Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [82]
“Off the agenda” for the government in its own sponsored elections are all of the basic parameters that make an election meaningful or meaningless prior to the election-day proceedings. These include: (1) freedom of speech and assembly; (2) freedom of the press; (3) freedom to organize and maintain intermediate economic, social, and political groups (unions, peasant organizations, political clubs, student and teacher associations, etc.); (4) freedom to form political parties, organize members, put forward candidates, and campaign without fear of extreme violence; and (5) the absence of state terror and a climate of fear among the public. Also off the agenda is the election-day “coercion package” that may explain turnout in terms other than devotion to the army and its plans, including any legal requirement to vote, and explicit or implicit threats for not voting. Other issues that must be downplayed in conforming to the government propaganda format are the U.S. government’s role in organizing and funding the election, the internal propaganda campaign waged to get out the vote, outright fraud, and the constraints on and threats to journalists covering the election.
Another issue off the government agenda is the purpose of the election. If its role is to influence the home population, spelling this out might arouse suspicions concerning its authenticity. In the case of the Vietnam election of 1967 and the El Salvador elections of 1982 and 1984, the purpose of the elections was not merely to placate the home public but also to mislead them on the ends sought. In both instances it was intimated that an election would contribute to a peaceable resolution to the conflict, whereas the intent was to clear the ground for intensified warfare. Nobody who proposed a peace option could appear as a serious candidate in Vietnam in 1967,7 and as we describe below, there was no peace candidate at all in El Salvador in either 1982 or 1984, although the polls and reporters kept saying that peace was the primary concern of the electorate. This highlights both the fraudulence of these elections and the urgency that the intentions of the sponsor be kept under wraps.
In elections held in disfavored or enemy states, the U.S. government agenda is turned upside down. Elections are no longer equated with democracy, and U.S. officials no longer marvel at the election being held under adverse conditions. They do not commend the army for supporting the election and agreeing to abide by the results. On the contrary, the leverage the dominant party obtains by control of and support by the army is put forward in this case as compromising the integrity of the election. Rebel disruption is no longer proof that the opposition rejects democracy, and turnout is no longer the dramatic denouement of the struggle between a democratic army and its rebel opposition. Now the stress is on the hidden motives of the sponsors of the election, who are trying to legitimize themselves by this tricky device of a so-called election.
Most important, the agenda of factors relevant to appraising an election is altered. From the stress on the superficial—long lines and smiling faces of voters, the simple mechanics of election-day balloting, and the personalities of the candidates—attention is now shifted to the basic parameters that were off the agenda in the sponsored election. As noted by Secretary of State Shultz, “The important thing is that if there is to be an electoral process, it be observed not only at the moment when people vote, but in all the preliminary aspects that make an election meaningful.” Spelling this out further, Shultz mentioned explicitly that for elections to be meaningful, “rival political groups” must be allowed “to form themselves and have access to people, to have the right of assembly, to have access to the media.”8 These remarks were made apropos of the 1984 Nicaraguan election. No congresspersons or media commentators raised any question about whether these criteria should perhaps be applied to the Salvadoran or Guatemalan elections scheduled