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Proceso 1166
October 19 2005
ISSN 0259-9864
Editorial: Misleading interpretations
Politics: Sophistry and the pre-electoral fanaticism
Economy: Funds for the reconstruction
Misleading interpretations
According to the present ARENA
administration, both God and nature would be mainly responsible for the last
national tragedy. God, because he created things in an imperfect manner, he
created a country in a high-risk area, subjected to earthquakes, floods,
hurricanes, and eruptions. Surrounded by volcanoes and mountains, many
inhabitants had no choice but to build their houses in the outskirts or by a
river, and these conditions make people’s lives even more vulnerable. Nature, on
the other hand, would play the role assigned by God and punish the population in
a merciless way. This is how, with such a misleading interpretation, the country
is under a permanent threat, and, therefore, people have to learn to live at
risk, in a country that could become an enormous shelter full of victims. The
administration of ARENA rejects any sort of investigation to establish the
identity of the responsible ones. According to this party, no one is responsible
for the present tragedy. This is the old argument that tries to run away from
any kind of explanations. Since the war was an issue that involved everybody,
nobody is responsible for it; since so many people are killing each other, no
one has to give any explanations about the crimes against humankind. In summary,
it is better not to wonder about whose responsibility this is, and resign
ourselves to our own destiny, whatever it might be.
It is very common to try and make God responsible for the catastrophes, but this
is wrong. The spirit of creation is not our enemy, or different from humankind.
People, with their actions, do turn it into a menace. Therefore, it is
unacceptable to say, just like President Saca does, that “we Salvadorans have
been created in adversity”. We are the ones that have turned the environment
into adversity. To blame God for this is to overlook the irresponsible manner in
which urbanizations, shopping malls, and roads have been built, an explanation
that the ARENA government avoids every time its actions are questioned. The same
institutional weakness, an evident factor in the lack of territorial planning
and urban development, also governmental responsibilities, is another aspect
that explains what happened. The governments of ARENA have under appreciated the
development of the nucleus of informal power, which has replaced the juridical
and the social organization of the State. The institutional weakness is the
responsibility of the Executive authority, with its President leading the way,
it is also the responsibility of the other two powers, of the local governments,
and of some of the construction companies (those companies that the system
allows to act without any boundaries, and that are not sanctioned when there are
deaths or damages).
Thousands of Salvadoran families live in high-risk areas, not because God wants
them to live like that, but because they have no choice. They do not have access
to a safe home. They do not qualify for a loan, and the governmental housing
programs do not count them among their beneficiaries. Their members do not have
a permanent job, and if they do, their income hardly allows to them purchase the
bare essentials. The few possessions that they have are all part of a personal
sacrifice. That is why they refuse to leave their homes. They know very well
that if they lose their few personal belongings, no one will support them to
replace what might get lost. To lose these things means more misery. It is easy
to order that people have to be evacuated, but for those who have no place to
go, these orders are very hard to accept. These families do not live like this
because they want to, but because they have been forced into this situation
through different mechanisms.
Undoubtedly, the hand of God is very powerful, but God does not need to test
human beings to verify their capacity to overcome crucial situations; however,
President Saca does think that God is putting this society through a test. The
relation of God with human kind is not a set of tests with rewards for the
people with more skills. God, for being all mighty, but most of all, for being
kind and compassionate, does not need to test anyone to know what is in the
bottom of their hearts. He knows all that without any sort of tests. God does
offer many opportunities to human kind in order to rectify its actions, in
addition to what might be inside a human heart. Sometimes it is also revealed
what drives people’s attitudes towards the others and towards nature. Some
people’s disrespect for humankind and for God’s creation plan is evident,
without the need of a catastrophe such as the one as last week’s. It has not
been God the one that has organized the process of creation in an inadequate
manner, it has been us human beings the ones that have disorganized nature’s
course, led by ambitions of power and wealth.
It is not true either that the Salvadorans have always overcome those tests
allegedly imposed by God; President Saca only refers to this sort of “tests” in
order to create a false sense of hope. And the proof of this is the negligent
attitude of the ARENA administrations towards the different kinds of threats and
risks. They left the mitigation tasks unfinished after the earthquakes of 2001,
and they overlooked others. A proof of this is the abandonment in which the
population lives; the people’s hopes are set on the possibility to emigrate to
North America because their own land denies them the chance to live with
dignity. The country’s most important challenge is to make it “livable” in order
that the inhabitants prefer to stay here rather than just run away at any cost
from misery and risk.
President Saca assures that “he cannot feel at ease before the needs of the
population”. However, these needs have been there ever since his inauguration
day, even earlier when he made his campaign promises, and since ARENA
monopolized the power. If during his first year as President he would have
gotten closer to the population in order to discuss the society’s problems with
the people –and not just establish a dialogue for advertising reasons-, just as
he promised, he would have discovered those needs, and perhaps he would have
taken care of that and put some order in his administration to prevent the
damage and avoid so much loss and suffering. If he had actually seen the faces
full of pain of the population, his administration would have taken a different
direction. His slogan: “A government with human sense” is just that, a slogan, a
portion of a permanent advertising campaign aimed to hide the national reality
away with an image strategy. A true sense of human significance would have led
his administration to provide the citizenry with social and environmental
security. However, it can never be late to “dignify people’s existence”.
The presidential discourse about the floods ends with an invitation to
solidarity; however, the Salvadoran population does not need to hear such
things. The population has enough solidarity when it comes to face this kind of
tragedy, as it has happened in numerous occasions. The people’s sense of
generosity is enormous. What the Salvadorans need, and what is systematically
being denied to them is the means to make that solidarity an institutional
factor in order to guarantee a good life and the proper care of the environment.
What the Salvadorans need is to strengthen their sense of local organization and
their perception as a community in order to establish the appropriate mechanisms
to share. President Saca should not expect that the people who throw their
garbage in the creeks become his main collaborators, because they do not have
anywhere else to dispose of it, and because they lack an elemental amount of
knowledge about this sort of problems. Instead, the President should ask for the
collaboration of those that are mainly responsible for the country’s enormous
economic differences.
Sophistry and the pre-electoral fanaticism
The FMLN reported this week what the party calls “a state
of electoral exception”. This is a series of electoral reforms approved by
ARENA, the PCN, and the PDC to, according to the left-wing party, disregard the
power of the opposition in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE, in Spanish). The
reforms enable the TSE to make decisions with a simple majority –that is, with
just three out of five votes-, instead of doing it by a qualified vote process.
This allows ARENA to do whatever its members decide to do counting with the
votes of the electoral magistrates of the PCN and the one of the Supreme Court
of Justice, represented by Mario Salamanca.
The reforms give away shares of 20% in the Vote Collecting Boards, in the
Electoral Boards of the Departments, and in the Municipal Electoral Boards. This
how these shares remain in the hands of the members of ARENA, the FMLN, the PDC,
and the PCN. The 20% that is left is shared by the new parties. The magistrate
of the FMLN, Eugenio Chicas, indicated that this process allows that the
decisions are made between the alliance of the official party and both the PDC
and the PCN.
ARENA justifies these reforms saying that they allow the decision making process
to be faster. It is true, it makes it faster indeed, but this is to favor the
official party. It establishes a mechanism that can easily create a fraud in the
next elections, something that, the way things are going, does not seem to look
like an exemplary event.
Fanaticism
Some people refer to El Salvador as an example of a political transition towards
democracy, after a scenery of political polarization and military conflicts. But
it is during a pre-electoral season when people can actually see how much the
mentality about a war has changed. It is not necessary that the TSE opens the
electoral campaign; it is enough with just a few months in advance to see the
most violent expressions of both the left and the right wing emerge.
It is important to mention, for instance, the death of a young activist from
ARENA, Ana Erika Quintanilla Torres. This kind of events, as it usually happens,
is used with an electoral purpose. Without much of an actual piece of evidence,
the members of the official party made its main contender, the FMLN, responsible
for the homicide. However, according to the investigations of the National
Civilian Police, a couple of gang members were arrested, and they were allegedly
accused of the crime. According to the police, Quintanilla was the victim of a
death threat when she left the gang she belonged to. Her murder, therefore, did
not have a political motive.
It is a sad story to see President Saca become part of this slight way of
handling crime, and stating that “the FMLN has begun to attack because it has
serious internal problems, and they are losing their mayors and congressmen, and
it sees that a catastrophic defeat is on the way, and what they have done is
begin to attack and insult others; in addition, they have already announced a
war against the government”. This statement was published by the Co-Latino
Newspaper, on September 21st of 2005.
The left-wing does not seem to have an exemplar behavior either, and it also
seems to have learned what are the political tricks of the right-wing. The
leader of the Association of Workers of the Social Security Institute (STISS, in
Spanish), Ricardo Monje, was arrested because he was allegedly accused of
sexually abusing his stepdaughter. In spite of the repulsion of the feminist
organizations, the STISS handled the arrest as part of a campaign created by
ARENA against the organization. The member of this union was one of the main
leaders of the national protests against the privatization of the public health
system.
In this case, no one knew, or no one wanted to know the difference between the
professional and the domestic aspect of this matter. The one that reported the
events was not, as it would seem if this logic were true, ARENA, but the partner
of the union’s member. Whoever criticizes the leader of a union, according to
the logic of political fanaticism, cannot be but an enemy of the working class.
However, it is important to say that the private life of Monge and the union
that he represents are two different things. If he is found guilty, the fight
against the privatization of the public health system will not be discredited.
What might lose credibility in this case is the individual. It is important to
see this because in an environment of fanaticism such as the Salvadoran one, it
is easy to mix these things with specific interests. If, in fact, the party of
the government is interested to neutralize the union, this does not mean that
Monge will not have to face his responsibilities with the judicial authorities
of the country.
The same discredit campaigns
The eighties stood out for having a poor environment of political discussion.
With a strong sense of censorship for everything that could smell like the
left-wing. The members of ARENA were the only ones able to express their
thoughts, as well as their contenders form the Christian Democracy. The
newspapers were filled with “paid advertisements”, some of them had signatures
and identification codes of questionable authenticity; others just seemed to
sign with the name of a ghostly association. These paid advertisements were used
to slander the members of the opposition that were connected with the guerrilla,
and this was equivalent to a death threat.
Fortunately, times have changed, and El Salvador is now in a transition process
that some people refer to as “exemplary”. However, there are individuals that do
not change the old habits. One of them, identified as the person who writes more
letters addressed to the Congress in order to request that the Parliament
punishes the FMLN, last week published in a newspaper an entire page in which he
made a connection between the party of the left-wing and the disasters. The
former members of the guerrilla, according to this person, were to blame for the
damaged national infrastructure that would cost millions of dollars. And that
was why, he indicated, they had to compensate the Salvadoran population for the
damage that was caused.
One of the first things that they usually mention about the FMLN during the
campaigns is precisely this kind of discussion. When they have intended to look
for an excuse to explain the flaws of the economic model, they have blamed it on
the destruction of bridges, and on the destruction of the electricity posts’
nets, among other aspects, caused by the former guerrilla members. When they
have intended to rave about the achievements of the economic system, they have
highlighted the recovery capacity pulled off thanks to the administrations of
the official party.
This character is right at one point. The FMLN has to compensate the Salvadoran
society for the damage that was caused during the war. However, the right-wing
also has to do their own thing. The right-wing should, in this sense, compensate
the people of the affected areas because of the operatives of the
counter-insurgence. The FMLN might have destroyed bridges, but let us not forget
that others also bombarded areas in which a considerable amount of people lived,
and others put many families on the street, for instance. However, this kind of
paid advertisement does not intend to compensate the victims of the war, the
victims that suffered for the actions of both the guerrilla and the army.
Funds for the reconstruction
The minister of Hacienda (internal revenue service),
Guillermo Lopez Suarez, spoke about the transformations of next year’s General
Budget of the Nation. These variations have to do with a reconfiguration of the
income and the expenses to face the reconstruction of the country after the
floods. For the last period of 2005, an important set of modifications will take
place in order to take care of the reconstruction tasks in the short –term. In
both cases, the government will assign the money of the loans that were destined
for other activities. There are $134 million for reconstruction projects
programmed for 2005 and 2006.
According to the source of the Ministry of Hacienda, the loans have already been
approved by the Legislative Assembly, all that is left to do is that the
congressmen approve of the new distribution of the funds. The first time that
the members of the parliament voted to approve the credits, the objectives were
very different from the ones that Hacienda is promoting now. A considerable
amount of the funds was destined to the reconstruction of new roads; however,
because of the damages caused by the rain, this money will be used now for
reconstruction and mitigation projects, among other aspects.
For the last period of 2005, the government expects to spend approximately $70
million. Out of this amount, $38 million will be used to build drainage systems,
vaults, and slopes. Another $10 million will be used to start with the first
phase of the housing reconstruction project for the victims. In the short-term,
$10.7 and $8.5 million will be assigned to the drainage project of the Ilopango
Lake and other mitigation duties in the neighborhood “Las Colinas”, in Santa
Tecla. Another $95,000 will be used to identify the amount of victims and their
loss. This money will also be used to design drainages and vaults.
The reconstruction and the risk mitigation projects will continue in 2006. For
this year there are $63.5 million available. This amount will be assigned to
practically the same activities developed in 2005. Those activities would be:
$12.6 million for the drainages, vaults, and slopes; $20 million to continue
with the construction of houses; $800,000 to design drainages, vaults, and
slopes.
A few days ago, President Saca stated that $230 million would be necessary for
the reconstruction process. However, between 2005 and 2006 only a little more
than 50% of this amount will be used. In this sense, the Minister of Hacienda
said that he expects that the remaining amount of funds can be obtained through
the international aid.
The budget of 2006
For the next year, the State expects to spend $3,338 million. The budget is
distributed in the following manner, according to the different administration
areas: the area of social development counts with $1,094.4 million (32.8%); the
public debt, $779.9 million (23.4%); while the general obligations of the State
go as high as $483.5 million (14.5%). On the other hand, $402.2 million will be
assigned to the administration of justice and the civilian security area, while
for the administrative tasks they will use $338 million (10.1%) and $240 million
more to support the economic development. According to the information of the
Ministry of Hacienda, the social area will count with the highest budget
allocation. This means that the new government will be making a higher social
investment level for the next year. However, it seems so critical to see that
the budget to pay for the public debt is the second most important and highest
amount: more that a fifth part of the budget has been assigned to face the
financial engagements of the State.
The budget for 2006 exceeds the 2005 budget by $346 million. This amount,
increased by 11.6%, is mainly due to the payment of the pensions, the financing
of the Social Economic Development Fund of the Counties (FODES, in Spanish), the
increase of the public sector’s employees’ salary, and the financing of the Fund
of Disasters, as well as the expenses of the elections, among other things. The
ministry considered that the subsidy promised to the public transportation
businessmen, because of the increasing prices of gasoline, was a “compromise”
that had to be immediately delivered.
There are $40 million available to increase the salary of the public employees.
This increase will be different for every sector. Those employees that that earn
less than $400 will receive a 10% increase. The salaries, which oscillate
between $401 and $700 will be increased by 8%. The salaries between $700.01 and
$1000 will be increased by 6%. The rest will be increased by 3%.
It is important to say that the proposal of the General Budget of the Nation for
2006 was designed before the floods. On September 30th, the document was sent to
the Legislative Assembly to be studied and approved. However, due to the damage
caused by the rain in the first days of October, several congressmen considered
that such project would be totally discarded and that the Ministry of Hacienda
would present a new project that would consider the destruction caused by the
rain. However, at the beginning of the week, Minister Lopez Suarez said that in
order to go ahead with the reconstruction tasks of the next year, it is
necessary for the congressmen to approve the 2006 Budget Project first and
later, the allocation of resources for the reconstruction of the country. For
instance, according to the budget of next year, the Ministry of Public Works
(MOP, in Spanish) would have $144 million available, that is, $14.6 million less
than what was stipulated in the budget of 2005. However, for the reconstruction
projects, that ministry will count with $47.2 million. In gross terms, the MOP
will count with $32.6 million more than in 2005.
The disposition to approve, in the first place, the formerly mentioned project,
and, later on, the resources for the reconstruction of the country is not a
difficult task in economic terms. It is not necessary, just like several
congressmen expected, to design a new budget project that would consider the
damages caused by the rain. In terms of numbers, the results in both cases would
be the same. However, from a political perspective, the situation can turn a bit
complicated. This can happen because, to determine the priorities for the
reconstruction duties of the next year, it is necessary to approve as soon as
possible the budget for 2006. This sets limits on the capacity of the
congressmen to make any observations in reference to the budget for the next
year.
In the last years, the approval of the State’s budget has been a complicated
task in the Legislative Assembly. The Executive authority, through the Ministry
of Hacienda, has presented the budget hoping that it can be approved
immediately. On the other hand, the congressmen of the opposition have
constantly questioned the allocations of several ministries, and they have
spoken about the importance to make some adjustments in the budget. The years
2004 and 2005 have been examples of how the budgets cannot always be immediately
approved.
Now, with the reconstruction duties that the country has to take care of, the
Executive authority will pressure the Legislative Assembly to immediately
approve the budget in order to go ahead with a new legislative authorization to
finance the reconstruction tasks. If the structure of the State’s general budget
is questioned, the official party will understand such attitude as a lack of
will to work on the reconstruction of the country. It should not seem odd if
when the discussion about the budget becomes trapped in the Legislative Assembly
the Executive authority begins to accuse the congressmen of the opposition of
wanting to arrest the country’s development. Despite the fact that, in several
opportunities, the observations and their questioning about the budget are well
founded, the parties of the opposition should be able to overcome such
situation. Most of all when the elections are just around the corner.
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