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Salvador vote ‘a farce’

The March election in El Salvador in
which the ultra-right wing ARENA took
control of the National Assembly and
dozens of communities was neither a demo-
cratic election nor did the outcome reflect
the situation existing in the country, a New
Democrat MP said in Vancouver Friday.

“From my observations, it was a com-
plete farce,” Comox-Powell River MP Ray
Skelly told a news conference April 8.

“Tt was largely carried out for the benefit
of the U.S. so they could justify the expendi-
ture of something in excess of $600 million a
year in the Salvadoran budget for military
expenses to continue the civil war,” he said.

Skelly was part of a Canadian delegation
in El Salvador last month on behalf on
Salvaide, a non-governmental aid group
providing assistance to agricultural co-
operatives and other rural groups in El Sal-
vador.The delegation took down $4,000 in
aid, including $2,500 from the city of Wind-
sor, which is twinned to the Salvadoran
community of Los Vueltas.

The delegation, which included Van-
couver unionist Peter Cameron and Salv-
aide Tepresentative Diane Jacobs, spent 16
days in the region, meeting with various
organizations, travelling to refugee camps
in El Salvador and Honduras and observing
the March 20 elections.

Significantly, the vote was presented
throughout the U.S. media as a sweep for
ARENA which in turn reflected a shift in
support towards the policies of the ultra
right wing group which has been closely
linked to the death squads. The Reagan
administration also stated that the results
were the “ultimate test of democracy.”

But that view is “completely false,”
Skelly declared.

“Where you have civil war, (where) the
army is playing a major role in the govern-
ment, where there are no civil rights, where
people are held without trial and tortured.

_—-.to hold a democratic election in that

avoid these jobs. Here is tradition
again: the man is supposed to be head
of the family, main provider. But this is
largely changing ....

Sara: I see the problem in this
society as being within the home. This
question is not being addressed as fully
as it ought to be. And it needs to be
tackled not within the family
framework, but in society as a whole,
out loud.

One example that occurs to me: a
number of years ago, when my older
son was in grade school, I attended a
parent-teacher meeting where they
announced some new after-hours clubs.
A sewing club for girls and a shop club
for boys. No one reacted to that except
me. But when I got up and said I
wanted my son to learn sewing and my
daughter to learn shop, people began
to support me. They had just never
thought of it from this angle before ....

Mira: Traditional roles. That’s what
we are struggling against.

Irina: I don’t think it’s like that
anymore. My son is in the third grade,
nine years old, and they did a sewing
project for Women’s Day. He made a

very good effort .... —

Larissa: I think people need to learn
to take things in stride. Women can be
many things. They can be mothers and
also return to their jobs when they
wish. They will be better people for this

Fred: You have to admit, though,
that women start from a position of
built-in disadvantage. In this sense I
find the criticisms quite compelling,

a

environment is virtually impossible,” he
declared. j

The delegation was in the capital of San
Salvador just before the elections where
“bombs were going off, there was a trans-
portation strike, the electricity was out, the
water was out and troops in full battle dress
were going through the poorer sections of
town conducting house to house searches.”

Even Salvadoran president Napoleon
Duarte acknowledged that in 19 communi-
ties in the country, there were no elections
because of the intensity of the conflict.

The NDP MP also challenged the
idea — created in media reports through-
out North America and Europe — that
ARENA had won majority electoral sup-
port in the election.

The official elections commission put the
number of eligible voters in the country at
2.2 million, but that figure is highly suspect
because there has been no census in El Sal-
vador since 1970. Opposition politicians
estimate that the actual number is closer to 3
million.

Even of those actually registered to
vote — 1.6 million — only half did get out
to vote. And about half of those, in turn,
cast their ballots for ARENA.

In effect, he said, “about one-eighth of
the people actually voted for ARENA.
There was no massive change — it was just
that Christian Democrats were so fed up
with the corruption of the party that they
had supported that they didn’t get out to
vote. ARENA grabbed a minor amount
and was able to take 200 of the 260 positions
(in municipal elections).”

In the National Assembly, the outcome
was much closer among the three contend-
ing right wing parties — ARENA, the
Christian Democrats and the National
Reconciliation Party (PCN) — but because
of the complex system of dividing up the
votes, ARENA took the majority, captur-
ing 31 seats, while the Christian Democrats
took 22 and PCN nine.

and have not-found enough answers
here. I don’t know myself what the
solutions are. And I think we might
examine the criticism itself, and find
some of it permeated with the premises
of capitalist society.

In Canada, for instance, it is not
only a woman who takes time from her
career to spend with growing children
but anyone, male or female, who
deviates for a few years to pursue a
different interest or life experience, will
fall hopelessly behind in their
profession. Now you have perestroika
here, you can build something entirely
new. Is this what you want?

Irina: We are all different. For some
it’s career first. For others, it may be
anore time for family. Let everyone
have the conditions to choose for
herself ....

Mira: Fred is making an important
point. This criticism, from Canadian
feminists, is coming from a highly
competitive society. They should
understand our context. Soviet society
is not a competitive one. Often we have
seen that Soviet emigres, who go to live
in North America, have great difficulty
adapting to the rat race. Nothing in
their experience has prepared them for
It.

That is why our women do not feel
endangered by these new choices — to
have more time for home life —
because they are not threatened in their
careers. They have a-tremendous
amount of protection in this sphere as
well. We are increasing our choices, not
diminishing them.

RAY SKELLY ... ‘in the

vote held
absence of democracy.’

There are still three seats in dispute which
could alter the balance in the assembly
although Skelly emphasized that “there are
only right wing parties represented.” And
the process itself demonstrates the lack of
democracy, he said, because “it is now three
weeks since the election and we still don’t
know the final outcome.”

“The political value of the election was in
the U.S. where they would justify the continu-
ing aid on the basis that human rights is
improving and that there is democratiza-
tion. In fact neither is the case,” Skelly
emphasized.

Although the international notoriety of
the Salvadoran regime has diminished since
the early 1980s when Archbishop Oscar
Romero was assassinated amid widespread
death squad activity, “the terror still exists,”
he noted.

“Most people including the government
of Canada, now say that the human rights
situation is much better — but that is com-
pletely false,” Skelly emphasized.

“People are systematically arrested.
There is no judicial process once you move

- into that disappeared environment. There is

regular use of torture, both physical and
psychological. There is no hope ... of get-
ting a fair trial. The terror of the early 1980s
still exists.”

He warned that there was likely to be “a
major period of repression” as the govern-
ment seeks to seize the initiative and step up
its offensive against the increased activity
and strength of trade unions, student
groups and other democratic organizations.

Despite that threat, various popular
organizations “were telling us that they
don’t care what the government repressions
is,” he added.

“One group. told us that they would
rather be killed in their offices fighting for
their rights than be killed in prison.”

Skelly has urged that representatives of
Canadian organizations travel to El Salva-
dor, noting that their presence has fre-
quently stayed the hand of the Salvadoran
regime.

The delegation’s visit to the refugee camp
at Colomoncagua, just across the border in
Honduras, also dramatized the new danger
posed by U.S. interference in the region and
by the American-backed Nicaraguan con-
tras.

Before they arrived in camp, it had been
machine-gunned for four hours “in an
unprovoked attack” by the Salvadoran
armed forces. Four refugees were killed
while another 60 were wounded. There have
also been other attacks although the camp
population, mainly older men and women
and children, pose no threat to the regime.

The only reasonable explanation, he
noted is that the U.S. “is seeking along with
the Honduran government to push refugees
out of Honduras in an effort to militarize
the whole northern border of El Salvador.”

Using contras no longer needed in Nica-
ragua as a mercenary force, the U.S. could
create a military force along the Honduran
border, trapping the guerilla forces of the
FMLN between the Honduran army,

_ backed by mercenaries, and the Salvadoran

army.

The result would be renewed conflict in
the region and the renewed U.S. interven-
tion, he said.

, lonely courage of Mordechai Vanunu.”

Clemency

for Vananu
pressed

Twenty world-renowned scientists,
including 12 Nobel Prize winners,
have appealed to Israel for clemency
for nuclear scientist Mordechai
Vanunu who was sentenced March 27
to 18 years in prison for revealing that
Israel had secretly developed atomic
weapons.

Calling Vanunu a “man of con-
science,” the 20 submitted a petition
to Israeli authorities which declared:
“No greater regard can be shown by
the court for the decent opinion of
mankind than by acknowledging the

His only crime, the petition stated,
“was that he could not in all con-
science, maintain silence about a pro-
gram of nuclear weapons in his
country.”

Among those signing the appeal
were Nobel laureates John Polanyi,
Dorothy Hodgkin, Carl Sagan and
Linus Pauling.

They called on Israel to “recognize
that Mordechai Vanunu is a man of
conscience, deeply disturbed by his
role in a nuclear weapons program,
who first sought religious guidance
and then decided to make public his
concerns.

“This act — of making public the
reality of Israel’s nuclear program —
deserves the court’s understanding
and its perception of a moral impera-
tive seized by scientists of conscience
throughout the world,” the appeal
declared.

Vanunu’s lawyer, Avigdor Feld-
man, who had argued throughout the
case that the court had no jurisdiction
because Vanunu had been kidnapped
and brought illegally to Israel, said he
would launch an appeal to the High
Court of Justice.

Vanunu, 34, worked as a nuclear
technician for eight years in Israel’s
top-secret Dimona nuclear research
station before leaving Israel in 1985.
The following year, he provided pho-
tos and documents to the London
Sunday Times, enabling them to
prove ina series of feature reports that
Israel had secretly developed nuclear
weapons.

The reports bared Israel’s status as
the sixth-ranking nuclear power in the
world, with more than 200 warheads
in its nuclear arsenal. The Israeli
government has refused to confirm or
deny its nuclear status and refuses to
sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. The country also has a secret
nuclear accord with South Africa.

Only days after the story appeared,
Vanunu was lured to Rome by an
agent of the Israel secret police, Mos-
sad, where he was drugged and taken
illegally back to Israel aboard a cargo
ship from the northern Italian port of
La Spezia.

Barred from public contact in
Israel, Vanunu at one point scrawled
the message on his hand that he had
been kidnapped and held it up to the
window of the military vehicle trans-
porting him as he passed by reporters.

The trial itself was held entirely
behind closed doors, purportedly to
protect military secrets, and defence
witnesses were warned that they too
would face penalties if they revealed
any details outside the courtroom.
Vanunu himself has been forced to
wear a crash helmet while in transit to
make it more difficult for photo-
graphers to take his picture.

Pacific Tribune, April 13, 1988 « 9