Fomilenio II: A Defeat for the Evil Right

Last Thursday afternoon, Sept. 18, El Salvador received good news about the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s decision to sign the agreement in which the United States will pay out $277 million. Let us recall that during President Mauricio Funes’ administration, an application was made for Fomilenio II in order to revive the country’s coastal zone. And it was during the Funes administration that the Millennium Challenge Corporation approved this compact, but his signature, which was anticipated by November last year, was postponed for strictly political reasons.

On the one hand, the ARENA party, through the Allies for Democracy, which is principally dominated by the Executive Board of the National Association of Small Enterprise or ANEP, lobbied at different levels of the United States government in order to prevent the second compact from being signed. At the time, we criticized ARENA’s anti-patriotic and anti-nationalistic efforts, carried out through its front organization in civil society called Allies for Democracy.

Obviously, Allies for Democracy temporarily fulfilled its mission, given that the United States started to demand new requirements to delay, if not get rid of the second compact completely. Both the government of former President Funes, as well as that of Salvador Sánchez Cerén, set to work overcoming each one of the new requirements demanded by the United States.

With the MCC announcing its decision to sign the agreement, there is no longer any doubt that, in addition to being good news for the Salvadorans who will benefit from economic recovery and other collateral work in the coastal zone, those who were sought for the second compact to fail have been defeated.

The two large circulation daily newspapers, which have been portents of doom, have also been defeated. On several occasions, the front page headlines of these papers stressed the supposed drawbacks facing the country in guaranteeing an investment climate.

In fact, they never saw what the MCC saw in El Salvador. “Over the last year, the El Salvador government has made tangible and sustained progress in improving the investment climate and in strengthening the rule of law,” said the MCC’s statement.

There is no doubt that the doom-laden voices have been refuted, and their plans to destabilize the country with their lies, have been uncovered.