It is impossible to talk without transformations

ARENA and the electoral violence in the northeast of Chalatenango

The newspapers of November 28th displayed sensationalist and unrealistic headlines about the incidents that took place in San Jose Las Flores, Guarjila, and Arcatao, at the northeast of Chalatenango. Some people even interpreted the events as an attack prepared by the FMLN against the caravan of Elias Antonio Saca. Rene Figueroa, the ideology vice-president of ARENA, seemed quite surprised. He did not only reject the violence allegedly used by the FMLN, but he also asked the electoral authorities and the police to put an end to the aggressions. In his opinion, “ARENA has been tolerant and respectful, and it has developed a campaign at the height of the circumstances; while the FMLN has been intolerant, and it has attacked our people. We suppose that this is their reaction before the crisis that they are facing with the opinion polls, that is why we see a desperate FMLN”.

The reaction of the FMLN has been more cautious. The leaders of the party also speak about those who were injured to defend themselves because of the avalanche of reproaches. They also accused ARENA for having ignored the municipal authorities. In the words of Eugenio Chicas, who is responsible for the electoral campaign of the FMLN, “ARENA has to understand that the FMLN administrates many municipalities and that the local authorities cannot be ignored. If they ask for permission, the authorities are allowed to get involved in order to create an adequate environment”. This is a very weak response, which probably shows that this was not a premeditated act, as the ARENA leaders seem to believe.

Electoral violence is a political stigma that usually grows in the societies where the contradictions and the polarization of the contenders go beyond the institutional boundaries. In these circumstances, the annihilation of the adversary is seen as the most perfect political resource. When this happens, the individual actors, their emotions, and the weakness of the institutions are a few of the factors that combine together and favor violence. That is why if they intend to avoid this kind of encounters between the political groups that see themselves as rivals, the political parties have to realize the consequences of what they are doing and the competent institutions have to use the law to control this situation. Therefore, it is necessary to review the responsibilities of the proper institutions in order to punish the agents that cause this kind of violence.

According to what has been published in the news media, it can be concluded that the journalists who witnessed the events that took place at the northeast of Chalatenango did not do much to stay away from the official version. Without being critical, they reported that there were violent encounters between the sympathizers of the FMLN and ARENA. Most of the time, the press accused the FMLN of being the instigators and the responsible ones of such violence. However, the version of the community members leads to a different interpretation of the facts.

Without a doubt, this is an obstacle to respond to the question about what really happened in San Jose Las Flores, Guarjila, and Arcatao on last November 27th. It is not impossible to know what happened, but those who are supposed to make the necessary investigations do not have enough moral courage to be sufficiently objective or even impartial. In the end, the collision between Saca’s campaign team and several inhabitants of Chalatenango will soon be forgotten and will become just one more episode of the political violence that usually comes along with the electoral process after 1992.

Beyond the will of making an electoral propaganda it is impossible to understand why they are making such a fuss about the cold welcoming that several sympathizers of the FMLN gave to the commission of ARENA in Chalatenango. At this point, it is already normal if the members of the opposite parties do not get along peacefully. During the campaign of the last municipal elections, several activists of the FMLN were killed by the sympathizers of ARENA. Despite this déjà vu sensation caused by the events that took place on last Thursday, there are several elements that have to be analyzed because they give a different perspective to this encounter if compared with the past electoral campaigns.

No matter how much several news media speak about an ambush, this was not a confrontation between the collision groups of the parties, as it often happens. It seems that violence emerged from the verbal aggressions made by the sympathizers of ARENA, and because they decided to paint with propaganda the houses and the plazas of the area. Several inhabitants of the region felt offended to hear them scream “yes to patriotism, no to communism” and “El Salvador will be the grave where the lives of the communists will end”. The violent parade of the members of ARENA crashes with the mind of a country that has recently gone through a civil war.

This means that it is necessary to analyze not only the violent provocation that the song of ARENA has, but also some of their political actions. This song is offensive and it has nothing in common with the image of cordiality and peace that the official party usually tries to show. Elias Saca should control his troops whenever they visit the hostile territories (those areas that were the center of the military operations during the civil war). If he does not control them, he is also responsible for their violent actions, and this contradicts the peaceful image that he intends to project through his campaign. The groups that were excluded and that did not receive their share of the national resources will not accept to hear that they will be buried because of their communist past (or present).

It is not easy to forget that the communities located at the northeast of Chalatenango were the main victims of the war. They suffered the land destruction campaigns that the Armed Forces promoted during that time, and the attacks perpetrated by the paramilitary groups. Most of the inhabitants of the area had to runaway to Honduras, where they lived as refugees. Many of these people have lost their families in circumstances that the country’s justice has not dared to investigate. The arrogance of the committee that represented ARENA did not help ease the situation.

The leaders of ARENA treat the victims of the war with contempt, and this has not only happened in Chalatenango. The tradition to launch their campaign in Izalco (a town that was the main victim of the genocide that took place in 1932) follows the same contemptuous line of action. The dimension of the cynic attitude that ARENA has can be measured by remembering the circumstances in which thousands of natives disappeared, the loss of their identity in a context of both an ethnic and an anti-communist war. However, ARENA usually launches its campaign here as if its members tried to outline a compromise to exterminate the communist adversaries.

The leaders of ARENA thought that they could go all over the country repeating the same slogan of death against the communists. The reaction of the inhabitants of the aforementioned area cannot be understood if the present campaign slogan is ignored. However, the ideologists of ARENA, instead of meditating about the actual causes of violence, they preferred to forget the offense. To excuse the violence of the sympathizers of the FMLN is not the point. This is not the first time they behave arrogantly before the political opposition.

The leaders of ARENA have to think that they will not be able to raise a flag of national harmony, while many of its authorities and sympathizers keep having as their primary objective the disappearance of their main contenders. This discourse was the key aspect of last Thursday’s disagreements. That is why we cannot talk about an ambush prepared by the FMLN, as many mediocre journalists have. That is why it is urgent that the leaders of ARENA send a message of prudence to its militants and its activists.

It is evident that the present circumstances are not ideal for this change in their discourse and their attitude. The party keeps building its ideological identity over a motto that talks about “exterminating” the communists. And their presence in the Executive Power is still interpreted as the approval of the Salvadoran population to go ahead with the elimination of their contenders. Therefore, if the members of ARENA are not willing to abandon the violent discourse of the last months, they will not accept to evaluate a strategy that has created acceptable electoral dividends. However, for the country’s sake, it would be necessary to stop using this kind of propaganda because it offends the people who live in the areas where many wounds are still open. Unless many of the advisors of the party believe that it is a good strategy to publicly display the acts of violence as part of their propaganda.

In this context, it is also necessary to analyze the lack of capacity that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE, in Spanish) has when it comes to fulfill its institutional duties. It is evident that the performance of this institution is very weak because it has not been able to follow the most elemental dispositions of the electoral code. Immediately after the end of the war, its performance was acceptable. The creation of the TSE is the best reminder of the lack of trust and the mutual envies that the leading political actors felt. Paradoxically, thanks to that situation, a certain amount of trust was created, because the mutual control of the politicians made its operations successful. Under this perspective, the TSE did meet its objective. A brazen fraud, which was the most common aspect of the elections that took place before the Peace Accords, was gradually avoided.

However, at this point, the TSE is not capable to respond to the present demands of the political system. The different parties that form the TSE are mutually neutralized and they are not competent enough to restrain their own violations to the electoral code. Therefore, it is necessary to redefine a new institution, an institution able to eventually show a transparent process of elections. On the other hand, the society needs an institution with enough independence to sanction the violent political actors and block the common violations of the electoral regulations.

An interpretation of the Report about the Human Development in El Salvador for 2003

An interpretation of the Report about the Human Development in El Salvador for 2003
When the covers of the most important newspapers of the country use headlines such as “Poverty has been reduced by 22% in El Salvador” or “The PNUD reports the developments achieved in a decade”, a clear message is sent to the Salvadoran population: the situation in terms of human development in the country has been substantially improved, although it might not seem quite so. At least this is what the Report about the Human Development in El Salvador for 2003 (IDHES 2003, in Spanish) seems to portray.

In these electoral times, this report seems like an important achievement for the official party, which has been administrating the country for 15 years, and since both the slight improvements of the human development indicators and the economic policies of ARENA seem to go hand in hand. For a considerable amount of Salvadorans, probably these good news tend to cause perplexity or skepticism. However, the recently published indicators of the Development Program of the United Nations (PNUD, in Spanish) somehow seem to support the information made public by the news media.

What are the contents of such diagnosis? How can we interpret the contradiction between the country described by the statistics of the PNUD, the grandiloquent discourse of the President, the message of the political opposition, and all the suffering of the population because of the present situation of El Salvador? Does this mean that the sustainable human development of most Salvadorans has actually been improved? And if this were true, is this the result of the economic and the social policies implemented by the government?

In order to elucidate the multiple questions created by the aforementioned report, it is necessary to say that the news media have published the information that the document contains from a different perspective, according to the interests of those who dictate the lines of the informative analysis. The message that they intend to send is not free of distortions, in a tense environment caused by the activities of the electoral campaign. Therefore, the situation is vulnerable enough to become the object of an ideological interpretation of the report presented by the PNUD. That is why it is vital to read it from both a critical and a realistic perspective.

In this context, it is necessary to describe some of the polemic key aspects of the report:
1. The human development index (IDH, in Spanish) has gone from 0.692 (1995) to 0.726 (2002). This means that the average result of the country’s achievements has positively evolved in favor of the welfare of the population. Therefore now more people can enjoy a healthier and a longer life, with more probabilities of improving their education and their access to better life standards.
2. According to the PNUD, the poverty levels were reduced by 22%, from 65% (1992) to 43% (2002) in only ten years. Those who live in poverty are classified in two groups:
a) Those who live below the poverty line. That is, those who are not able to cover the value of the basic basket of food (CBA, in Spanish).
b) Those who live at the poverty line, those people who are able to purchase the CBA, but who are not able to finance the satisfaction of other needs (housing, health, education, clothing, etc.). In El Salvador, according to the PNUD, the percentage of the population living below the poverty line was reduced by 12.3%, when it went from 31.5% in 1992 to 19.2% in 2002.
3. According to the PNUD, these improvements are due to “the deliberate effort of the government to increase the proportion of the country’s budget and the GNP assigned to the social expenses, to the introduction of certain funds and innovative social programs in favor of the poorest sectors (…)”

The former affirmations have been polemic in a sense, they seem to contradict themselves with the economic and the social crisis that many segments of the population are going through. It is important to say that the report of the PNUD makes certain observations about the limitations of the indicators. Something that the news media do not indicate in a clear fashion: there are many factors that question the reliability of the results that refer to the poverty levels, given the statistic sources that support this information. These statistics are based on suppositions that the PNU criticizes because it is clear that that there are certain methodological weaknesses and an imprecise analysis of certain variables. And this has to do with the way in which the General Direction of Statistics and Census (DIGESTYC) uses the information that it gathers.

Therefore, the interpretation about the reality of poverty is deficient due to the following aspects: the poverty line conventionally accepted underestimates the number of people who are involved in that situation. This is because the poverty line that is used to indicate if a person is poor or not is too low and it is an selective method. It basically places those people who cannot purchase the CBA in a category of “extreme poverty”, and those who are able to purchase the CBA are placed in the “relative poverty” category.

These criteria are extremely questionable because of the following reasons:
1. The levels of extreme poverty, total poverty, and relative poverty are calculated based on the possibility to purchase the CBA, and this mutilates the very concept of poverty, because it does not envelope its multiple dimensions. The most basic needs to survive and grow do not have to do exclusively with food; there are other needs that are not covered with that hypothetical value, that is why these criteria generate the wrong information.
2. There is a distinction between the urban and the rural CBA that underestimates the social and the economic differences that exist between the people who live in either area, and this reflects a notable difference between the basic goods, especially in the quality of the products. Even the PNUD accepts that the approximate value of the CBA is questionable. There is a clear difference between the prices of the food products included in the CBA and the prices of the food products included in the basket used to build the index of prices for the consumer (IPC, in Spanish). This leads to question the performance of the DIGESTYC.
3. The strategies of the population living in poverty, the fact that the people have to leave the country to send remittances to their families, the exploitation of the labor, and the informal employment level, among other problems, are part of a crisis that is not reflected in these indicators. Nevertheless, they are the vertebral column of the system that guarantees the survival of many Salvadorans who live in adverse conditions.

Poverty, income, and fiscal policies
There is a very important aspect in the document of the PNUD that has characterized the country’s economic structure. The very little accomplishments that have been achieved to reduce poverty are fundamentally due to an unequal distribution of the income. According to this year’s IDHES, the differences between the incomes of the poor and the wealthy families have had a critical behavior during the last 25 years, and not a defined tendency. In 1979, 20% of the poorest sectors of the population perceived 2% of the national income, and 20% of the wealthiest sectors perceived 66% of the national income. In 1992, after the Peace Accords were signed, these differences were slightly reduced: 20% of the poorest sectors received 3.2% of the national income, and 20% of the wealthiest sectors of the population received 54.4%. In 2002, after three administration periods of ARENA, these differences have reappeared. A 20% of the poorest sectors of the population receive 2.4% of the national income, and the fifth part of the wealthiest families obtains 58.3%.

This means that, despite the improvements made to eradicate poverty and increase the access to the social services, the economy is working in the benefit of only a few people. In other words, the country’s economic activity reproduces this unequal structure, while the economic gap between the poor and the wealthy tends to grow, as well as the income differences between the rural and the urban areas. That is why it is necessary to create a fairer distribution of the income, in order that the programs to reduce poverty can really become effective and sustainable in the mid and the long-term.

The IDHES 2003 seems to indicate that the economic policy implemented by the official party in the last decade has been far from resolving the most critical economic problems and the social conflicts of the Salvadoran population. The taxation structure implemented by the Cristiani administration plays a very important role, because the regressive taxes were one of the key aspects of his economic perspective. In other words, the last decade has worked with a regressive fiscal policy.

A quick glance at the 2004 Budget Law Proposal shows us that most of the income for the activities of the State comes from the Regular Income (73%). Inside the Regular Income, 40% of the funds to finance the Budget of the State come from the Value Added Tax ( IVA, in Spanish), which taxes in the same way the expenses of the rich and the poor. Only 20% is financed with the income taxes. This explains why, after a decade, the economic differences tend to become more noticeable.

That is why the IDES 2003 explains: “As for the tax policy, the country has to make an effort to establish a tax structure far more equitable”. That is, a taxation structure able to strengthen the income taxes, the taxes to the expensive goods, and the taxes to the capital gain of the properties, among other taxes.

In order to create an effective fiscal reform and to actually succeed in the fight against poverty, it is necessary to restructure the taxation system in a serious and in a responsible fashion, in order to improve the flow of the necessary means to build a better county. The efforts to stop the fiscal evasion are not enough. A fiscal reform means much more than that; it means to implement an effective fiscal policy, according to the income level of the population.

The behavior of the poverty line, the quality of life, and the income level of the Salvadorans depend on the fiscal policy developed by the government. The most important needs of the population, and the enormous economic differences between the social groups can be attacked from the fiscal area. It is necessary to create a fiscal reform able to finance most of the State’s Budget with the taxes paid by the wealthiest families, and that most of that budget can be spent to benefit the families that have less resources to survive. The IDHES 2003 seems to indicate that the present governmental administration has not taken care of this situation in the last years.