May 24, 2008 -- Jorge Schafik Handal Vega --son of the legendary FMLN founder ``Comandante Simon''' Jorge
Schafik Handal -- joined the militant left in El Salvador in 1968 as a
student. He was a combatant commander throughout the people’s war in
the 1970s and 1980s and, following the 1991 peace accords, was integral
to the successful transition of the FMLN’s combatant structures into
the political and civil institutions of El Salvador. He is currently a
deputy for the FMLN in the Central American Parliament.
Handal Vega is toured Australia in May 2008 to build solidarity with the
FMLN’s 2009 election campaign, a message that was enthusiastically
received. All recent opinion polls in El Salvador
indicate that the FMLN will win both the mayoral and presidential
elections next year, wresting the last Central American country to be
governed by the extreme right wing out of its control. Desperate to
prevent this, the US-backed ruling Arena party has launched a massive
campaign of bribery and intimidation, which is accompanied by a growing
number of brutal attacks on, and murders of, FMLN leaders and
activists.
The FMLN is expecting Arena to also use fraud to try to win the
elections, and is urging Australian activists to travel to El Salvador
in December-January to act as international observers of the election.