Report 2014:

Victoria International Election Observers to El Salvador

Introduction: CASC invited 2 observers to share their experiences & reflections on the 2014 Presidential election in El Salvador. After 2 elections & a recount Salvador Sanchez Ceren was declared winner by 7000 votes. His inauguration will take place on June1.

From Cory Greenlees

In the fall of 2013, the Victoria FMLN club requested volunteers to serve as international observers in the upcoming presidential election. After several meetings, eight of us volunteered and travelled to El Salvador for the February 2, 2014 presidential election.

Most of the delegation spent about ten days in El Salvador. Our responsibilities included monitoring events prior to the election, including press coverage, attending observer training, election day observation, and post election reporting.

Since the end of the civil war, and the signing of peace accords in 1992, international observers have been participating in El Salvador elections. International observers are invited to help ensure elections are fair and transparent. This year, approximately 6,000 international observers, from 33 countries, went to El Salvador to express solidarity and assist with the election.

International observers receive instructions.

On election day, international observers were dispatched to polls all over the country. The task was to witness proceedings in and around voting places. The instructions we received were not to interfere directly but to report questionable activities to local election officials. Intimidation, fraudulent voting, and inaccurate reporting of ballots were issues to be alert to. Thanks to the organization of the Victoria FMLN, our delegation was able to participate fully and contribute to the best of our ability.

Unfortunately, the first round of voting on February 2, did not produce a clear winner. With 49.5%, the incumbent FLMN party garnered 10 points more than the right wing ARENA party but did not get the required 50% +1 majority. A second round of voting takes place on March 9, 2014 and an FMLN win is predicted

FMLN campaign rally San Salvador 2014

Although a second round of voting is required, reports confirm that the February election was transparent and peaceful. The process of democratization continues to advance in El Salvador. Ease and access to voting places increased, fraud was reduced, and attention to human rights, including those of the disabled, gays, and women were enhanced. And no small matter, the 2014 election was the first election campaign in which no one was killed.

An inked finger serves as proof of voting in the presidential election on Feb 2.

While in El Salvador, the Victoria delegation also continued the solidarity work started by CASC, in 2009, with the community of El Milagro. Prior to departure, the Victoria delegation raised about $1600 for El Milagro. The funds were designated for improvements to the community health centre. Once in El Salvador, the delegation delivered the funds and met with people in El Milagro.

The children of El Milagro

Serving as an election observer was fascinating and worthwhile.

If you are interested in participating in the future contact: victoriafmln@yahoo.com

Report by Kevin Neish.

For his full account see: www.kevinneish.ca

The March 9th second round of the Salvadoran election was a close one, with FMLN winning by only 0.22%, a 6,300 vote lead out of 3 million. How did the right wing ARENA party come so close to over taking the FMLN? Well, basically by using lies, threats, intimidation and cheating. In its 2nd round campaign, ARENA simply promised to do everything that the FMLN had already promised or done, usurping their campaign. For example, the FMLN government gave free education, school books, back packs, uniforms, shoes and a daily meal with a glass of milk to every Salvadoran school child.

As can be seen in this photo, ARENA blatantly steals the FMLN program victory, by proclaiming on its billboards that “We Eat Well in School”, showing healthy kids in new uniforms and backpacks, with glasses of milk in their hands, all of which was provided by the FMLN not ARENA.

As part of the intimidation campaign, the pro ARENA media, ran a daily stream of lurid anti-Venezuela articles, suggesting that the same fascist violence was in store for El Salvador, if the FMLN won the election.

I saw wholesale cheating and intimidation by ARENA on election day, at the “Feria Internacional” polling station in San Salvador.

Election rules state that there can be no campaigning within 300 meters of the poll entrance, but here you cannot even see the poll entrance, behind all the

Voters had to line up amongst intimidating ARENA propaganda and goons, just to enter the polling station yard.

But with the support of the majority of Salvadorans, like this vote being counted, the FMLN won, despite ARENA’s cheating, intimidation and lies.

Now we have to do whatever we can to support the new FMLN government against the expected attacks of ARENA and the US government.

Kevin Neish

CASC observer for both 2014 presidential elections.

by James Jordan,

Alliance for Global Justice National Co-Coordinator

The International Network in Solidarity with the Political Prisoners (of which The Alliance for Global Justice is a co-founder) has just received the wonderful news that labor activist, human rights defender and Colombian Political Prisoner Liliany Obando will be released on bond tomorrow from the prison where she has been held for three years and seven months on charges of “Rebellion”.

Liliany Obando was arrested August 8, 2008 while serving as the Human Rights Coordinator for FENSUAGRO, Colombia’s largest organization of peasant farmers and farm workers unions and associations. She was apprehended while finishing a report about the more than 1,500 Fensuagro members who had been killed by Colombian military and paramilitary troops over its first 30 years of existence. She was detained on the basis of evidence allegedly obtained from computers that “miraculously” survived an attack against a FARC encampment across the border from the Colombian Department of Putumayo, in Ecuador. That camp was not a camp carrying out aggressions, but was involved in negotiations toward the release of FARC captives Ingrid Betancourt and three US citizens. The Uribe administration had learned that the camp had had back-channel talks with members of the US State Department. The attack, ordered by then-Defense Minister and current Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, was widely considered to be an attack on hopes for a peace process itself.

Evidence said to be contained in the computers was not credible. The international police agency INTERPOL said that the sources of files the computer contained could not be authenticated. The chain of custody of the evidence was broken and unaccounted for several times during the first days it was seized and at least two Colombian law enforcement personnel testified that the files had been manipulated. Charges against Obando were made on the basis of copies of emails said to have been found on the computer. However, Police Captain Ronald Hayden Coy Ortiz, who oversaw the initial investigation testified in court that the computers contained no email records.

Nevertheless, Obando’s case was stretched out over more than three years without resolution. Even when the Colombian Supreme Court ruled that the evidence against her was inadmissible, she continued to be jailed

But even if the Supreme Court, Interpol and the government’s own witnesses could be ignored, an international campaign for her freedom could not. After years of friend of the court statements signed by such notable supporters as Prof. Noam Chomsky, Sanctuary Movement founder and former President of the Presbyterian Church Rev. John Fife, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin and others, petitions, letters, emails, demonstrations, phone calls and delegations on her behalf, Liliany Obando is finally looking forward to being united with her two children and other friends and family–and to her freedom. It is no mistake that her release was announced concurrent with a major conference in support of the more than 8,000 Colombian political prisoners: the Colombia Behind Bars Forum, with guests from around the world, including representatives of the INSPP and AFGJ. This is yet another example of the power and influence of international pressure!

Nevertheless, all is not settled regarding Liliany’s case. The court process has not been suspended and she still could be sent back to jail. Further, political prisoners released into the general public are often at risk of violence in the first days, weeks and months following their liberty.

I spoke today to Liliany at the Buen Pastor (Good Shepherd) Women’s Penitentiary just moments after receiving the news. I was so happy, overjoyed I could barely contain myself. Lily greeted me, “You heard the good news?” Yes, of course, I’d heard it. I asked her how she was feeling, and she said, “I have mixed emotions. I want to leave, but I don’t want to leave the other political prisoners behind. We have to keep working until all the political prisoners are free.”

Yes, that is the Liliany Obando that so many of us have come to know, love and look up to. Never tiring of the struggle for peace, justice and human and labor rights, the day she entered the prison she started collecting the testimonies of other political prisoners and organizing on their behalf. From within the jail cells, Liliany proposed the establishment of the International Network for the Political Prisoners and always insisted that we not only advocate for her freedom, but for the freedom of all her comrades deprived of liberty. And she insisted that we not just advocate for the freedom of the political prisoners, but for peace in Colombia.

From the beginning, the INSPP has insisted that a first step toward a real and just peace in Colombia will begin with a humanitarian exchange of Prisoners of War, and with the immediate freedom of all of Colombia’s Prisoners of Conscience and Prisoners Due to Judicial Set-ups.

Today there are many indications that a legitimate peace process could be ready to begin in Colombia. The recent announcements that the FARC would release all their current military prisoners met with the release of Liliany are significant. But international pressure must not let up! Now is the time to demand the freedom of all Colombia’s 8,000 political prisoners and, more, for an inclusive peace process based on dialogue and negotiations, and wit
hout unrealistic pre-conditions. And for us in the US, we must demand an end to our country’s sponsorship of war and repression in Colombia, including our funding and restructuring of Colombian prisons where political prisoners are concentrated under harsh conditions.

But as we vow to continue this struggle…let us also take a moment to celebrate this great victory. As Liliany once told me, “By day we struggle, by night we dance!

As a high profile political prisoner, Liliany Obando is under the threat and risk of violence and there has been a request for international accompaniment for her during her first days of freedom. AFGJ and the INSPP are preparing for the possibility of traveling to Colombia to help provide protection. There is also a need to raise more than $3,000 to cover her bond payment.

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