The FMLN joins the right-wing Arena to face Nayib Bukele in 2024 in El Salvador

It is a pact that has generated surprise in El Salvador. The former guerrilla of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) has joined with its arch-enemies of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) to form a common front to defeat the current president Nayib Bukele in the elections scheduled for 2024. The opposition alliance , which brings together the right-wing parties Vamos and Nuestro Tiempo and civil society organizations, was revealed by the digital newspaper The lighthouse, which reports on negotiations between the groups to decide on a presidential candidacy that has the possibility of defeating Bukele. The president has reacted furiously and harshly criticized the new alliance.

According to the report of The lighthouse, there is still reluctance within the two large Salvadoran political groups about the alliance, which has been promoted by civil organizations, although there is a consensus that it is unfeasible for candidates to be launched under the banners of Arena or the FMLN, given the population’s weariness Salvadoran opposition to the traditional parties, which controlled power for more than 30 years. For the majority of Salvadorans, the decades of government of the conservative ARENA and the leftist FMLN after the return of democracy in 1992 did not represent a real change in the country, on the contrary, both organizations are seen as responsible for the problems of violence and poverty that afflict salvadorans. “The opposition alliance is an initiative of members of organizations and civil society that launched the proposal to the parties and, if materialized, it would become the first major opposition alliance that would present a single candidacy in more than half a century,” reports the diary. Those who promote this alliance “see a real possibility of taking power away from Bukele and his Nuevas Ideas party in the 2024 elections, for which the current president, who already controls the entire state apparatus, has announced that he will seek re-election despite that the Constitution prohibits it in six articles”, explains The lighthouse.

The Salvadoran president announced last September that he will seek re-election in the 2024 elections, after the Constitutional Chamber that he formed authorized his immediate presidential re-election. “After discussing it with my wife Gabriela and my family, I announce to the Salvadoran people that I have decided to run as a candidate for the presidency of the Republic,” Bukele said on that occasion in a message from the Presidential Palace. With the road clear for his re-election, the president has so far taken it for granted that he would not have strong political competition to stay in power, since he commands high approval ratings due to his controversial war on gangs. Bukele, who has tight control of the powers of the State, has maintained a state of emergency in El Salvador for a year, with the military and police forces on the streets in a fight against the so-called maras that has allowed the rates of unsafety. So far, more than 60,000 people have been detained and human rights organizations have denounced abuses and harassment by the authorities.

After learning of the publication, the president reacted furiously to the new alliance. In a broad comment on Twitter, his favorite social network to publicize his decisions, Bukele criticized the new initiative. “In 2019 we said that this would happen, that ARENA and the FMLN would join (ARENA 2.0 we called it at that time); They told us that it was a lie, that their anti-communist ideals, some, and revolutionary, others, would not allow it; that they would never be the same,” the president wrote. “A few years later, they consummate their union. A civil war that left 85,000 dead, a million displaced, 5 decades behind schedule, our infrastructure destroyed, the birth of gangs and false peace agreements, which plunged us into 30 more years of poverty and underdevelopment. They divided a country in two and put us to kill each other, between brothers; financed (both) by foreign powers. All that, and many more things, to end here. God forgive them,” he added. Bukele constantly refers to the civil war that bled El Salvador dry and also to the peace agreements, which he disdains.

In his report, The lighthouse reports that the members of the new opposition alliance have begun negotiations to find a formula that will gather enough sympathy in the electorate to at least subtract enough votes from the charismatic president. “The formula must be proposed by members of civil society who participate in the talks, but the top leaders of Arena, FMLN, Nuestro Tiempo and Vamos, according to four of the sources, have promised to assume the presidential candidacy as their own. that they propose”, informs The lighthouse.

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