Alfredo Cristiani, Armando Calderon Sol, Francisco Flores, and three other ARENA members (most likely) are going to begin a process of selecting the party's 2014 presidential candidate in hopes of having one chosen by September before the party's national convention. An ARENA spokesman said that the committee is going to travel the country consulting with supporters before making a final decision. The process sounds much more democratic than the process for selecting the FMLN's candidate but it's not really. A small group of party leadership are selecting the candidates for each party.
ARENA looks like it will be choosing among San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano, former foreign minister Francisco Laínez, and deputies Ana Vilma de Escobar (also former vice president) and Edwin Zamora. Unlike the FMLN, I'm not sure that it matters who ARENA selects, at least in terms of winning in 2014.
In other news, Tim has a nice round up on the current constitutional crisis in El Salvador where the country's Constitutional Court ruled that the Legislative Assembly's appointments of Supreme Court Justices in 2006 and 2012 were unconstitutional. The CC ordered the congress to select new justices and congress is balking. See here for more background on the dispute and the church's call for congress to resolve the crisis.
After three years in government, Funes will prioritize the economy and combating insecurity in his last two years. That sure sounded like a weird headline to me. What exactly had Funes been prioritizing his first three years?
Finally, Edgardo Ayala and Claudia Ávalos have a piece for IPS on Women Fight Blows from Climate Change with Sewing Machines and Eggs in El Salvador.
