A little more on that Elliott Abrams attack against the FMLN

Earlier this month, Elliott Abrams attacked Salvadoran Sanchez Ceren and the FMLN's alleged links to South American drug traffickers. He is concerned about the negative consequences of an FMLN victory in February's presidential elections. I said that I was no more fearful of an FMLN victory than I was an ARENA or Unidad victory. The FMLN played the rules of the democratic game while in opposition for fifteen years and during its near five years in the presidency, it had brought down poverty and homicide rates (according to government statistics) and had finally begun to move on corruption allegations against former ARENA administrations.

Geoff Thale at the Washington Office on Latin American and Hector Silva of InSight Crime (among other places) attacked Abrams as well but they did so while highlighting other problems. In a Letter to the Editor at the Washington Post, Geoff argues that drug trafficking and corruption "is rooted not in one party or another, but in El Salvador’s weak institutions and high levels of corruption, especially in the police." The US needs to work with the next president, regardless of which party he comes from, in order to tackle shared challenges. WOLA has more on its website. While it'll be different with Sanchez Ceren, the US has worked with presidents from different political parties in the past.

Hector, on the other hand, gets a little more personal. Elliott Abrams is one of a number of Reagan era officials who were implicated in the Iran-Contra Scandal and its cover-up. It was in the mid-1980s that officials connected to Iran-Contra brought the cocaine problem to El Salvador. Hector is grateful that there are sensible people in Washington working on US policy towards the region and not that many people like Abrams.

That's one of the reason why the Democrats and the FMLN should be able to work together if the FMLN wins the upcoming elections. However, all bets are off if the Republicans take the White House in 2016. In that case it won't be one party's fault. There's enough animosity between former Republican Cold Warriors and FMLN officials that I'm not optimistic that they'll be able to overcome their history.