Let's hope COENA separates itself and the party from its candidate's fiery rhetoric

Salvadorans returned to the polls on Sunday to elect their next president. After cruising to a first round victory one month ago, most of us expected the FMLN to cruise to another victory in round two. Every poll gave them a double digit advantage heading into this weekend's vote. However, a strange thing happened on the way to victory.

With 99.88% of the vote counted, the FMLN only leads 50.11% to 49.89% over ARENA, or ~6,400 votes. All the polls were wrong or many Salvadorans did not behave the way that they told pollsters that they would.

Both the FMLN (+100k) and ARENA (+400k) surpassed their first round vote totals which is pretty impressive given that I (and others) were expecting some drop off in voter turnout for round two. Both also surpassed their 2009 votes.

What was initially a story about the better than expected showing of ARENA (at least two hours ago) is likely to turn into a story about ARENA's Norman Quijano's dangerous speech not just alleging fraud (which is fine) but calling on the armed forces to get involved if necessary (not so fine).

An angry Quijano accused the election tribunal of corruption, and hinted at fraud.

"We are not going to allow fraud," he said, claiming victory. "Our armed forces are watching this process."

ARENA failed to use its 2009 loss to transform itself into a pro-democratic and pro-capitalist political alternative to the FMLN. Its strong performance in the 2012 municipal and legislative elections convinced it that they were fine without any major reforms. Tonight's strong showing might reinforce the belief that they do not have to change to regain the presidency.

However, their candidate's speech tonight demonstrates that key party leaders are still stuck in the 1980s and that the party formed because Ronald Reagan was allegedly soft on communism is alive and (un-)well.

Salvadorans need them to change. It is not healthy in 2014, if it ever was, to call on the military to resolve political disputes and in the midst of vote counting. Let's hope COENA separates itself and the party from its candidate's fiery rhetoric.