slum of tin-roofed shanties. The economy was propped up by the smuggling of cigarettes and other contraband. And in the latest of a series of scandals, the president at the time was discovered to have been using a stolen BMW as his personal limousine. The brutal 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner had come to an end in 1989, but his Colorado Party was still firmly in power, causing many Paraguayans to question the benefits of their fledgling democracy.
But in the countryside, landless campesinos were taking full advantage of the dictatorship's demise. They were organising road-blocking protests and occupying land claimed by powerful businessmen and politicians, acts of defiance that would have been unthinkable under the iron-fisted rule of Stroessner.
However, as in many other Latin American countries, the battle over land in Paraguay played out in relative obscurity.
A decade later, the conflict between campesinos and landowners has taken centre stage politically like nowhere else in the hemisphere, bringing down a president and changing the course of a nation.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110824875
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Déjà Coup All Over Again
The U.S. is silent as Paraguay follows in the steps of Honduras
BY Jeremy Kryt
Diplomatic relations in Latin America were rocked by the ouster of Paraguays President Fernando Lugo on June 22, after a hasty and controversial impeachment trial by the nations Congress.
Governments throughout the region denounced the proceedings as an institutional coup, and moved to sever ties with their soy-exporting, deeply impoverished neighbor. Meanwhile, in the capital of Asunción, schools shut down, shops closed their doors, and crowds of angry demonstrators took to the streets to protest the toppling of the first freely elected president in the countrys history.
Lugo is the third democratically-elected Latin American leader to be targeted for regime change in the last three years. A police-led uprising against the president of Ecuador was successfully put down in September 2010. A year earlier, in June 2009, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped by soldiers and flown out of the country. As in Paraguay, the Honduran Congress was used to legitimize a puppet government.
A moderate leftist and a former Catholic priest, Lugo had been dragged before Congress on vague charges of poor performance. Given 24 hours to prepare a defense, he had just two hours to present his case before the opposition-controlled Senate. The verdict was delivered almost without debate, and the man known as the Bishop of the Poor was told to clean out his officereplaced by Vice President Federico Franco, a member of the far-Right opposition. ..................(more)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101639412
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In the Shadow of Paraguay's Coup: Social Movements Mobilize for Democracy
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10757-in-the-shadow-of-paraguays-coup-social-movements-mobilize-for-democracy
Rain or shine, every Thursday in Asunción, Paraguay, activists gather to protest the right-wing government of Federico Franco, which came to power in a June 22 parliamentary coup against left-leaning president Fernando Lugo. These weekly protests represent a new spirit and strategy of protest in post-coup Paraguay.
The coup gave birth to new corporate agreements, repression of citizens' rights and crackdowns on press freedoms. It also unwittingly created a new panorama of leftist social struggles and movements.
These movements for democracy have risen up against the coup government and the renewed state and corporate assaults on human rights, the environment, and small farmers. Some activists are protesting politically motivated layoffs while others are demanding a new constitution. Beyond questioning the Franco government, these movements are putting forth a progressive agenda in the debate about what kind of country Paraguayans want, regardless of who is in power.
Collective Resistance
"What we are seeing are self-organized protests that are organized collectively," Gabriela Schvartzman Muñoz, the spokeswoman for Movimiento Kuña Pyrenda, a socialist and feminist political movement which organizes the Thursday protests in the capital, explained in a phone interview from Asunción.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11084635
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A soft coup in South America
July 12, 2012
A soft coup in South America
The questionable removal of President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay by the countrys Senate, nine months before the end of his five-year-term in April 2013, raises questions about the state of democracy in South America, much as the coup in Honduras did three years ago for Central America. For a region with a recent transition to democracy, this is worrisome. For a country like Paraguay, dominated until 2008 by 61 years of uninterrupted rule by the Colorado party of General Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), that veritable archetype of the Latin American dictator, this is especially so.
Twenty-odd years into democratic transition and consolidation in Latin America, we were hearing that democracy had stabilised, that the concern was no longer of coups, but of the quality of democracy and the latters ability to deliver the goods and services citizens expected. Free and fair elections were taking place, alternation in power was the rule and civil liberties and press freedom were respected. The real challenge now, we were told, was how to move from these low-intensity democracies, to governments that ensured not just the respect of political and civil rights, but also those of social and economic ones. Latin Americas economic boom over the past decade and the social policies of some governments around the region were starting to make that happen, in a part of the world that continues to have the most unequal distribution of income anywhere.
~snip~
So, how did Paraguay fare under President Lugo? Was the country going down the drain, to hell in a hand-basket under the ministrations of the good bishop?
Well, not really. Although hit, like every other country, by the Great Recession of 2008-2009, in 2010, the Paraguayan economy grew 14.5 per cent, one of the highest rates in the world, comparable to the rates clocked by Singapore or some of the Gulf Emirates, and Paraguays highest in 30 years. It grew again at 6 per cent in 2011, and prospects are upbeat for this year as well. In other words, the country is booming, and doing better than it ever did in the past. This is largely driven by the cultivation of soya, of which Paraguay has become the fourth largest producer in the world, with 8.4 million tonnes in 2011, and some $1.5 billion in exports, much of it to China. President Lugo, aware of the significance of the Indian market for soya as well, had visited India in May. It is said that soya has become so significant that it has replaced smuggling as Paraguays main economic activity.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11084063
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Paraguay: coup backers push for US military bases
Submitted by Weekly News Update on Mon, 07/02/2012 - 23:30.
A group of US generals reportedly visited Paraguay for a meeting with legislators on June 22 to discuss the possibility of building a military base in the Chaco region, which borders on Bolivia in western Paraguay. The meeting coincided with the Congress's sudden impeachment the same day of left-leaning president Fernando Lugo, who at times has opposed a US military presence in the country. In 2009 Lugo cancelled maneuvers that the US Southern Command was planning to hold in Paraguay in 2010 as part of its "New Horizons" program.
More bases in the Chaco are "necessary," rightwing deputy José López Chávez, who presides over the Chamber of Deputies' Committee on Defense, said in a radio interview. Bolivia, governed by socialist president Evo Morales, "constitutes a threat for Paraguay, due to the arms race it's developing," according to López Chávez. Bolivia and Paraguay fought a war over the sparsely populated Chaco from 1932 to 1935, the last major war over territory in South America.
The US has been pushing recently to set up military bases in the Southern Cone, including one in Chile and one in Argentina's northeastern Chaco province, which is close to the Paraguayan Chaco, although it doesn't share a border with Paraguay. Unidentified military sources say that the US has already built infrastructure for its own troops in Paraguayan army installations near the country's borders with Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil; for example, an installation in Mariscal Estigarribia, some 250 km from Bolivia, has a runway almost 3.8 km long, in a country with a very limited air force. (La Jornada, Mexico, July 1, from correspondent in Argentina)
The Chaco is thought to have some oil reserves. Richard González, a representative of Texas-based Crescent Global Oil, announced on June 28 that the company was investing $10 million in the region, starting with exploratory drilling in September or October of this year. The announcement came after Crescent's representatives met with Federico Franco, who was Lugo's vice president before being appointed president by Congress. Supporters of Lugo's ouster claim the investment by the US company could ease Paraguay's total dependence on foreign oil. Venezuela, which supplies 30% of Paraguay's oil, cut off shipments after the removal of the elected president. (Prensa Latina, June 29; La Nación, Paraguay, June 29)
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11243
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[font size=6] ETC., ETC., ETC. [/font]
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)of Paraguay's population (well, somewhere between 90 and 98% if you only count the yes votes) and they did so according to Paraguayan law.
Just because a certain crowd dislikes a result doesn't make it a coup. Heck, you all are already condemning the USA and Obama admin for the 'coup' in El Salvador that only exists in your imaginations.
joshcryer
(62,265 posts)But I fear, naturally, they will embrace the corruption before them. Still, I can't help but be optimistic.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)El Salvador has avoided the disasters that Guatemala and Honduras have suffered.
joshcryer
(62,265 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)As long as he continue the same policies he should be okay. Fucking ARENA is scary though. How do people vote for them?