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Showing posts with label press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label press. Show all posts
Por Ramón Jiménez
Simpatizantes y afiliados del Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) del Distrito de Columbia, Maryland y Virginia celebraron el ascenso a la Presidencia de la República de El Salvador por segunda vez consecutiva.
La toma de posesión de la Primera Magistratura por parte del profesor y excomandante guerrillero Salvador Sánchez Cerén tuvo lugar este domingo 1 de junio en el Centro Internacional de Ferias y Convenciones de San Salvador.
La celebración en la región metropolitana de Washington tuvo como escenario la sala de recepciones de la Iglesia Episcopal San Mateo en la localidad de Hyattsville, Maryland que se vio abarrotada por decenas de personas que lucían banderas alusivas al partido izquierdista así como camisetas o vestidos completos de rojo brillante.
Fuente: www.metrolatinousa.com
Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Salvadoran President-Elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren,
Around 5 pm today, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Salvadoran President-Elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren at the Department of State.
In the meeting, Mr Kerry said to Mr. Sanchez Ceren that the US considers El Salvador an important ally in the region not just as partner in security matters, but also in economic terms. Due to its large Salvadoran population in the United States, El Salvador is the third country with whom the US exchanges more services, products and information after Mexico and Canada.
Sanchez Ceren, on his part, invited Mr. Kerry to visit El Salvador for his inauguration ceremony on June 1, 2014 and to speed up the $261 Million Second Compact from the Challenge Corporation Account, which Mr. Kerry presides.
In Press Conference, Sanchez Ceren said that his visit to U.S. was fruitful and saluted the Salvadoran community, the largest latino group in the Washington metropolitan area.
Mr. Sanchez Ceren is expected to return to El Salvador at 5:00 am on Tuesday.
FMLNUSA
We share with you the Future: FMLNs Next Generation, Foreign-Born.
On April 26th, 2014 the FMLN's leadership in Washington, DC. gathered some of their young base to show that the party has a bright future.
Here is the result:
Sanchez Ceren, in an official trip to Washington, will meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry this Monday May 12, at the State Department.
John Kerry has confirmed the meeting with Sanchez Ceren and said that the US will continue to work with El Salvador on a variety of issues, including migration, economic development, security in the region and other bilateral matters of great importance for both countries.
President-elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren, is accompanied by appointed Chancellor Mr. Hugo Martinez; Technical Secretary of the Presidency Roberto Lorenzana and Ambassador of El Salvador in Washington, Rubén Zamora.
After winning the elections in El Salvador, Sanchez Ceren has visited the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, and His Holiness Pope Francisco in the Vatican and a tour throughout Central America.
The Pope Francis met this Friday with Salvadoran President-Elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren, at the Vartican in Rome, in a historical visit in which the ex-guerrilla commandant thanked the Pontif’s efforts to the beatification of San Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero.
Romero, 62, was killed on March 24, 1980 by death squad members supported by the military when celebrating mass in his Church La Divina Providencia in San Salvador.
His canonization process began in 1994 and, after several years of stagnation, Francisco reactivated the cause in 2013 to beatify and make Romero become the first saint in Salvadoran history.
The audience, at the Pontiff 's Private Library at the Vatican Papal Palaces, lasted for 30 minutes, after which the president-elect said he was " very happy to meet with a Pope so loved by the Salvadoran people ."
Sanchez Ceren asked the Pope’s blessing for his presidency, which begins the first of June, 2014.
The President-Elect kissed the Pope’s ring, as part of the protocol, and reiterated that he was "very happy to be for the first time in the Vatican with the Pope, to whom he gave a painting of the figure of Archbishop Romero, painted by famous artist Joshua Villalta .
He also presented a stole made by artisans of La Palma, in the north of El Salvador, who specialized in making guerrillas combat clothing during the civil war.
The Pope, meanwhile, gave Sanchez Ceren a medallion of a saint and document of the V General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM ) in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007.
At parting, Francisco wished a speedy recovery of Margarita Villalta, Sanchez Ceren’s wife, who came to the Vatican walking with a cane due to surgery practiced on her left leg.
The five-person delegation that accompanied Sanchez Ceren were Foreign Minister, Jaime Miranda, Margarita, his wife and two diplomatic representatives accredited to the Vatican.
Sanchez Ceren , 69, who is Catholic , will be the first former guerrilla to come to power in El Salvador and the fourth in Latin America, after Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, José Mujica Uruguayan and Brazilian Dilma Rousseff.
FMLNUSA
As part of Sanchez Ceren campaign’s promise to protect human dignity through a social agenda, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly approved the Social Development and Protection Law on April 3. The law was presented by President Mauricio Funes last year to ensure that the groundbreaking social services initiated by his administration continue.
These programs are designed to address the needs of historically abandoned and excluded sectors. The law mandates a “legal framework for human development, protection and social inclusion that promotes, protects and guarantees the fulfillment of people’s rights”.
It specifically targets Salvadorans living in poverty or facing discrimination, and gives special priority to children, women, young people, the elderly, people with disabilities and indigenous people.
Guillermo Mata, a legislator from the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), said: “We are guaranteeing a series of human rights for people, not as a handout, but as a right.”
Among the wide range of social initiatives now cemented into law are: free uniforms, shoes, and school supplies as well as school meals and a daily glass of milk for all public school children; the Ciudad Mujer (Women’s City) service centers that provide reproductive and mental healthcare, legal support, childcare and employment training for women; pensions for impoverished senior citizens; the Family Farming Plan, which provides seeds, supplies and technical support to small-scale farmers; and a free, comprehensive public healthcare system for all.
During the electoral campaign, president elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren said that if he won the presidential election, the current social programs would continue and new law would be enacted to further protect the neediest and poorest in El Salvador.
“What we are doing is starting to implement some of the promises of the campaign today rather than tomorrow”, said the candidate in his twitter account.
The cost of the official inauguration of the Government of president-elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren this coming June 1 has been reduced to $983,000, Roberto Lorenzana, new Secretary of Economic Affairs, said yesterday.
At first it, the Legislature had approved $1,404,970 for the official ceremony. But Sanchez Ceren said that that was too high, and unacceptable for country like El Salvador and instructed the transition team to reduce the costs.
Lorenzana also confirmed that the inauguration act will be held at El Salvador’s International Convention Center. After that, a popular gathering will take place in which Sanchez Ceren will share with fellow Salvadorans the beginning of his Administration.
With the 30% reduction in the budget ordered by Sanchez Ceren, the act will become the most austere presidential inauguration in the history of El Salvador, well below the $2 million average of the past 5 inauguration ceremonies.
Madrid, Mar 31 (EFE).- A Spanish judge decided Monday to continue the investigation into the murder of five Spanish Jesuits in El Salvador in 1989 despite Spain's recent enactment of a law limiting the application universal jurisdiction.
But in a nod to the new standard, National Court Judge Eloy Velasco dropped the crimes-against-humanity charge against a score of Salvadoran military officers, while maintaining the accusation of terrorist murder.
The law that took effect earlier this month mandates that crimes against humanity committed outside Spanish territory may be prosecuted in Spain only if the alleged perpetrators are Spaniards or foreigners who acquired Spanish citizenship after the commission of the offense.
Besides quashing one of the accusations, the judge has to restrict his investigation to the murder of the five Spaniards among the eight people who were slaughtered.
Velasco decided to move forward with the case despite the fact that universal jurisdiction mandates that all existing probes be shelved, pending a finding that the case meets the new standards.
He said that he felt the reform is "illogical" because, in his judgment, it is "contradictory" that a judge should shelve a case and then decide if it meets the new standards.
Velasco said the only person who may decide whether or not to continue with a case is the investigating magistrate.
In complying with the reform, the judge also asked Spain's Supreme Court to determine if the trial held in El Salvador for the killings was a fraud, as Velasco believes, in which case he would conclude that the murders have not been investigated properly.
On Nov. 16, 1989, Salvadoran soldiers invaded the Central American University campus in San Salvador and killed then-chancellor Ignacio Ellacuria and four other Spanish priests: Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Amando Lopez and Juan Ramon Moreno, along with Salvadoran Jesuit Joaquin Lopez.
Also slain were a cook and her 16-year-old daughter.
Only two of the 14 members of the Salvadoran military who stood trial in September 1991 for the murders were found guilty. Though sentenced to 30 years in prison, they were released thanks to the 1993 amnesty.
Sanchez Ceren’s pick of businessman Tharsis Solomon Lopez as Minister of Economy generates trust in the private sector in El Salvador.
The arrival of businessman Tharsis Solomon Lopez as incoming Minister of the Economy has generated great expectations among analysts and business people, because they see it as a sign of building good working relations between the new government and the private sector.
The continuity of businessman Carlos Caceres as Finance Minister also generates trust from the entrepreneurial class in El Salvador.
Lopez, former vice president of the Salvadoran Association of Industrialists (ASI), one of the unions which together with the ANEP (National Association of Private Enterprises) made sharp criticism of the Funes Administration, now will have in their hands the relevant Ministry of Economy. And that, analysts say, is a plausible sign that Mr. Sanchez is trying to build a government of consensus to work shoulder to shoulder with the private sector in El Salvador.
FMLNUSA
- Finance Minister, Carlos Cáceres
- Foreign Relations Minister Hugo Martinez
- Minister of Public Works: Gerson Martinez
- Environment Agency (Minister) Lina Pohl
- Minister of Economy : Salomón Lopez Tharsis
- Minister of Tourism: Jose Napoleon Duarte
- Secretary of Economic Affairs: Roberto Lorenzana
- Private Secretary: Manuel Melgar
- Secretary for Governance and Policy Dialogue: Hato Hasbun
Sanchez Ceren said that in the coming days he will announce the rest of the cabinet staff.
Sanchez Ceren calls for austerity in his Presidential Inauguration in El Salvador
Following the controversy generated by the reallocation of $ 1.4 million for the ceremony of the transfer of presidential power, the elected president of El Salvador, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, requested the Transition Committee to set austerity measures and reduce costs for the ceremony.
The Presidential Inauguration is expected to take place next June 1, in San Salvador.
"I urge the Transitional Committee to work with austerity, rationality and to seek options to reduce costs in the budget of the ceremony of June 1st." said FMLN’s Sanchez Ceren in his Twitter account.
After Supreme Court of Justice rejects the appeal of vote by vote recount, Arena accepts electoral defeat.FMLN's Sánchez Cerén won presidential elections with 50.11% of the vote, defeating San Salvador Mayor Norman Quijano (49.89%) of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) had declared Sánchez Cerén the winner on March 16, but Quijano’s party filed an appeal, claiming voting irregularities. The TSE ruled there was “no basis” for the appeal.
ARENA appealed then to the Supreme Court, seeking a manual recount of the votes. But the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, in a split decision yesterday evening, rejected the appeal presented by ARENA.
The resolution of appeal dismissal was supported by the magistrates Florentin Melendez, Sydney Blanco and Eliseo Ortiz, while Belarmino Jaime and Rodolfo Gonzalez voted to study the request.
ARENA accepts electoral defeat
ARENA in an official press release announced that they accept and abide by the electoral result of March 9th, 2014.
"We abide by the decision of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice declaring inadmissible the action presented by our Party requesting the recount" reads the press release made public yesterday around 5:00 pm (El Salvador Local time)
FMLN-USA
US State Secretary John Kerry: "We congratulate Salvador Sanchez Ceren on his election as president"
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
March 25, 2014
We congratulate Salvador Sanchez Ceren on his election as president, and we particularly congratulate the Salvadoran people for their participation in a process that the OAS election observer mission called calm and orderly.
We recognize that there are pending legal matters, and we urge continued respect for the legal processes and institutions of El Salvador.
El Salvador is a country and a people that I first got to know well as a freshman Senator, and it is a relationship that remains just as important to me as Secretary of State. The United States looks forward to working with President Salvador Sanchez Ceren and to continuing joint efforts to promote security and economic development through the Partnership for Growth. Our longstanding partnership and commitment to El Salvador and the Salvadoran people continues.
Source: http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/03/223902.htm?goMobile=0
The Electoral Cout said Mr Sanchez Ceren won 50.11% of the votes in the 9 March poll, defeating conservative candidate Norman Quijano, who polled 49.89%.
Mr Quijano had challenged the result, alleging fraud.
But the court's decision makes Mr Sanchez Ceren the country's first ex-rebel to serve as president.
On Sunday, the court said that there was not enough evidence to back Mr Quijano's claim.
"Based on the results, Salvador Sanchez Ceren and Oscar Samuel Ortiz are declared president and vice-president elect respectively, for the period from 1 June 2014 to 1 June 2019," court president Eugenio Chicas was quoted as saying by Reuters.
The country's outgoing President Mauricio Funes said he would meet Mr Sanchez Ceren later on Monday to begin the handover process.
Mr Sanchez Ceren became vice-president of El Salvador in 2009, while Mr Quijano was the mayor of the capital, San Salvador.
Source: BBC
El Salvador concludes an election considered transparent (ó El Salvador concludes a transparent election)
The Embassy of El Salvador in the United States reports that, after the run-off voting, held on March 9, 2014, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) concluded the official count, which showed the following results:
• FMLN : 50.11 % ( 1,495,815 votes)
ARENA : 49.89 % ( 1,489,451 votes)
Difference: 0.22 % ( 6,364 votes)
Disputed : 3,198 votes
Null : 19,579 votes
• A total of 3,008,043 Salvadorans casted their vote in the second round, while in the first round 2,741,074 people casted their votes. It is worth to mention that this situation is atypical, as in most runoff elections, the second round experiences a decrease rather than an increase in voting turnout.
• The 2014 presidential election has been a historic election for two reasons: first, it Salvadorans abroad were able to cast their vote, and is the election that has experienced the greater voting turnout.
With the provisional results, the TSE could not declare a new president-elect, since it can only do so after the final count. We hope that the TSE would declare a new president-elect in the next 48 hours, if no party submits resources.
The Ambassador of El Salvador to the United States, Ruben Zamora, highlighted the speed with which the results we publicly reported, both, the preliminary ones which were reported on the day of the election, and the final ones reported at the end of the official count. "This speaks highly of our system. Everything has been done under our legal framework and following the dictates of the Electoral Code. The provisional ballot was completed in less than six hours, the night of the election, and the final was completed within 43 hours, "said the diplomat.
"It is important to mention the presence of international observers who followed the electoral process thoroughly and who highlighted the transparency of the process," said Ambassador Zamora, who also mentioned the presence in the process of delegations from the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of American States (OAS), who issued a statements in which they described the process as reliable. Even the State Department of the United States‘ spokeswoman, Jean Psaki, acknowledged that international observers endorsed the Salvadoran elections, and made a call to complete the process peacefully.
The final count began on Tuesday March 11, 2014, when 23 tables began to review the 10,445 records. Each table consisted of: 4 members of every Departmental Electoral Board (2 per political party), 1 representative of each political party in contention, 1 delegate of the Attorney General's Office, 1 member of the Attorney’s office for the Defense of Human Rights (PDDH) and 1 member of the Board of Election Monitoring (JVE) of the contending parties.
Additionally, the official count was observed by four representatives of the Electoral Observation Mission of the Organization of American States (OAS), two of the European Union (EU) and the Embassy of the United States of America in El Salvador accredited four official who visited the counting tables.
The Embassy would like to clarify that the request for recounting every vote, made by one of the participating parties, is against Article 214 of the Electoral Code, which reads: "To the extent that the tribunal (TSE) receives the records and documents referred in previous article, it will proceed to the final count, in the manner it considers appropriate, taking as the sole the original closing records and the scrutiny of each of the polling stations. "
Moreover, the petition of the same party for the purposes of reviewing the challenged ballots also contradicts the Electoral Code, which establishes in Article 215 the following: "The court may only order the revision of ballots of one or more polling stations when the sum of the challenged ballots exceeds the outcome of the vote of the municipality or Department, so that they can to change the first outcome. "This time, the number of challenged votes (3,198 votes) is less than the difference between first and second place (6,364 votes).
We are convinced that this election represents a step forward in the institutionalization and consolidation of our representative democracy.
Source: El Salvador's Embassy in Washington, DC.
The party said it submitted evidence of fraud to the attorney general’s office.
International election monitors and Attorney General Luis Martínez González have said there was no sign of wrongdoing during the election.
"Deseo felicitar al pueblo salvadoreño por su fuerte y pacífica participación en la elección presidencial del pasado domingo. Su compromiso al proceso democrático es inspirador y fortalecerá al país en los años venideros.
Han sido alentadores para mí los reportes de numerosas misiones de observadores internacionales, incluyendo la misión de la Organización de Estados Americanos, que señalan que la elección del 9 de marzo se desarrolló con altos grados de transparencia y eficacia, sin fraude, representando así una evolución positiva en la historia democrática de El Salvador.
La Corte Suprema Electoral, la máxima autoridad electoral de El Salvador, debe ser aclamada por su esfuerzo de guiar al país durante el periodo tenso en el que se llevó a cabo el conteo final. El Tribunal ha mostrado un alto grado de imparcialidad, respeto para todos los partidos, y transparencia para el público, la prensa, y la comunidad internacional. Es importante que todos los actores políticos acepten los resultados una vez que éstos sean anunciados oficialmente.
Espero con entusiasmo la continuación de la fuerte alianza de Estados Unidos con El Salvador y su presidente entrante."
Office of Congressman Jim Moran
RHOB 2252
Moran Praises Democratic Progress in El Salvador
Washington D.C. -- Representative Jim Moran, Northern Virginia Democrat, Ranking Member on the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee and senior member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, today released the following statement on the results of El Salvador’s recent Presidential elections:
“I wish to congratulate the Salvadoran people for their robust and peaceful participation in Sunday’s presidential election. Their commitment to the democratic process is inspiring and will strengthen the nation going forward.
“I was heartened by reports from numerous international observer missions, including the Organization of American States, that the March 9th election was carried out with high degrees of transparency and efficiency, without fraud, representing a positive evolution in El Salvador’s democratic history.
“The Supreme Electoral Tribunal, El Salvador’s highest electoral authority, should be applauded for their efforts to shepherd the country through a tense period while the final vote count was being carried out. The Tribunal has shown a high degree of impartiality, respect for all parties and openness to the public, the media and the international community. It is important that all political actors accept the results once they are made official.
“I look forward to the U.S. continuing its strong partnership with El Salvador and the country’s incoming president.”
Office of Congressman Jim Moran
RHOB 2252
But the opposition National Republican Alliance (ARENA) countered that the leftist Sanchez Ceren's victory in Sunday's run-off was "illegitimate," setting the stage for an acrimonious dispute in the Central American country, which is still traumatized by civil war.
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal said Sanchez Ceren, a former rebel commander of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), won 50.11 percent of the vote while ARENA candidate Norman Quijano, a conservative, received 49.98 percent.
With such a narrow victory, the president-elect's first words were a promise to "work to unite the country."
"Let's build together a more inclusive, more developed country where we can have a decent home and life for all," Sanchez Ceren said.
A victory rally was called for Saturday night in the capital San Salvador.
Sanchez Ceren, who is to be sworn in June 1, takes on a highly polarized population plagued by gang violence, rampant poverty and an economy that grew just 1.9 percent in 2013.
- Opposition cries foul -
The electoral tribunal had conducted a manual count of the votes at the request of Quijano, who also had demanded that the results be nullified because of alleged fraud.
ARENA, which has three days to appeal the outcome, remained bitterly unsatisfied after the tribunal announced the final result, which was identical to a preliminary result announced Sunday.
"There is an illegitimate winner of a corrupt process with an overseer of the process that was in charge of covering it up from the start and which enjoys no credibility," ARENA vice president Ernesto Muyshondt said, referring to the tribunal.
Sanchez Ceren, 69, had been favored to win the run-off by as many as 10 percentage points, so the tight margin came as a big surprise to many.
He served as vice president under President Mauricio Funes, who came to office in 2009 at the head of El Salvador's first leftist government, ending two decades of right-wing rule.
Sanchez Ceren was one of five top guerrilla commanders during the 1979 to 1992 civil war, and the first to be elected president.
The FMLN and ARENA were the main protagonists of that conflict.
After the rebels laid down their arms, the FMLN became a legal political party.
Quijano, 67, the mayor of the capital San Salvador, was a law-and-order candidate and staunch anti-communist who campaigned against the country's high crime rate and the notorious "mara" street gangs behind much of El Salvador's drug dealing and extortion.
Quijano, however, suffered from his links to ex-president Francisco Flores, a former campaign adviser under scrutiny over $10 million donated by Taiwan that went missing during his 1999 to 2004 government.
After the civil war, El Salvador found itself facing violence from street gangs which control whole neighborhoods and run drug distribution and extortion rackets.
Forty percent of El Salvador's six million people live in poverty, and the country relies heavily on remittances sent by Salvadorans living abroad -- around $4 billion a year, or 16 percent of the country's GDP.
Source AFP
With all the votes counted, the electoral court announced on its website that Sanchez Ceren, candidate of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front got 50.1 percent of the votes. Norman Quijano, of the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance party—known as ARENA—got 49.9 percent.
With about 3 million ballots cast in Sunday’s runoff election, Sanchez Ceren won by less than 7,000 votes, and Quijano’s party vowed to challenge the results unless authorities agree to a vote-by-vote recount.
Outgoing President Mauricio Funes was a journalist who was sympathetic to the FMLN rebels during the 1980-1992 civil war but was never a guerrilla, unlike Sanchez Ceren, who most recently served as Funes’ vice president.
A scare campaign comparing El Salvador’s left to Venezuela’s brought Quijano from far behind in the polls to near tie. But Sanchez Ceren has sought to distance himself from Venezuela’s crises. “El Salvador is not and cannot be Venezuela,” Sanchez Ceren said during the campaign.
Instead, he said his role model is Uruguayan President Jose “Pepe” Mujica, who spent 14 years in prison during Uruguay’s dictatorship. A flower-farming former guerrilla, Mujica gives away 90 percent of his salary, doesn’t have a bank account, drives a 41-year-old Volkswagen and never wears a tie.
Source: AP
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