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Democracy Updates
Chronically underrepresented in the political life of El Salvador, women from a cross section of national political parties came together recently in San Salvador to lay out a National Legislative Assembly program to move the nation toward more gender equity.
Thirty-five current and former women legislators attended the forum and set as their priorities promoting a national budget with a gender focus, advancing a law that guarantees equal opportunity for women and men, and a law against femicide, the killing of a woman based on gender, a crime that is not currently recognized and often goes unpunished.
Partner Spotlight
The March 15 victory of Mauricio Funes, candidate of the former guerrilla movement Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, FMLN), marked a new stage in the consolidation of Salvadoran democracy. The victory of President-elect Funes, by a clear margin with 51.3 percent of the vote, creates the first government since the 1992 peace agreement that ended El Salvador’s civil war that is not controlled by the Nationalist Republican Alliance party (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, ARENA).
In-Country Perspectives
NDI recently published the El Salvador 2009 Benchmark Democracy Survey, which measures citizens’ democratic values and perceptions of democracy in their country.
The survey uncovered a number of unexpected attitudes among women and young people, which prompted NDI’s former country director for El Salvador, Alison Miranda, to think about new ways to increase Salvadorans’ levels of political and civic engagement.
El Salvador
Since the end of the twelve-year civil war in 1992, El Salvador has made important progress in advancing national reconciliation, political reform and electoral transparency. At the same time, high rates of crime, poverty, inequality and unemployment, along with declining citizen satisfaction with public institutions and political parties, present significant challenges for the country’s continued democratic consolidation.
In 2009, El Salvador’s municipal, legislative and presidential elections were held in the same year for the first time since 1994. El Salvador’s two largest parties, the Nationalist Republican Alliance party (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, ARENA) and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, FMLN), dominated the elections as they have since the 1992 peace agreement.
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