After the electoral debacle, it is crucial that the parties re-establish themselves

Faced with the results of the recent elections, the opposition parties have accepted defeat and must develop again in the face of the increasingly apparent decline.

The February 28 parliamentary elections changed the political map in El Salvador and left the traditional parties ARENA and FMLN with their vote flow down to 79% compared to the last election.

For example, the FMLN peaked in 2009 when it reached over 900,000, but it started to decline in 2012 and suffered its most resounding decline in 2018, dropping to 175,000 votes.

In light of these results, Óscar Ortiz, FMLN General Secretary, acknowledged on March 1 that the election results were becoming increasingly unfavorable and that it was “an irreversible trend” since 2015.

You can consult the following: Results of the 2021 elections for mayors and deputies

Faced with this latest coup, the Ephemelenista leader warned that they will change the statutes and rebuild the left party according to the present time.

The FMLN was in full swing from its first election participation in the country in 1994, on that occasion they obtained 21 seats, they managed to be the second Salvadoran political force, where they gained a significant quota in its second election participation in 1997. of legislative and municipal power and by 2006 they had 32 legislators in the Legislative Assembly until they were in government for 10 years.

On the ARENA side, the decline was less, but it also lost votes. For example, in 2018 it counted more than 800,000 votes, but this 28F dropped to 295,000 votes.

That is why the Tricolor Party has stated that it is aware that the results of the last elections are not favorable for them and attributes this to the fact that the country has concentrated more power in the

Executive, but admits they will make changes to the party to seek out “responsibly” new forms of communication with the population to listen to their needs.

Eduardo Escobar, Executive Director of Acción Ciudadana, believes the opposition parties have acknowledged their defeat and are talking about reforms to their institutional framework, but it has not been heard that the leaders will leave their positions. “It’s a question that should have been mentioned and done,” he explains.

“(The parties should) set up a transition committee so that it is the one leading a process of institutional realignment and analysis, because if not what is going to happen is what has always happened after an electoral defeat, that the parties that make them alone “cosmetic adjustments,” there is no depth towards the party, it looks like changes are being made, “said Escobar.

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It indicates that it has received no real and firm recognition from the opposition parties of the responsibility they have for the situation they find themselves in, while instead hearing voices blaming third parties for what happened and not compelling accept responsibility of the party. bad management they have done.

Escobar notes that even, in his analysis, the parties chose civil society organizations or the Constitutional Chamber for what happened in the elections, when in reality they are the result of years of mismanagement by the parties.

“I think if the leaders go ahead and make some cosmetic changes there, they will show us that they have not learned or understood anything. I would be seriously inclined to think that the parties have not yet understood, they have not understood the message that the population has been telling them. This should not only be seen as a situation to analyze the internal circumstances of the party, but should also include changes and evaluation of what people think in this analysis, ”said Escobar.

Carlos Mauricio Hernández, professor in the Department of Philosophy at José Simeón Cañas Central American University, said in an interview with the medium Infobae that “the fundamental reason for this change in electoral preferences is due to the failure of both ARENA and the FMLN . in an outrageous way in all three major flags that characterize the Salvadoran electorate: bread, peace and work ”.

He added that “neither in the twenty years of governments of the right nor in the ten years of the left was a society achieved in which the majority had decent living conditions, security or jobs with fair wages. It is no coincidence that the FMLN is almost disappearing ”.

Also read: Which ARENA delegates were no longer reelected?

In addition, researcher Jeannette Aguilar, also consulted by Infobae, added another ingredient that influenced the sharp drop in votes for opposition parties: Nayib Bukele’s campaign.

To his electoral strategy to take advantage of the saturation with the traditional parties was added a massive and millionaire marketing campaign, along with the overt and scandalous use of the government apparatus to convert in favor of his party, leaving no margin for competition. and made the rest of the participants invisible, ”Aguilar explained.

Parties in decline or in need of reorganization

Eduardo Escobar says that in this case it is necessary to conduct an analysis of brands that talk about parties like ARENA, FMLN, PCN and PDC as if they were talking about a commercial issue, for example where a product could be very good. but if it’s from a bad brand it won’t increase sales of the product, “we don’t know if the ARENA and the FMLN political brands can still be rebuilt, oxygenated and still valid, this is part of what the political parties have to do, they have to do the analysis whether the brand can still sell, be viable as an option for the electorate, ”he explains.

He notes that if that brand no longer has support to bring it back to market, no matter how much investment or changes it makes, it won’t rise. They should not only do this analysis within the parties, but also take to the streets, to the population and ask how much chance there is that people will again believe in these ‘political brands’, and that they are a ‘no’ of the population. the game can be changed over time with various actions or can certainly not be continued.

As for thinking about re-establishing parties, in the case of the FMLN party, one should not just think about re-creating a party from the left, or in the case of parties known as the right wing, the question is first of all to know “whether the citizens still occupy them at the ideological location as a form of positioning”, or whether the voters no longer see that they identify with the left or the right.

You can read: The FMLN has started to lose voters since 2009 and ARENA in 2021

“People no longer position themselves as I am from the left or I am from the right, so and they show up with a left party, this is doomed to fail. You have to first see if people are still positioning themselves in those terms of left or right and when people use these categories it has to see the target audience they could have, ”he says.

He adds that as new parties are re-established, they should also pay attention to the reality that they have to submit their proposal based on the thinking of the population, observe more what they are looking for for their improvement, whether it be laws, forms and lifestyles. .

“It seems that these parties have not adapted to the new era, this does not mean that they are putting aside their principles and values ​​but that they have to adapt it to the new generations and new realities, such as the commercial brands that remain. according to the criteria, the perception and the desires of the people for their product, and therefore they remain between the preferences of the population, and those who could not adapt, were lost, ”he explains.

He notes that if the political parties do not connect with the logic and desires of the citizens, they will remain “frozen in time” and speak to an electorate that does not exist, they are not speaking to those who are going to vote, and this presupposes that this is what the political parties have failed to understand, also according to statements by political analyst Álvaro Artiga, who mentions that there is a “generational shift” affecting the traditional parties. “Our parties spoke to an electorate that no longer exists, this is what happened,” said Escobar.

Decline of the parties in power

The PDC chairman Rodolfo Parker recognized on March 2 the results of the election, a party founded in 1960 where its role will always be to seek the common good, its leader said.

As to whether changes will take place in the party, Parker said that “every political party has an imperative duty to respond to the times, in a healthy combination of experience with a guarantee of renewal.”

As for the PCN Party, which was a strong political institution at the same time in the 1960s and controlled several governments until 1979, so far has not made any official statements as to whether changes will come to self-sustain over time. can maintain. .

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Eduardo Escobar mentions that these traditional festivals had their heyday. “They ran out of patience (for the population) they gave ARENA space because they didn’t trust the FMLN, then they broke that barrier, they gave power to the FMLN, they ratified it in the next election, but they saw that they did. did not change their living conditions, they saw that the government was not benefiting them, they said no more then, they were running out of patience, ”he says.

He adds that it will be with the current administration to see if this same phenomenon occurs, where the population believed, supported but not getting a blank check, it is to see if citizenship behaves like this after the experience with previous governments of other parties.

“I believe that with the former president (Antonio) Saca, the population no longer gave a blank check to ARENA, while (Salvador) Sánchez Cerén did not give a blank check to the FMLN, due to the degree of non-compliance and dissatisfaction. then, it was no longer what we do, people will eventually vote for us, and you can’t see it that way, ”explains Escobar.

He explains that in the case of New Ideas and President Nayib Bukele, they are not talking to the population about ideologies, which they have made clear, and the key that the Salvadoran president used before becoming the population. ”He did not speak of the left or the right. to be.