Two countries in one

About the electoral reforms

Saca just finished the first one hundred days of his administration. The diverse public opinion polls that have been published reveal the state of grace that the President enjoys. Close to 80% of the Salvadoran population approve of the strategies used by the governmental administration. Some people talked about his attitude as a negotiator and his actions against delinquency in the country. The survey of the Institute of Public Opinion of the UCA (IUDOP, in Spanish) summarizes this situation in the following words: “the Salvadoran population gave 7.27 points to the performance of the Saca administration. More than half of the people thinks that the government is fulfilling its promises. Both the combat against delinquency and his open attitude are the most positive aspects of the new governmental administration according to the Salvadorans”. On the other hand, there is a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with the economic situation, and generally, with the performance of the present political system.

On the one hand there is a certain confidence, the President seems loquacious and hyperactive. He has a couple of political needs. He must follow the line that was traced for him, and he also has to be careful enough not to show that, in fact, his promises are not consistent enough with the present reality. This one is a constant critic that the local politicians have had to face, and, for the interests of the present government, specially in the context of the next legislative and municipal elections, this is a doubt that the present administration cannot reveal. And, in order to continue demonstrating its intention to solve the most critical problems of the Salvadorans, Saca has started a consultation process to adopt certain political reforms.

In one hundred days, Saca has stood out for his frenetic political rhythm. His closest ministers and collaborators have been present in the news media to announce the accomplishments and the good intentions of the new government. Diverse plans to recover the sense of politics have been announced. In this context, the subject of the electoral reforms has returned to occupy the headlines of the national press. The Legislative Assembly, some political parties, and the presidential commissioner for the negotiation system are all requesting ideas about the possible ways to reform the electoral code. Since this is an universal subject that has to do with all the levels of the political life, diverse actors are giving their opinion about the course that the reforms have to take. On the other hand, there is also the old dispute about the salaries of the congressmen, which seem too high if compared with their lack of efficiency and their lack of sensibility to tune in with the demands of the citizens. In addition, in this conjunction, the subject of the independent candidates has returned to the public arena.

This article will not touch the discussion about the technical arguments connected with the best way to examine the electoral system. The objective is to review the present debate, with the diverse demands of the pressure groups, through the elements that can be found in the speech that goes against the policy and the congressmen. When one is to respond why the Salvadoran political system does not work, a series of deceptive affirmations are included and it is necessary to put them in the right place.

The allegations against the congressmen reveal that they do not respond to the citizenry. The electoral system would be to blame, since it directly takes away the political responsibility from the legislators. The parties are those that play the leading role and the legislator must obey the orders of the leaders if he wants to continue in the field of politics. Otherwise, the people in charge of the parties can obstruct somebody’s political career, if he dares to disobey their slogans when voting in the Legislative Assembly. In other words, the precursors of the reforms of the electoral system indicate that they intend to recover the spirit of the Political Constitution that consecrates the independence of the congressmen.

This simplistic argument has shown its effectiveness at same time that it mines the credibility of the Legislative Assembly. Although it is not possible to affirm that the lack of popularity of the congressmen is due to this type of opinions, there is no doubt that those that think so try, if not to remain in the same situation, to at least take advantage of it to achieve their goals. In fact, the public opinion surveys constantly reveal that the parties, the Legislative Assembly, and the congressmen have been negatively evaluated by the citizens (they have gotten the worst reviews).

Although it is true that it is necessary to be aware of how incompetent the political system is when it comes to understand the demands of the citizens, there is no doubt that the problem is more complex than the observations made by the prophets that speak about the end of the kingdom of the national political parties. In fact, although the congressmen frequently make decisions that have nothing to do with the demands of the population, it is also important to notice that these decisions respond to certain economic and social interests, which generally correspond to the line of the governmental party.

In other words, if it is necessary to criticize the performance of politics in the country, it would also be important to wonder about the responsibilities of the party in the government in reference to the political decisions that have been made and those that negatively affect the interests of most of the population. If this exercise cannot be completed, it all becomes a contradiction. While the decisions made by ARENA and its congressmen are blessed in the context of the last fifteen years, the Legislative Assembly is denigrated because of its alleged lack of responsibility to fulfill the citizens needs. This hypocritical attitude hides the responsibility that the right-wing sectors have in relation to the political deterioration of the country. This is not about blaming it all on one sector, this is about understanding the importance of the political interactions in the decisions that are made, and the role that this plays when in the context of the national political activity.

Due to the lack of seriousness of the discussions about the political problems of the country, it will be difficult to come up with the right proposals. While some people keep thinking that life has nothing to do with politics, the key aspect of the problem will remain unsolved. The worst thing that happens in this case is that those who criticize the performance of the parties are those that take more advantage from the disconnection between the congressmen and the citizens. Precisely when the political contents are taken away from the debates about the course that the societies must take, the most influential groups of pressure count with more capacity to impose their personal ideas and their interests. This has been the case of this country, at least since the implementation of the post-war democracy.

It is necessary to reinterpret the sense of the transformations in order to find the way for a true political renovation. In the first place, the actual problem of the country has nothing to do with the number of congressmen (some people consider that eighty four congressmen are just too many), nor with their salary. It has nothing to do with the image of the independent politicians. The case of Alberto Fujimori in Peru, just to mention an example, demonstrates that the independent ones do not necessarily solve the political problems of the people, no matter how much affection or popularity they count with.

On the contrary, it would be necessary to wonder why a reform of the political parties is not encouraged. One of the obstacles for the democratization of the political life is the verticality that prevails in the political organizations. Those who are less virtuous are the ones that keep talking about freedom and democracy in the country. On the other hand, the last elections have verified that it is necessary to control the origin of the parties’ expenses. Nevertheless, nobody mentions the need to examine these areas.

The social aspect as a myth

One hundred days of work are not enough to make a definitive conclusion about the course that the Saca administration has taken, especially if the enormous social challenges of El Salvador are considered. These challenges go beyond everything that has been done in such a short period of time, and everything that would be done in just one presidential period. Nevertheless, it has been possible to observe some tendencies that, judging by the narrow maneuverability of the present government, would be enough to eventually moderate the optimistic will of the new President. This situation allows to conclude that, at least during the first months, the social reform, more than a reality, has been just a myth.

Since the day of the presidential inauguration, Elías Antonio Saca promised that “the social aspect” would be a priority for his administration. He promised that he would fight against both poverty and delinquency, that he would create decent employment sources, and that he would adopt the necessary measures to intensify the application of the reforms in the sectors of education and health. One hundred days later, Saca is proud because he summoned an employment pact, increased the coverage of the Social Insurance for the children of the contributors, put under consensus the approval of penal reforms oriented -along with the Super Iron Fist Plan- to fight against the delinquency of the gangs, and established the foundations of the educational plan 20-21. In other words, Saca appears before the eyes of the population with concrete results that, next to an environment of both negotiation and understanding that characterizes the present moment, would ratify the fulfillment of his promises.

The benefit of a doubt?
The opinion surveys reflect a very noticeable optimism among the Salvadoran population in reference to the fulfillment of the promises made by the President. In other words, a high percentage of Salvadorans would be giving the benefit of a doubt to a President who, until now, has been close to their interests, and that has managed to generate a climate of governance and a relative level of understanding with the political opposition. There does not seem to be any doubt about this: most of Salvadorans approve of the first one hundred days of the Saca administration.

On the contrary, the population does not have a unified criterion about the effectiveness of the social administration, the perceptions are varied. A portion of those interviewed supports the optimistic governmental evaluation. It is necessary to say that this group overlooks the evident provisional state of the presidential action. In other words, what has been done in the last one hundred days can be nothing more than a provisional sample of a plan.

A second group of Salvadorans does not see a single achievement for this period, although it admits that the climate of political irritation that characterized the last days of Francisco Flores created an atmosphere of understanding among the different political forces of the country. Whether these opinions are right or wrong, they seem to indicate that the social agenda has not been followed with the intensity that the official speeches try to reflect. There are those who think that the Saca administration has taken to some steps in regard to the construction of a promising social reform, but that it does not necessarily mean that it will be a successful strategy. In this sense, it would be necessary to say that this optimism
-a moderated one- has its foundations in the fact that the financial capacity of the government conditions the effectiveness of a social reform.

A tight economic belt
The small fiscal margin of operations questions the viability of the social reform. If in the last electoral campaign it was clear that there was a gap between politics and the society -that is, a gap between the interests of the politicians and those of the population-, the recent facts seem to throw some light on a missing link between a social reform and the necessary economic reform. In other words, it is necessary to insist on the fact that the President’s widely advertised intention to return to the social matters will not be possible without making certain reforms to the present economic model, and one of the main ingredients of such model is the fiscal reform.

The public finances are not healthy. It is no mystery that without any available resources the intentions of the new President will not go beyond a promise. The question is where will such resources come from? Saca’s economic team has said that it will not increase the income tax level and that it will not touch the value added tax. In addition, the President has said that by the end of the year he will have a fiscal plan that would allow him to fulfill the promises that he made since the elections. That is why Saca is playing at evaluating the interests of a society that increases its demands, and those of an elite -the most critical tax evaders, those that can contribute to the social reform- that refuses to put its substantial income at risk.

From this perspective, it seems that an important fiscal act of justice is at stake -an undeniable bastion of the left wing -; however, people cannot just be naïve about this: the present government will avoid any commitments that might lead it to confront the business elite because the government belongs to that class. If this were the case, the President’s allies would have already approved a wage increase; however, the subject was not even discussed in the meeting that was held by some of the most important representatives of the business elite and the Salvadoran financial sector. The social reform is not nothing but a chimera without the necessary economic support.

The projects: a social agenda in the long term
If something has been clearly established during the first one hundred days of the Saca administration is that the social reform is not a matter of three months, not even a matter that could be resolved in a whole presidential period. A social reform requires a number of measures for the long term, the implementation of a State’s policy able to go beyond the presidential whims, and beyond a fragile short-term vision.

In matters of education, for example, the plan 20-21 emerges like a promising and an extremely ambitious project. It gathers a considerable number of diverse personalities from different ideological creeds to negotiate the measures that will enable this project to exist. In addition, according to the organizers, it counts with the support of the Salvadoran business people, and in the pictures of the commission’s first encounter, one of the most important local businessmen appeared next to the Minister of Education. Despite the intentions, one returns to the starting point: both the financial support and the true will of the business people have to become a reality first.

As for the health sector, the projects do not seem to have the same ambitions; however, an optimistic attitude is still present. President Saca recently inaugurated the renovation of a hospital “of the first world” destined to take care of the contributors of the Social Security System. Just a few days before this event, they had announced the extension of the health coverage system for the contributors’ children (up to12 years old). The government also announced a project that involves an investment of millions of dollars in the Social Security System and the national network of hospitals. At the same time, the so called governance commission discussed the revival of the health sector’s integral reform. The most important aspects of the sector have been approached, but without dealing with measures that might significantly increase the quality of the health services that the population receives. Once again the enormous challenges minimize the specific actions.

There are other subjects that remain untouched, such as the implementation of an integral housing policy, the creation of decent jobs, and the immediate tasks to reduce the levels of poverty, especially in the most critical areas of the country.

The challenges: it takes more than a political will
The first one hundred days of the Saca Administration have spoken about a political will –we still have to see about that- that intends to change the social Salvadoran image. Saca has said that this project could be his most important axis. With this, he seems to be supporting, without any hesitations at all, one of the most emblematic slogans of the political left wing. This means that he would be moving his speech towards the center and clarifying the traditional message of the Salvadoran right wing. In other words, he would be playing in the field of the left wing, without leaving the right wing or without resigning to the interests of the business elite, which is closely attached to that political ghost.

This is what the Salvadoran public opinion understands. Saca adopts the speech of the left wing, and promises those things that are forbidden to him beforehand: to act independently from the powerful classes. Without a doubt, this is a populism that goes hand in hand with "the friendly" face of the President.

In this specific situation, and validating the presidential will, an enormous challenge requires more than that. Saca has indeed taken a step ahead as far as the development of the country is concerned: he seems to act with more vehemence than his predecessors when it comes to his commitment with the social transformations, but he has also shown that his projects are not viable without the support of the key sectors for the development of the country, being those the business elite and the financial sector, that is, the most important owners of the Salvadoran resources.

Without their support, the social matters will remain as a cosmetic aspect of the official speeches, that is, they will continue being a myth; specific actions -in the best one of the cases-, that lack a national development plan.