Democracy is more than just voting

An English introduction to the August 2004 issue of El Eslabón which is published in Spanish.

By Eva Rasmussen

10. August 2004

“If the number of abstainers is an indicator of democratic development, then we have indeed reduced the democratic space to a ballot box.” This is how economist María Eugenia Ochoa, of the National Foundation for Development (FUNDE) sees the recent presidential elections in El Salvador. 

You can read the full interview in the new issue of El Eslabón, which focuses on efforts underway among civil society in Central America to improve the overall settings in which elections take place by working to reform electoral laws and political parties in such a way as to promote the opening of spaces for informed participation beyond just election day.

There have been a number of changes to electoral laws in some of these countries. In an overview, Fernando Solís deals with three important issues: the independence of election authorities; the democratisation of the political parties, still pending throughout the region; and the financing of political parties and their electoral campaigns.

A serious example of how election authorities may become almost entirely dependent upon political parties can be found in Nicaragua, where the well-known pact between former president Arnoldo Alemán and Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega led to a power-sharing agreement. Mette Frost Berthelsen, a DDW at the Institute for the Development of Democracy (IPADE), analyses the consequences of the pact and reports on a proposal for electoral reform put forth by IPADE, in co-operation with the civic group Ethics and Transparency.

In Guatemala over half the population is of indigenous origin. However, and regardless of the promises made in the 1996 Peace Accords, the electoral law passed by Congress this past April does not contain “a single article to favour the participation of indigenous people”, comments Gregorio Chay, of the Maya Defence Organisation. 

“Without participation there is no commitment”, argues Adfell Vega, deputy director of IPADE, in a reflection on the municipal elections scheduled to take place in Nicaragua on 7 November 2004. “There’s a lot to be done”, he adds, concluding that “the challenge over the coming years consists not only in modernising State institutions, but in dramatically changing our political culture.”