Defection in El Salvador

I kept meaning to post about how the right has splintered in El Salvador. Twelve of ARENA's 32 congressional members proclaimed themselves independent (see Tim's El Salvador Blog and for a conspiracy theory involving--of course!--Hugo Chávez, see the ever-entertaining and fact-free Mary Anastasia O'Grady).

This already has had an effect, because those 12 (who refer to themselves as the Grand Alliance for National Unity, or GANA, which is "win" in Spanish) voted to approve the FMLN government's budget, whereas the ARENA legislators abstained.

I would love to see comparative work on the right in countries where someone from the left is in the presidency. The right often implodes and engages in internal conflict. Of course that process of disintegration had generally begun earlier, which is why a candidate from the left was able to win in the first place. It would be interesting to tease out the cause and effect relationships.