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presidency and, in coalition with the conservative Party of National Conciliation,
controlled the Assembly (Montgomery 1995; Seligson 2000).
Peace negotiations in Guatemala were even more difficult and lengthy
than in El Salvador. The URNG was much weaker than the FMLN, and thus had
limited bargaining power. The Armed Forces, thought no longer in direct control
of the government after the transition to ostensible democracy in 1985,
continued to have almost complete autonomy and to wield very substantial
political influence. Having the insurgency to battle helped to justify the
continuation of a strong military budget, much of which was in turn channelled
into private enterprises from which top generals profited. Nevertheless, external
pressures (especially from the United States) finally led the dominant faction of
the Armed Forces to support a negotiated peace settlement with the URNG. The
civilian government of Alvaro Arzú (elected early in 1996) then negotiated a
peace settlement with the URNG that was signed at the end of 1996.
Under the accord, the URNG laid down its arms and was accepted as a
legal political party. The Armed Forces were to shrink in responsibility and
budget, and were to be more subject to civilian control. The indigenous
population was to have substantial cultural autonomy. However, implementation
of the accords has been, at best, limited and even pro forma. In practice, the
military proved most unwilling to give up its power, made evident in the
assassination of Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998, shortly after he released a Human
Rights report sponsored by the Catholic Church. Only low level military
personnel, and a priest, were ever charged in the murder. 5
In 1999, the URNG participated for the first time in a national election,
supporting Alvaro Colom, a centrist candidate for President who ran third (in
2003, without URNG support, Colom made the runoff against centrist Oscar
Berger). The URNG did not compete directly for parliamentary seats in 1999.
Post-Revolutionary Politics 6
Nicaragua. The electoral pattern established in the 1990 Nicaragua
election persisted into the new century, as the FSLN tended to find itself
confronted by relatively unified forces that outweighed the Sandinistas (see
Table 1). The Liberal faction around Arnoldo Alemán had strongly opposed the
pact between Violeta Chamorro and Daniel Ortega, and it was Alemán’s Partido
Liberal Constitucional that prevailed in both 1996 and 2001. The Sandinistas
remained, however, the largest single party, and gained control of municipal
governments throughout the country, including in Managua. Daniel Ortega was
the perennial presidential candidate of the FSLN, and he was not able to pull
enough votes to win against a substantially unified opposition. Through the
decade, then, the Sandinistas remained the principal opposition party (Anderson
and Dodd 2005).
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