Seven theses concerning the political parties of El Salvador

Economy

The salvadoran economy during the first semester of 1998

Society

Concerning the plan for restoration of the downtown area

News Briefs

SEVEN THESES CONCERNING THE POLITICAL PARTIES OF EL SALVADOR

1999 is just around the corner. Except for the fortuitous emergence of a center block, nothing seems to indicate that the four most important parties in the recent political history of El Salvador are going to cease occupying a place of primary importance in the scenario which will be created around the presidential elections of 1999. This editorial aims to contribute to the debate concerning the political parties which —for good or ill— are going to decide, on the basis of their opposition or their alliances, the style of government which the country will have when the third millenium begins. In seven theses, by no means exhaustive, the principal characteristics and history of the four most important political parties are described below.

1.- The PCN, PDC, FMLN and ARENA have played a decisive role in the national political life for the last three decades. In the decade of the 1970’s, the PDC was the principal opposition party —an integral member of the UNO coalition—, while the party in power was the PCN, supported by the military echelons. During the decade of the 1980’s, the PDC (until 1989) played a role of primary importance in the leadership of the government and in the counterinsurgency struggle by means of a pact made up of the PDC, the Armed Forces and the Reagan-Bush Administration, while the FMLN, as an insurgent army, aimed to take political power by means of armed struggle. In the decade of the 1990’s, the FMLN became a political party (1992), coming to be the second political force in the country, after ARENA. The PCN and the PDC, in spite of a noticeable diminution of power, have joined a right-wing block with ARENA, by means of which they obtain a series of political and economic benefits.

2.- Each of the four parties have passed through a series of accommodations which at more than one point have led them to crises and internal ruptures. The parties most weakened by these crises and ruptures have been the PCN and the PDC, although certainly ARENA and the FMLN have not escaped the difficulties created by dissidence, as criticisms which certain right-wing sectors launched against ARENA and the government (in which they are accused of being mercantilists) have revealed; the FMLN is currently experiencing a difficult situation in its attempt to define its electoral formula.

3.- The PCN faced its most difficult situation in October of 1979 when a revolutionary junta government revealed the repression and corruption sponsored by that party. From this date on, the PCN, which had been in power since the 1960’s, has never again been in control of the government. It is not only a case in which a separation took place between the military and the party, but also —in the context of warnings of an approaching war— many of its civilian members opted to leave its ranks.

4.- The PDC tasted power during the decade of the 1980’s with Jose Napoleon Duarte. First as president of one of the revolutionary governmental juntas, and afterwards as president of the republic, Mr. Duarte was able to place members of that party in positions of state leadership. With this, corruption such as never before seen in the PDC rank and file came to exist. After the death of Duarte, conflict for the succession began and ended by issuing in the formation of two factions: the followers of Chávez and the followers of Rey Prendes. Both factions, worn out by interminable conflict and faced with political defeat, were replaced by two new factions: the old guard and the new political class, which continue to dispute control of the party to the present day.

5.- After the failure of the PCN, ARENA came to fill the void in the ranks of the groups holding economic power: they now had a party which would permit them to launch the electoral struggle on the political stage once again. This party, once it began to leave its death squad antecedents behind, moved forward rapidly, first in the Legislative Assembly and, afterwards, towards the presidency: in 1989, Mr. Alfredo Cristiani of ARENA relieved Mr. Duarte of the presidency of the republic and the kingdom of ARENA began, in a context in which the FMLN was engaged in its last military efforts to take state power. This party grouped together three sectors of economic power as they faced the threat of the FMLN: landowners, industrialists and bankers. When the military threat of the FMLN disappeared, the interests of these three sectors began to generate frictions inside the ARENA party. Currently, the financial and banking sector has succeeded in imposing itself, by means of internal struggles which the party was unable to hide, over the other two sectors.

6.- The FMLN, originally an army, had to convert itself into a political party. During the decade of the 1970’s, five factions expressed the political-military and Marxist-Leninist tendency in the country. During the 1980’s these factions joined together and founded the FMLN, although not for this did their basic differences disappear. The civil war over, those differences came to light again. All seemed to indicate that it was the organization or the leader which ought to enjoy hegemony over the activity of the new party. These disputes came to be represented in the joining together, on the one hand, of the FPL, the PRTC and the PCS, which stayed in the FMLN, while, on the other, the ERP and the RN decided to found a new party: the PD. After this, a new division has emerged in the ranks of the FMLN, that of the division between the orthodox tendency and the revisionist tendency.

7.- The impact of these changes in the parties on society —be they accommodations, crises, ruptures— has been at two levels. One is its impact on the most optimistic of intellectual circles that, in general, tends to see these changes as indications of a process of democratization inside the political parties. Another, more critical sector, is not content with this reading and prefers to interpret the dynamic of the parties as an expression of a deficit in the process of democratization. The other level of impact is seen in relation with the majority social groups that, as several opinion polls reveal, do not understand what is happening in the political arena. The practical result of this is a lack of credibility and confidence in politics and politicians.

THE SALVADORAN ECONOMY DURING THE FIRST SEMESTER OF 1998

During the first six months of 1998, the Salvadoran economy continues to behave in a manner similar to last year’s behavior, exhibiting a relatively acceptable macroeconomic situation which contrasts with various problems at the socio-economic level. Poverty continues to be the principal problem and its incidence is greater in rural areas. The current minimum wage has experienced a lessening of its purchase power by 22% since December of 1988. Moderate economic growth during recent years has not translated into substantive improvement of the quality of life for the majority of Salvadorans.

At the level of gross economic activity, recent tendencies demonstrate that growth rates will be maintained between 5% and 4%, a level superficially superior to growth during the last year. One must consider that this prognosis can be adjusted at a lower level owing to higher levels of delinquency, uncertainty during a pre-electoral period—which holds back some investment—and the possible effects of the Asiatic crisis in the medium-range. Nevertheless, we consider that for the majority of the population, 4% growth is not much of a consolation. According to estimates, even considering a supposition of equitable distribution of income, at this rate, it will take 35 years to double real income per capita. The most dynamic sectors in this first semester, at the level of production and the creation of jobs, have been the manufacturing and construction industries and the financial sector, while business and agriculture have seen their economic activities reduced.

On the question of inflation, the first seven months of the year demonstrate an upward tendency in comparison with the same period of last year. The pressure on this behavior comes principally from the categories of foodstuffs and housing, but it is hoped that with the basic grain harvests these pressures could diminish a little during the remainder of the year. In any case, inflation accumulated throughout various years, lessened by moderate increases in the minimum wage, has come to signify a considerable deterioration in the buying power of the workers who earn the minimum wage. At this writing, the buying power of the minimum wage is 22.5% less than it was in December of 1988. In comparing the minimum monthly wage with the basic amplified food basket for the urban area one can see that the buying power of wages is far from satisfying the material needs of the workers, in spite of an increase of 9% registered during the month of May.

In the financial system, three tendencies are primary. First, a recomposition has taken place in the public treasury in such a way that cash holdings and deposits in current accounts have been reduced in order to increase deposits in savings accounts and long-term savings accounts. This tendency is, possibly, a delayed response to the high levels of real interest in 1997, and the recovery of public confidence in the banking system after the FINSEPRO-INSEPRO scandal. Secondly, an increase in competition has been observed in the banking system. With the entry of new banks and foreign capital into the system, the indexes of concentration of deposits demonstrate a barely discernible downward tendency. In the long run, this phenomenon could favor patrons of the banking system with better services. Thirdly, credits destined to diverse productive sectors are concentrated in more than 42% for business, while credits destined for the agricultural sector represent approximately 11%.

With regard to public finance, during the first six months of 1998, a deterioration in current savings of the Public Non-Financial Sector (SPNF, for its initials in Spanish) has been observed as this diminished by 36% as compared with the same period during the previous year. The cause of this negative result in public finances seems to come as much from public spending as from income. Total spending of the SPNF increased by 4%, while current income diminished by 2.9%. A reduction in the latter is owing, principally, to the sale of public businesses under the privatization program, highlighting the fact that the businesses sold generated important income for the public sector. A positive aspect is the increase of 7.5% of tax income as compared with the same period during the previous year. Nevertheless, the tax burden of the country is low: for 1997 it was 10.8% with respect to the GNP, one of the lowest in Latin American and in the world. Moreover, the tax structure is very regressive, given that it rests principally on indirect taxation, such as the Value Added Tax.

Finally, the external sector has continued to demonstrate positive tendencies during recent years. Total exports experienced growth in the amount of 7.4% as compared with the first semester of last year. This behavior is a result of the dynamic of non-traditional exports and maquila exports. Nevertheless, the contribution of the maquila ought to be examined with care, given that by comparing net maquila exports with net coffee exports, one can observe that coffee contributes more towards the generation of profits than the maquila. Nevertheless, this situation could move backwards in the measure that the maquila could continue its tendency towards growth.

Likewise, it might be pointed out that the deficit in the trade balance continues to diminish in relative terms, with respect to exports and imports, which is a favorable tendency for the country. Nevertheless, in June of 1998, a slight increase in the deficit in absolute terms has been noted, principally because of the fall in coffee prices. On the other hand, owing to a strong flow of dividends, a positive capital balance and a policy of fixed currency rates, the level of international reserves has continued growing as compared with last year. It should be pointed out that the accumulation in reserves during recent years has been possible, in large part, because of family remittances.

With respect to the potential impact of the Russian and Asiatic economic crises on the Salvadoran economy, we should exercise prudence. Our economy is very open to international trade, but it is centered on exchange with the U.S. and Central America. The majority of title values traded in our market are national, and, above all, come from the public sector. Therefore, this crisis does not impact on us directly. Nevertheless, the devaluation of the Mexican peso and the problems of the location of title values by the government in international stock exchanges are indirect effects which require a very prudent macroeconomic handling.

[The foregoing is an offering by the Economics Department of the UCA.]

CONCERNING THE PLAN FOR RESTORATION OF THE DOWNTOWN AREA

The Plan for the Restoration of the Historic Downtown Area of San Salvador by Mayor Hector Silva’s administration has set a precedent in two senses: on the one hand, it is sizing up as one of the few projects —if not the only project— which, having been designed by the mayor’s team, not only has met with little resistance in its implementation, but which, moreover, has received recognition and the approval of the majority of the social forces in the country. On the other hand, it constitutes the first serious and planned effort to provide order in an area characterized by chaos, abandonment and decadence.

More meritorious still is that this effort is being set in motion by a left-wing administration which, leaving to one side the populism characterizing the political movements of this class, has decided to provide a definitive solution to the problem of relocating and evicting the sea of street vendors which flood the sidewalks and streets of the capital city’s downtown area, a first step in the implementation of the plan. This measure has won the mayor recognition by sectors traditionally opposed to his administration: private enterprise and a good part of the moderate right.

The Restoration Plan, supported by the Citizen Tranquility Plan of the Metropolitan Police Corps (CAM, for its initials in Spanish), aims, with the help and advisory offerings of municipal governments of friendly countries such as Cuba, Chile and Mexico as well as international organizations, reordering the capital center and rehabilitating its historic arquitecture with the aim of restoring its potential as an economic recourse in business and tourism.

As was to be expected, and even as the mayor’s office predicted from the point in time at which the Restoration Plan was made public, major resistance was encountered from the sector most directly to be affected in the reorganization of the downtown area: the street vendors’ union. Keeping this in mind, the Silva Administration projected a series of measures to avoid possible conflicts: first of all, it designed viable alternatives for the venders who were to be relocated from their original positions (building of commercial "modules", fixing up areas in already existing markets and the development of "mobile markets"); and, secondly, to carry out a process of consciousness-raising and dialogue with those affected salespersons so that they would accept relocation voluntarily.

Although it was not exactly in the context of the Restoration of the Historic Center, the effectiveness of the Silva plan passed its first text with the relocation of the sidewalk vendors in various zones of the city: around the Benjamin Bloom Hospital and the Amigos de Israel Baptist Church, located in Colonia Escalón. Nevertheless, the real test of fire for the Silva project, after the eviction of the vendors from the Fajardo Pasaje, was the shake-up of the sidewalk sales located in the Plaza Morazán in the downtown area of the capital city on 16 September.

On that day approximately twenty sidewalk vendors were forcibly relocated after they rejected all offers by the mayor’s office, they insisted in staying in the same place "at whatever price". The result: 16 arrested and some children and sellers with light symptoms of intoxication as a result of exposure to teargas used by the Unit for Maintaining Order (UMO). Although violent evictions have rarely been accepted by the citizenry, on this occasion, a showing of support and congratulation for Mr. Silva were not to be expected. The reasons are various: in the first place, the process of forcible eviction was begun after they had outrun the grace period extended by the municipality and after which it was sufficiently clear that the vendors would not leave their posts of their own free will; in second place, the fact that more than 60 vendors had acceded to the offer to move them voluntarily to the placed offered made the mayor’s office’s declaration valid in that those who insisted in staying in the place were only an aggressive and benighted minority, deaf to the calls for negotiation which had been presented to them.

In third place, in spite of the provocations and threats of the rebellious vendors, the operation developed by the UMO and planned by the CAM was clean: there was no unreasonable use of force during the operation, to which fact the person who was assigned to report wounded persons among the vendors attested, in addition, the operation was more focussed in clearing out the plaza than in repressing the people. Finally, and perhaps the best reason, with the operation the vendors’ union, traditionally anarchistic, was led to understand that the question was a serious one and that what would not be tolerated was giving more weight to private interests over and above the needs of a large number of the population who must use the sidewalks and streets of the downtown area.

So then, adopting a more critical vision which might override the initial optimism with which the cleaning up of Plaza Morazán has been seen, it is necessary to consider this last point more deeply. Certainly, the mayor’s office is partly right: the Restoration project implied imposing order on the sidewalk vendors in downtown San Salvador because "the majority interest ought to take precedence over private interests". Nevertheless, this ideal implies two fundamental elements: a) that of placing it within the process of dialogue and negotiation which dispels the authoritarian danger which compliance with it implies; and b) placing at the disposition of the minority which will see its resources and viable alternatives affected in order to compensate for the damage which it will cause them.

If we limit ourselves to the dynamic which is operative between the mayor’s office and the street vendors of all of downtown San Salvador, it is obvious that these two elements have been present because the evictions have only proceeded after negotiations have been entered into and efforts to satisfy the demands of the vendors have been satisfied with the resources at the disposal of the mayor’s office. In the case of Plaza Morazán in particular, the negotiation was long and those who agreed to having their posts relocated were moved to an area with the minimum requisites in order that they might continue to carry out their work with a minimum of security and commercial viability.

The problem presents itself when it is called to mind that the disposition of the mayor’s office and the well-being of the population in which private interests must be sacrificed to please the majority, there are private interests which are more sacrificable than others. It is reproachable that the decision the basis upon which the mayor’s office acted and the support which it offered to the citizenry was not repeated with the same intensity when, for example, adjustment of municipal taxes was dealt with. The attitude of private enterprise is open to reproach for celebrating the eviction of their smaller brothers when it was the most stubborn in ceding in its own economic interests in benefit of and for the development of the entire city. In the same way, the attitude of the mayor’s office is open to reproach in the measure in which it moderates its actions with regard to the power which holds back the minority which see themselves being sacrificed.

In order for the idea which we are discussing to have ethical validity, it is a sine qua non for all members of the citizenry be equally disposed to cede for the collective good and that the state entity which might oblige such a thing proceeds with the same force and decision as in all other cases. On the contrary, we are dealing with a hypocritical society which congratulates which the weakest are made to cede for their benefit. Certainly the Plan for the Restoration of the Historic Downtown Area of San Salvador is correct and the mechanisms which are being used to bring this about have, up to the present time, been adequate, but the inevitable contrast, more than an expression of naïve optimism, ought to merit a reflection on our political reality and the ills which grieve it.

 CRIMES. The Minister of Public Security, Mr. Hugo Barrera, declared that the government of our country will contact U.S. authorities to request their collaboration in clearing up the crimes in which National Civilian Police Agents are supposedly involved. The Minister justified the measure by considering that "they [the U.S. investigators] are much more professional and experienced than we are, with more adequate technical resources". Among the cases for which collaboration is requested are those which involve the murder of the radio announcer Lorena Saravia, of the young man, Adriano Vilanova and the businessman Mauricio Garcia Prieto. The Director of the National Civilian Police, Mr. Rodrigo Avila, last week denounced the existence of an alleged plan to discredit the police corps in which various sectors of the country are implicated. In this sense and using the Saravia case as an example, the director recalled that persons who belong to diverse sectors have been involved in the crime, such as journalists, communications media, politicians and ex-members of the National Civilian Police. Mr. Barrera declared, without further explication, that in the three cases "manipulations" exist, because of which the collaboration of foreign investigators is pertinent in the clarification of the murder cases (LA PRENSA GRAFICA, September 15, 1998, p. 6).

ABSENTEEISM. According to authorities of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the fact that 800,000 persons who ought not to be signed up as eligible to vote appear on the electoral rolls (in the majority of cases, because these persons are deceased) is one of the principal reasons which high levels of absenteeism and abstencionism are registered in each election. In this sense, a program for constantly cleaning up the rolls in order to eliminate these cases is being carried out so that the 1999 elections will be more representative (LA PRENSA GRAFICA, September 16, 1998, p. 16).

MR. FRANCISCO FLORES. The ARENA presidential candidate for the 1999 elections, Mr. Francisco Flores, declared that, in spite of the existence of many names which might be considered in nomination as candidate for the vice-presidency in ARENA’s electoral formula, the vice-presidential candidate still has not been defined. Mr. Flores limited himself to enumerating the characteristics which his formula partner should have and, among these, he mentioned honesty, public service background and "proven competence in service to the country". Among the possible vice-presidential partners are Ms Mirna Lievano de Marquez, ex-minister for Planning, and Mr. Roberto Murray Meza, of the ARENA National Executive Committee, have been mentioned, among others (LA PRENSA GRAFICA, September 16, 1998, p. 16).

CANDIDACIES. The ARENA, FMLN, PCN and PDC parties aim to define, during the upcoming weeks, their presidential formulas and make official their candidates for which reason the leadership and rank and file of the parties are being convoked. ARENA declared that it will hold a meeting of the National Assembly on October 11 in order to define their vice-presidential candidates. The FMLN said that their third National Convention will be celebrated on September 27. That day they hope to be able to unlock the tie which different tendencies (the orthodox and the revisionist) and achieve a presidential formula. The PCN held two meetings during the next few days, the first in order to make public their maximum authorities, with Mr. Ciro Cruz Zepeda chairing because the statues of their party require this. This meeting will be held the same day as the FMLN’s meeting. The second meeting will be in order to announce and make official the candidate formula of Mr. Hernan Contreras as presidential candidate. Meanwhile, the PDC has not set the date for its convention. The party secretary, Mr. Ronal Umana, declared that it will take place for the sole reason of confirming Mr. Rodolfo Parker as presidential candidate. The current PDC leadership will pay no attention to the petition of the Democratic Christian Unification Movement (MUDC, for its initials in Spanish), which has requested that Mr. Umana hold primary elections in order to elect a presidential formula (LA PRENSA GRAFICA, September 15, 1998, p. 16).