The Salvadoran population and television

Calculated political risks?

While Saca induces the population to sleep with pretty speeches about his good intentions and his good profile, the interaction dynamics between the political parties have remained in the same critical situation. In their race towards the legislative benches and the municipal governments for the next elections, the members of ARENA, starting with President Saca, are willing to forget the political truce between them and the opposition. They want to defeat the adversary by tarnishing its image with mud, taking advantage of its delicate internal conjunction.

There is a series of elements that have influenced politics during the last days, and that motivated the title of this commentary. In the first place, there is the open battle that the small vendors of the country’s city streets are fighting against the mayors of the FMLN. It is also necessary to consider the public reprimand that Saca and other leaders from ARENA gave to the mayor of San Martin because he decided to become part of the MIDES project. The official behavior in both of these subjects, among other aspects, is a clear signal of a strategy aimed to weaken the FMLN, promoted from the official circles of the right-wing party.

The street vendors of discord
It seems peculiar that one of the main defenders of the streets vendors of Santa Tecla is the minister of Internal Affairs, René Figueroa, known by his inopportune declarations against those who claim for their rights in the streets. The faithful defender of Saca’s good deeds declared that he was astonished by the attitude of the Mayor of Santa Tecla, Oscar Ortiz, because he did not know how to negotiate with the street vendors.

According to the peculiar interpretation made by Figueroa, the municipal authorities are guiltier than the street vendors who attacked the municipal infrastructure without mercy. Contrary to the habitual response of Figueroa’s party, it seemed peculiar that in his declarations he did not even have one word about the alteration of the public order. The sectors of ARENA are usually the ones that propose law initiatives to treat like terrorists those who defend their rights from the trenches of the barricades.

The public official did not do much to explain the fact that the police has passively observed the negative behavior of the street vendors. In fact, the police must offer a good explanation about its attitude regarding the disturbances that took place in Santa Tecla. An easy explanation like the one some editorialists use to blame it all on the alleged dispute between the orthodox and renovators, that is, the members of the left-wing party, is not enough to support such behavior.

The President as a militant
Everyone knows Saca’s political affiliation. Therefore, to call him “the militant president” is not a reason to overlook the fact that the President was chosen under the flag of ARENA, and that he agrees with the idea connected with the elimination of the Communists, a thought preached by his party. Nevertheless, it is also important to mention that, given the institutional adjustment of our political system, the president is represented with a national investiture that overflows the limits of its own party.

Saca understood it when he declared that he considers himself the president of all the Salvadorans, without exceptions. This is so because, unlike other electoral systems, the presidential system of two rounds, tries to avoid this reality and to create automatic majorities, although, in fact, they are somewhat fictitious.

For that reason, as it usually happens, in these systems the presidents are careful enough not to present a specific party. Because their legitimacy rests on the representation of the society. Nevertheless, in the case of Saca the situation is different. In the first place, the President is still the president of his party. He is still the person who is in charge of the organization and all of its internal rough terrains. He has not even taken the time to delegate the organization’s coordination functions to a Secretary General, for instance.

Recently, Saca has demonstrated that there is a collision between his functions as the President of the country and as the supreme leader of the official party. Before the decision of the Mayor of San Martín to be associated with the MIDES project, the President publicly declared that such decision went against the interests of his party. This is not only an atypical declaration for a president, but it also indicates that the damages against the environment and that the violation of the environmental law are not priorities, because there are certain city halls that throw their garbage anywhere they please. This is a peculiar way to show his true colors for a character who kept talking about his moderate spirit in order to avoid uncomfortable questions connected with the behavior of the member of his party.

To tell the truth, there have been enough signs to reject the idea of a totally aseptic Saca before the discussions held by the parties, a person who is only interested in solving the problems of the Salvadorans. Both of the previously mentioned issues intensify the discussion about the hypocrisy of the President.

Calculated risks?
Saca’s decision to remain at the head of ARENA and repress any dissident voices inside the official party obeys to a clear and an affluent strategy. The president was never an active militant of the party and, therefore, he does not automatically count with the necessary loyalties to establish his power inside the organization. In addition, most of the present congressmen of ARENA owe their election to Francisco Flores, someone who was not necessarily a defender of Saca’s candidacy.

The President, in addition, takes advantage of his popularity in the public opinion polls to make sure of his power in the party. The incapacity of the opposition to overcome its internal problems plays a favorable role for the concentration of power in the hands of Saca. While the voices of the adversaries are not heard, the connection between the official party and the presidency does not represent any political risks at all. On the contrary, this conjunction is favorable for the President, who will definitively ask the voters, during the next elections, for the necessary support to develop his proposals.

However, despite the political cleverness of Saca, the apparently applauded decision of the minister of Governance in the case of the passivity of the police before the attacks against the city hall of Santa Tecla, will somehow debilitate the country’s institutional performance. It becomes clearer that the PNC intervened in this situation by being repressive only with the demonstrators whose demands affect the political peace of the official politicians.

This is called the “politicization” of the police. This is not about demanding an iron fist policy. It is necessary to demand the correct operation of the public institutions. It is a fact that, in Santa Tecla, the police, the people who have the task to protect the lives and the property of the citizens, let the street vendors act with impunity and commit criminal acts against the municipal property.

The First draft of the General Budget of the Nation

Last week, the minister of Hacienda (the Internal Revenue Service), Guillermo Lopez Suárez, arrived at the Legislative Assembly to present the first draft of the General Budget Law of the Republic for 2005. According to the document, the expenses of the State for the next year will ascend to $2,992 million dollars, including an increase of $198.1 million in reference to the 2004 budget. One of the most important aspects of the document refers to the bonds of the national public debt that will be issued to finance of the activities of the State. With this, they hope to obtain approximately $542 million dollars. To this amount it is necessary to add $200 million dollars to pay for the country’s last loans. The expenses of the national debt would go beyond $700 million dollars, that is, approximately 25% of the General Budget of the Nation.

According to the first draft, there are different organizations of the State that will increase their expenses: the Presidency of the Republic; the Judicial Organ; the Ministries of Hacienda, Education, Health and Internal Affairs, among others. The average increase that these institutions will receive is approximately $20 million dollars. There are other institutions that will also receive an increase, but it will be more modest: the Legislative Assembly, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Court of Accounts, and the University of El Salvador (UES, in Spanish), among others. In this group, the increases will be of approximately $2.5 million. As an exceptional case, the UES will receive $7 million dollars more than it did in the present year.

On the other hand, there are the dependencies of the State that will suffer a budget cut for the next year: the Ministries of Economy and Public Works, the General Attorney’s Office (FGR, in Spanish), and the General Office of the Country’s Judge Advocate General. The average reduction in some institutions of the State is only of a million dollars. On the other hand, there are those that will practically stay with the same amount assigned for 2004: the Human Rights Office, the Electoral Supreme Court and, and the National Council of the Judiciary Office. This way, it is possible to notice that the increase on the expenses of the State is mainly focused on many of the units that are under the command of the Executive power. The units of the Public Ministry would practically keep their level of expenses without alterations.

The thorny subject of the national debt
One of the most confrontational aspects than can be anticipated for the discussion of the budget in the Legislative Assembly refers to the state of the national debt. Here, it is important to remember the words of the FMLN’s congressman, Gerson Martinez: "the country can keep its indebtedness, but the point is that it has been a sterile indebtedness". In this sense, much of the debts that the country has contracted in the last years, even before the earthquakes, have not been used to make productive investments. It is obvious that for an adequate performance of the State it is necessary to finance the regular expenses; however, the use of the resources would have to be aimed to develop productive projects for the country.

The marrow of the problem is the low revenue coefficient that the country has. A substantial increase of the revenue for the public State Treasury would considerably reduce the amount of the debt. This one has a limit, since to issue a debt in an indiscriminate way could act against the country’s risk ratings, and the Treasury bonds would seem unattractive for the international markets. In other words, it is important to remember the link that exists between the bonds issued by the State and the country’s risk ratings.

In the future, one of the most critical problems that the present administration will have to deal with is the sustainability of the debt in the long term. El Salvador has become indebted in the last few years to resolve its financial necessities. For the specialists, most of the income obtained through the debts is not part of the investment programs. In fact, indebtedness is associated with the idea that there will be future improvements in the nation’s income sources; the possibility to pay the debts depends on this.

In order to improve the income level, nothing is more advisable than the reactivation of the national productive apparatus, but this new budget seems to indicate that the expenses of the nation have not been guided towards that direction. Indebtedness is not harmful for the country, as long as it is used for the activities that will create profits in the medium and long term. Unfortunately, that cannot be said about the loans of the last administrations. The Salvadoran economy does not seem to indicate that its productive apparatus is adequately working or that it has a dynamic performance.

What about the social issues?
One of the most outstanding aspects of this whole matter is the amount destined for the families that live in a situation of extreme poverty. It is possible to remember that the Salvadoran President, during his intervention in the General Assembly of the United Nations, committed himself to carry out a program of subsidies to specifically palliate the situation of poverty in the country. According to the first draft of the budget law, this program only has destined one million dollars to face the needs of 220,000 Salvadoran families. What kind of sense can this decision make? One can only hope that this program has a first stage of logistic development that allows them to identify specifically how many families are in this situation. This "cartography" of poverty would make it more efficient to actually use the public policies to the eradicate poverty in the next years. In other words, everything seems to indicate that this program will allow them to establish a precise diagnosis of who are the poorest families. In the future, as Súarez mentioned, the plan to fight poverty will have to be related to the social policy that the government follows through both the Ministries of Health and Education. In addition, the future implementation of the Health Fund (FOSALUD, in Spanish) could help them to achieve this goal.

On the other hand, one of the "incongruities" that the 2005 public policy proposed by Saca will have is the budget increase for both the Governance Ministry and the National Civilian Police (PNC, in Spanish), within the framework of the "Super Iron Fist Plan” and the amount destined to the operation of the Attorney General’s Office. Why the incongruity? For the plan against delinquency to be carried out successfully it is not only necessary to make a general preventive effort, the judicial system also has to make an enormous effort in this context. For the specific case of the plan against the gangs, the public prosecutors play an important role, because they are the ones that play an active part in the judicial process of the gang members. That is why it is not easy to understand how all the leaders of the gangs will be arrested without increasing the budget of the FGR.

The General Budget of the Nation is an instrument of the economic policy and if it is used in an adequate manner it can help with the reactivation of the economy. Nevertheless, a general look at the budgetary structure for 2005 says that there will not be too many resources available for those organizations that are important for the reactivation of the economy. If the level of indebtedness increases, and no investments are made to improve the country’s productive structure, the nation could fall into a situation of financial insolvency that will have a strong set of repercussions on the economy.