The Michigan Daily - Sunday, May 6, 1984 - Page 5
Salvadorans pick president today
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP)
- A runoff presidential election cam-
paign that in many ways has matched
the mood of this strife-torn country
comes to an end at the ballot box today.
Voters clutching all-important iden-
tity cards are expected to stream to
polling places all over the country -
from the remote, tense countryside to
the busy corners of San Salvador - to
choose between two radically different
presidential candidates.
A CENTURY old law requires those
eligible to vote and makes them liable
for fines if they don't, although officials
say fines are rarely imposed. An
estimated 1.8 million of the nation's 4.8
million people make up the electorate.
The issues that separate the two can-
didates - Jose Napoleon Duarte, at
moderate Chrisitan Democrat, and
Roberto d'Aubuisson of the rightist
Republican Nationalist Alliance Arene
- have been buried in the vicious
name-calling of the campign.
The campaign that began after the
first-round election March 25 was a
reelection of a nation wrenched by civil
war and polarized socially and
economically and of a people who have
taken to settling their own disputes in
the absence of stable governement in-
stitutions they can trust.
MORE THAN 51,000 government
troops, guerrillas and civilians have
died and an estimated 500,000 people
have fled the country in a civil war that
has no end in sight.
Duarte and d'Aubuisson have very
different approaches to what has
caused the problems and how to solve
them.
Duarte has called for conciliation and
dialogue with the left and has made a
"social pact" with labor and peasant
groups, promising them Cabinet and
other key posts in areas of special in-
terest to them. He ascribes the coun-
try's bloody civil war and class
polarization to deep-rooted social
inequality that will take time and un-
derstanding to cure.
HE PROMISES that if elected his
government will tackle the ugly
question of right-wing death squads and
gain the "moral authority to confront
subversion."
D'Aubuisson calls Duarte's "social
pact" an agreement with subversion
and violently opposes any dialogue with
the leftist guerrillas, favoring a
military solution to a problem he sees
as external in nature.
A former National Guard intelligence
major, d'Aubuisson advocates a free
hand for those in the private sector,
saying they are the only ones with the
know-how and capital to put people to
work and make the country productive
again.
HE DESCRIBES his party as more
nationalitic than conservative and says
his appeal has been to "true
Salvadorans."
Charges that he is linked to rightist
death squads, which he insists are
false, have led his being branding as a
fascist and a killer by Duarte suppor-
ters whom d'Aubuisson, in turn, calls
communists.
"I don't think it makes much dif-
ference to most of the people here
because they don't really believe either
candidate is going to do much to help
them in their day to day living," said a
priest in the working class suburb of
Sovapango just east of the capital.
"A LOT OF people here vote out of
duty but I think a lot also vote so they
won't have trouble later on when they
have to present their identity cards for
security checks or government
business," he said.
Government identity cards are stam-
ped when people vote in El Salvador,
and there is a strong government cam-
paign pushing the patriotic duty to vote.
Many Salvadorans say they feel safer if
their identity cards show they have
voted.
Even though the difference between
the candidates are great, the campaign
has not touched much on the bread-and-
butter issues so vital to the country's
millions of poor.
THE SUBURB of Soyapango retains
traces of the middle-class town it once
was but has been swamped by thousan-
ds of refugees from the war-torn coun-
tryside.
In the teeming, smoky marketplaces
tucked among flimsy hovels and
narrow paths, accusations, charges and
countercharges from both parties blare
from radios.
"They just tell us who to vote again-
st," said Francisco Esquivel, 60, an
illiterate market porter. "They never
tell us why we should vote in favor of
either of them."
Christian Democrat polls, which
were fairly accurate in the first round
March 25, give Duarte a 60-40 edge over
d'Aubuisson without taking into effect
alliances from other rightist parties.
Duarte won 43.4 percent of the vote In
the first round against 29.76 fwr
d'Aubuisson, making a runoff
necessary because no candidate had a
clear majority.
Leftists are boycotting the presiden-
tial balloting, as they did the election
for a Constituent Assembly in March
1982. They dismiss the election as a
"farce" and say the only way to have a
fair vote in El Salvador is to negotiate a
share of power first.
Francisco Jose Guerraro, the Con-
ciliation Party's candidate, has hinted
he would prefer a Duarte victory,
although the Christian Democrats
remain his party's archenemy. He
shares a fear of many that if
d'Aubuisson wins, U.S. military aid on
which the Salvadoran government
depends would be cut off "and we would
become another Nicaragua, that's for
sure."
There has been no guerrilla attempt
to disrupt the runoff or threaten voters.
Leftist leaders have said they do not
want to endanger civilians who might
feel obligated to vote because they want
their identity cards stamped.
Minorities play a small
role in nation newsrooms
(Continued from Page2)
minority journalists . to meet the
demand.
William Hillard, a black who started
as a copyboy at the Portland Oregonian
and now is executive editor, says his
paper searches for minority staff
members. Even so, he says, the
Oregonian staff is only 5 percent non-
white and the paper lost two of its three
black reporters to other papers in the
last few months.
" Some argue that papers simply
don't look hard enough. They say if
newspapers were more willing to hire
and promote minorities, word would
get out and more would go into jour-
nalism.
Dick Gray, dean of journalism at the
University of Indiana, says good
students, white or minority, have no
trouble finding jobs. But, Gray says,
when it comes to the C-student, whites
are hired by small or medium-sized
papers, but those minorities often can't
get those starter jobs.
And some think that many papers
are indifferent: they'd have a mixed
staff if it was easy, but since it isn't,
they don't.
Jay Harris, a former journalism dean
who now writes for Gannett
newspapers, thinks the root problem is
that the urge to integrate has come in
response to external pressures - the
civil rights movement and, more recen-
tly, the threat of equal opportunity
lawsuits - rather than "a desire by
editors to improve their newsrooms or
their news products."
"As long as it is the courts and the
fear of financial loss which is the
primary motivator in this area as op-
posed to commitment to excellence for
readers, I look for a rush of activity for
three, four or five years and then it will
trail off again," Harris says.
There's no question that relatively
few black college students, even those
who study journalism, look to
newspapers as a career.
PAUL PETERSON, an Ohio State
University journalism professor, asked
1,127 black journalism majors in 1980
where they wanted to work. Only 5.4
percent said they hoped to join daily
newspapers. Three times as many wan-
ted to go into radio or television, where
many black youngsters find a role
model.
Gray offers another theory on why
white editors may be reluctant to hire
minority applicants.
"In the 1960s and early '70s,
newspapers hired a lot of minorities
whether they were well prepared or
not," Gray says. "Maybe they got bur-
ned. Maybe they're afraid they will be
open to charges of discrimination if
they fire persons who don't shape up."
A harsher view comes from the
Philadelphia Inquirer's Moore, now his
paper's associate editor.
"The bottom line is racism -
whether it is overt or covert," he says.
"Anybody who tells me he can't find
black people or who uses the excuse
that once we train them they go to other
papers, I think that's evidence there's
no commitment."
Carl Morris, a former copy editor at
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was hired
by the ASNE to help the industry
achieve its integration target. He says
that when they hire minority people
newspapers often have higher standar-
ds than when they hire whites.
"We're all not superstars," Morris
says. "There are a lot of good, average
reporters out there. You ought to hire
them like you hire white reporters -
some on their skills and some on their
potential."
This is a f ree introductory seminar
for upcoming tests and an
opportunity to meet UTPS
faculty members!
We will be administering LSAT/
GMAT/GRE mini tests with a review
session Tuesday, May 8, on the
U of M campus on the third floor of
the Michigan League in Room D.
LSAT/ GRE - 3:30 - 5:00 P.M.
GMAT - 6:30 - 8:00 P.M.