AFTER the second round of the El Salvador elections, won by the right-wing ARENA party, it only took a week for fundamental public debates to erupt among the five parties which constitute the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) - the organisation which led the 12-year guerrilla war against the right wing death squad regime.
On May 1, when the executive committee of the new National Assembly was elected, a public F split before the television cameras occurred between the five parties of the FMLN.
Previously the Political Committee of the FMLN had decided not to participate in the Assembly's executive committee, due to its undemocratic set-up, which guarantees a majority for ARENA.
However. on May 1. seven of the 20 FMLN deputies, representatives of two of the FMLN parties, the National Resistance (RN) and the ERP (Renewal Voice of the People - formerly Revolutionary Army of the People), chose to accept the ARENA conditions and take the two seats in the executive offered to REVOLUCION the FMLN.
To ensure their election to these two seats, the RN and ERP deputies made a tactical alliance with ARENA deputies and voted for the ARENA candidate for president of the Assembly.
Breach This breach of discipline was immediately denounced by the members of the three other parties - the Popular Liberation Forces (FPL). the Communist Party and the Central American Revolutionary Workers Party (PRTC).
On May 11, a meeting of the National Council of the FMLN, boycotted by the RN and ERP, decided to withdraw the FMLN mandate from the seven rebellious deputies and suspend them from their leadership positions in the FMLN.
That decision included Jaoquin Villalobos, the main leader of the ERP, held to be the "moral instigator" of the affair, although not himself a deputy in the Assembly.
This clash, out of which the right-wing media made heaps of publicity, shone a spotlight on the internal divisions and political immaturity of the FMLN and revealed to all Salvadoreans the profound differences in the FMLN.
For several years ERP leader Villalobos and some other ERP leaders have abandoned all reference to Marxism-Leninism (influenced mainly by the collapse of the USSR) and adopted openly social democratic reformist positions.
Social democrats Since 1993 the RN and the ERP have openly called themselves the "social democratic wing of the FMLN".
Today they justify their attitude on the basis of its "practicality" and accuse the three other parties of the FMLN of being "archaic" and above all "antidemocratic"
However, the ERP is not in a good position to criticise others on this count, since in November 1993 they expelled an important part of their own membership for being in disagreement with the leadership.
These people have organised themselves in the "Democratic Tendency" and have asked for recognition as a sixth formation in the FMLN.
Televised
For a month now, the crisis of the FMLN has been one of the main factors in the Salvadorean political situation, with televised debates between the two blocs, weakening considerably the possibility of a co-ordinated intervention by the FMLN in the National Assembly against the policies of the government.
For the moment there remain two camps. committed to their respective positions.
The "bloc of three" (FPL, CP, PRTC) refuse to go back on their decisions, while the ERP and RN reject the measures taken against their parliamentary deputies. Villalobos maintains that the ERP and RN want to stay in the FMLN, and are not obliged to leave.
Socialist *SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 67, August 1994; Page 23