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News > El Salvador

El Salvador: Presidential Candidates Debate Before Feb Election

  • Right-wing candidate Carlos Calleja (L) and candidate for the FMLN, Hugo Martínez (R), participating in the televised debate in San Salvador.

    Right-wing candidate Carlos Calleja (L) and candidate for the FMLN, Hugo Martínez (R), participating in the televised debate in San Salvador. | Photo: EFE

Published 14 January 2019
Opinion

Three of four presidential candidates took part in a presidential debate discussing issues like education, migration, and public security problems, etc. 

Three of the four candidates for president in El Salvador participated in a presidential debate Sunday night where issues like security, migration, education were debated.

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The three candidates were: Josue Alvarado, representing the newly-established VAMOS party, billing itself as "the only party without a dark past;" Hugo Martinez of the leftist Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN); and Carlos Calleja representing a coalition of right-wing nationalist groups like the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), the Nationalist Coalition Party (PCN), PDC and Democracia Salvadoreña (DS).

The presidential candidate for the Great Alliance for National Unity (GANA), Nayib Bukele did not participate in the debate.

The debating candidates discussed topics like public security, migration, foreign policy, health, pensions, and education for an hour and a half each.

To improve public security, ideas like a new safety plan, integrating the whole community, and more focus on childhood education as prevention were discussed by the candidates.

All three candidates agreed to create an International Commission against Impunity in El Salvador (CICIES) without threatening the independence of state institutions.

The candidates also debated for a permanent solution for Salvadorans deported from the United States.

For higher education, scholarships, equal opportunity, and a focus on English education were the main issues.

In a previous debate in December, the pension system, a battleground for decades, was also discussed. In 1998, the right-wing ARENA party partially privatized the pension system as part of the United States-backed neo-liberal reforms.

This resulted in an imbalance as the private sector profited while the government accumulated a huge debt in order to pay out pensions in the public system.

The presidential election will take place in February 2019.

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