Perspectives on the new government

The presidential message: from criticism to self-criticism

The reactivation of the agricultural and livestock sector

A change of attitude: one of the challenges for the reordering of San Salvador

News Briefs

PERSPECTIVES ON THE NEW GOVERNMENT

On June 1, Francisco Flores was inaugurated president of the republic and the ARENA party thereby began its third consecutive period in office. It is evident that Flores is not starting from zero; he begins, at the time he assumes power, from the premise of an economic, social and political context, the most important dynamics of which have been forged in the context of the two previous governmental administrations.

The legacy of the two ARENA governments to the Francisco Flores administration will be presented below together with the most important challenges which his administration will face and finally the possible scenarios which will impact the country once the third ARENA administration begins its work. As an hypothesis —contrary to an alternative hypothesis which holds that no breakage of any kind exists between the Cristiani group and the Flores team; the ostensible tensions between them being the result of an artfully designed play of mirrors— we propose the idea that what Flores expresses (or would like to express) a strategy of institutional renewal inside the ARENA party, which would require a redefinition of the linkages between this party, big business —especially those linked to finances— and the state apparatus.

The Francisco Flores administration receives from the previous ARENA governments, the following: (a) a national economy with its three fundamental sectors in a state of disarticulation: financial, industrial and agricultural; (b) a context of neoliberal economic policies with concrete results in some areas such as the privatization of electrical energy, telecommunications and retirement pensions; (c) a social policy context with very limited success at a structural level (decreasing poverty), but with relative success in specific fields such as education, expansion of basic social services (drainage, potable drinking water) en the rural areas of the country; (e) a discontinuity and lack of connection between economic policies —and social policy; (f) key institutions for the democratization of the country—such as the Ombudsman for the Defense of Human Rights and the National Civilian Police —weakened; (g) the political and economic consolidation of the Cristiani group, which converts it into a factor applying important and unavoidable pressure on the new government; (h) an unresolved public security problem in which the Ministry of Public Security is involved, together with the National Civilian Police, the Public Security Academy and the make-up of the police; and (i) a correlation between the ARENA party, the big businessmen (above all those linked to the financial sector) and the state.

In this context, the unavoidable challenges to the new government are the following: (a) rearticulate the national economy, which presupposes the formulation of a medium and long-range plan as well as a national development plan and the formation of an institutional body which guarantees its implementation; (b) achieve a minimal coherence between economic policies and social policies which must be redefined in the contexts of the political legacies of the two previous administrations as well as a greater state effort to channel macroeconomic achievements towards the solution of structural social problems such as poverty and socioeconomic marginalization of the majority of Salvadorans; (c) advance in the institutionalization of democracy, recuperating the original and proper sense of the Ombudsman for the Defense of Human Rights and the National Civilian Police, and presenting again the role of the Ministry of Public Security in the process of the democratization which the country is experiencing; (e) disarticulate (or redefine) the links between ARENA, big business and the state; and (f) diminish (or "break") the political and economic dominance of the Cristiani group which finds support in state institutions.

What are the scenarios which can be sketched out in the immediate future? There are, possibly, three: (a) the redefinition of ARENA and the simultaneous affirmation of the autonomy of the state and the articulation of the economic and social policies for the most pressing needs of the majority sectors of the country. As this scenario begins to take shape, the conflict between the government team and the Cristiani group will be inevitable, and its solution will depend upon the economic support (a) position which the industrial groups and agricultural producers assume) and the political (composition of the Legislative Assembly beginning in the year 2000) which both would succeed in mobilizing in their favor; (b) deepening of the neoliberal hereditary lack of connection program between the economic policies and the social-conservation policies of the ARENA profile; this is to say, more of the same. The risk will have the effect of wearing ARENA down, although this does not necessarily translate into a political-electoral failure (for which the existence of an electoral alternative would be required and which is not to be seen on the immediate horizon); and (c) a mixed (compromise) formula characterized by moderate reform of ARENA and the maintenance of the axis of the neoliberal hereditary-empowerment of the neoliberal program and the implementation of already announced social policies (or policies initiated by the previous administrators).

The period of time between the inauguration until the legislative and municipal elections of the year 2000 will surely not bring greater surprises or political-institutional changes. Perhaps the most important dynamics on the question of the consolidation of the scenarios sketched above will begin to be brought to bear after the elections of the year 2000. Meanwhile, it will be necessary to follow closely the reaccommodations and positioning of the tendencies and sectors which coexist within ARENA as they take shape in view of the future electoral process, in which ARENA will not confront only the FMLN party but will confront itself as well.

In this context, one must take care to avoid precipitate interpretations; it would be best to be attentive to the dynamics which are taking shape, without evaluating them a priori as an expression of a political change without precedent —this is to say, as a "deepening" of democracy or as a continuation of a schema for the exercise of power inherited from the immediate past— this is to say, as an expression of a "stagnation" in the transition and consolidation of democracy. The thesis of the "turning back of authoritarianism", although interesting and worthy of greater attention, must be discussed in depth in order to avoid crude simplifications of the national political process.

THE PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE:

FROM CRITICISM TO SELF-CRITICISM

One of the items which raised a little dust in the presidential speech was the "boomerang" which it threw at "our political opposition: the debate is sterile if not edifying. Criticism, if it does not propose and guarantee a better proposal is not useful". This sentence received a great deal of applause which resounded as a triumphalist echo of conquerors over the conquered. Once the event passed, it must be said that the sentence of the president was not a very happy one. It is true that the political parties, those of the opposition and those of the imposition, have lost credibility before the electorate (this is shown clearly in the elevated level of abstentionism). In this sense, the "boomerang" ought to be directed at the full range of party contenders and those of us who were following the event on radio and television would have applauded.

The sentence was not a happy one for various reasons. He who raises a criticism, in the etymological sense of the original Greek (krino, meaning to judge or evaluate), is issuing a value judgment, an evaluation, or is seeking an explanation of reality. One component of active democracy is to react to political, economic and social reality. And so did the president express himself in the fourth paragraph of his discourse: "Freedom of thought and parliamentary expression and the freedom to criticize and analyze the communications media, are the daily guarantee, the mirror and reflection of our coexistence with mutual respect". It would seem that there were two distinct authors in the preparation of this discourse.

The right to criticize is not reduced to the parliamentary expression, but is the right of every citizen, as was expressed in the Multidisciplinary Roundtable Discussion of Washington (Key Topics for the National Plan): "It is because of the foregoing that, at the stage at which Salvadoran democracy finds itself, mechanisms are required which include in the reflection about the country the broad sectors, especially those who have no political affiliation. Solid schema are also necessary in order to guarantee to the citizen the exercise of calling its governing bodies to account and not only in electing them. And finally, a basic and broad consensus is necessary concerning the destiny of the country, sanctioned by the citizenry as a whole, which would function as a context for the play of all social and political forces". From the halls of Washington are seen specific reasons for citizen participation in this right: "Impunity, corruption, irresolvable confrontations, closed leadership negotiations and other political vices are generating a distancing of large sectors of the population from political activity, even in relatively young democracies" (pp. 357-358).

From this perspective, and without being a member of the opposition, Father José María Tojeira sends the boomerang back to the president in an article entitled "The Presidential Ethic". "Not al criticism which does not present a proposal is bad. On the contrary, if a minister or functionary acts in a bad way it is necessary to denounce him. And at the moment of the denunciation, the person denouncing (the critic) is not obliged to propose concrete solutions. He who must face this criticism is he who governs, not those who are governed. Moreover, a government leader who does not listen to this kind of criticism immediately becomes an authoritarian government and lacks ethics and policies.... The broadening of democracy must include all kinds of criticism, and not only criticism which it considers to contain proposals better than its own. Political authoritarism consists in closing oneself up in what one considers the best, without paying attention to criticisms and without responding to them when they are offered..." (CoLatino, Thursday, June 3, 1999, p. 12).

A fundamental step in arriving at constructive criticism is that the government, its executive committee, be the first to criticize itself and evaluate itself. For this it is necessary that the government make a serious critical evaluation of national reality and that it allows itself to be helped in making this evaluation of national reality. In this sense, some phrases from the presidential speech are a little unfortunate: "Thanks to the continued effort of the two previous governments, while other countries find themselves in an unstable situation, we Salvadorans have consolidated some stable and disciplined macroeconomic foundations. In spite of the ups and downs of [the fact that the] international economy have reduced our perspectives to short-term growth, the robust system which we have inherited will permit us to confront this situation and return in the future to greater growth indexes."

This panegyric of past ARENA governments is not consonant, in the first place, with other structural failures highlighted in the same discourse: the serious problems of work and employment, education, health, water, small and very small businesses, the agricultural and livestock sectors and "the growth of those productive sectors which, in spite of their strategic importance, are still in a weakened state". Where is the robust system which we have inherited? This is dissonant, moreover, with reality and the new ministers begin to take economic sidesteps in order to hide the sensitive economic recession openly declared by the business guilds and confirmed in a recent trimester poll published by the think-tank FUSADES. There is a structural problem, a loss of buying power seen in the bankruptcy of business inventories. There are conjunctural reasons: high interest rates, legal mergers, the CAMs and the CEMs, restrictions on credit, factors which the business associations, the president of the BCR and the leaders of the banking system disagree about. One can discuss causal conjunctures, but the effect is clear: we do not have a robust economy.

With the change of government one would have hoped that a new reading of economic reality might have been made —one more in accord with the analyses made of "Key Topics of the National Plan, the State of the Nation in Terms of Human Development and Social Challenge" presented in the FUSADES program, which are criticisms with proposals. It is time that the government should transcend the "macroeconomic alliance", as was recommended to it in the recent publication of the think-tank of the National Foundation for Development (FUNDE): "The predominant macroeconomic policy tends to fetishize figures and statistics. Increases in the GNP, inflation rates, trade or fiscal deficits have taken on a life of their own and have succeeded in being substituted for reality which they merely represent. Development has come to convert statistical series into development, while the wellbeing of the people has been in confounded with macroeconomic variables." If the new government does not enter into a process of self-criticism we will be obliged to follow with an interminable process of criticism which will help us to offer the government explanations of reality which it is refusing to recognize.

THE REACTIVATION OF THE AGRICULTURAL AND LIVESTOCK SECTOR

The behavior of the agricultural and livestock sector is one of the most revealing in terms of the negative results of the economic policies implemented during the last two decades, as is the unfavorable international context for the prices of coffee exports prevailing since 1989, with the dissolution of the International Coffee Organization and the consequent fall in international coffee prices.

The last two ARENA governments have not been divorced from this problem and already the Calderón Sol administration (1994-1999) proposed the adopting of an "Agricultural and Livestock Development Plan". The new ARENA government headed by Francisco Flores has also offered to implement policies tending towards the reactivation of the agricultural and livestock sector, which it may be interesting to examine in this article.

According to the president, the problems of the agricultural and livestock sector "can be summed up in a single word: feasibility", and, in order to overcome these it proposes measures concerning the physical infrastructure, the formation of associations, credits to very small rural enterprises and the promotion of information channels. In this sense, the physical infrastructure of these projects would aim towards developing a rural road network, increase the size of areas under irrigation and promote the warehousing of products after they are harvested. The formation of associations aims for a situation in which producers act in an associated way in order to take advantage of "scaled economies in some phase of the agricultural and livestock cycle" and it would be —according to Flores— "the principal objective of agricultural extensionism". The credit policy would aim to reorient the policy of the Banco de Fomento Agropecuario towards attention to the small producer or businessperson. The publishing of the information, finally, would seek to develop information centers and the stock market of agricultural and livestock products so that the information which "theses provide, would elevate the efficiency of the markets and permit the producers and businessmen fair prices and wages for their investment and work".

There is no doubt that feasibility is a problem for agriculture, but not all measures proposed by the president necessarily point towards the re-establishment of that feasibility. In the case of infrastructure projects there does exist a direct relation between feasibility because it would promote a reduction in the costs of transport and an increase in productivity by means of the proposals for improving the rural highway network and increasing the areas with irrigation systems.

On the other hand, the formation of associations, the program for credit to small rural producers and the installation of information centers are not measures for the promotion of the feasibility in and of themselves. In fact, feasibility would be increased if changes were to take place in the forms of production which would lower costs, increase prices of agricultural and livestock products or a combination of both factors, but none of the three measures proposed by Flores are explicitly designed for this. The formation of associations would lead to lowering costs only if the supposition of the president were to be complied with in that "it will permit scale economies to be taken advantage of".

Were small credit programs to be implemented in the current situation they might lead to greater indebtedness of the peasant sector, as has happened with the credit programs extended by the Banco de Fomento Agropecuario; and the creation of information centers could be useful for increasing feasibility, although in a different context. Feasibility is not increased by the single fact that the producer knows the current market prices, above all if these are not sufficient to cover the costs of production and generate feasibility.

To deal with the problem of the lack of feasibility in agriculture and in the deepening of rural poverty requires more ambitious measures than the ones recently announced by President Flores, not only by the continuous economic and social marginalization of the peasant sector, but also by the somber international setting which the agricultural exports and big agriculture and livestock face, which has notably changed the agricultural situation. In the recent past, one of the principal problems confronting the agricultural and livestock sectors was its heterogeneity, remarkable in the coexistence of capitalist exploitations side by side with the peasant ways of working the land, which translated into notable differences in terms of production, productivity and income. In fact, the peasant economy has always been synonymous with rural poverty, while capitalist production has been synonymous with export cash crops such as coffee, sugar, cotton, etc. together with considerable income and profit.

Currently, the agricultural crisis is such that even the cash crops have ceased to be as profitable as they have been in the past. This is owing, principally, to the decrease in international coffee prices, which, in turn, has provoked a reduction of its importance within the GNP, exports and tax income. It might be pointed out that the prices of sugar, another of the country's cash crops, has also suffered important reductions during the present decade, although not to the same extent as that of coffee. Consider, for example, that in 1988 coffee represented 6% of the total GNP, 58.8% of exports and 21.5% of tax income while in 1998 it is hardly 3% of the GNP, 18% of exports and was exempted from the payment of export taxes beginning in 1991.

The problem of agriculture is not posed solely in terms of stimulating small rural businesses or the peasant economy, but in relation to how to deal with the new international scenario of lower prices for agricultural and livestock exports. In current conditions it seems clear that the exploitation of agricultural and livestock items could subsist to the extent that it could be reoriented towards the production of products at a higher price or which would bring income which dies not necessarily come from working the soil.

The promotion of non-traditional exports was one of the principal objectives of the foreign policy of the first ARENA government. Nevertheless, to date, little has been achieved in the realm of diversification of agricultural and livestock exports which consist principally in coffee and sugar, with the presence of other products which would hardly reach 4% of the total exports of vegetable products such as sesame, balsam, vegetables and flowers. On the other hand, the strategy for reactivating agriculture presented in the presidents speech does not suggest that the diversification of agricultural and livestock products is being contemplated.

The generation of income outside the realm of agriculture, in spite of not being a policy directed towards the reactivation of agricultural and livestock production is what in practice explains that in developed countries agriculture has not collapsed and that the levels of wellbeing in the rural areas continue to be acceptable. In the majority of cases this has presupposed the extension of production subsidies, has also made possible the extension of credit and outside income which comes from the salaries of the agricultural workers could obtain in other economic sectors.

The lack of microeconomic viability for agricultural and livestock activities makes it difficult to contemplate how measures such as were announced by the government could solve the agricultural problem because, given the current conditions, not even the production of cash crops is feasible, much less the production of basic grains. It is for this reason that the need for public policies should be considered as soon as possible in order to induce serious technological changes in agricultural and livestock production in general and to encourage more profitable crops.

A CHANGE OF ATTITUDE: ONE OF THE CHALLENGES FOR THE REORDERING OF SAN SALVADOR

Re-ordering and re-organizing a city such as San Salvador is not an easy challenge for various reasons. In the first place, its inhabitants, accustomed to chaos and the rule of the strongest, lack even the most minimal schemas for orienting their conduct with respect to legality and the rights of others, and so then, the chaos and disorder produced when, at an individual level, citizens do not have the most basic and minimal principles for acting in a civilized way. Attitudes so basic as not throwing trash in the street, respect for traffic laws even when no danger exists of being sanctioned or of using crosswalks for pedestrians, in San Salvador and in the rest of the country's cities are exceptions.

In second place —and complementary to this lack of civic culture—, on the one hand, the body of legal norms which establish rights and duties for citizens is either not publicly known or is diffuse and, on the other hand, governmental agencies charged with overseeing their compliance have little credibility among the populace, carry out their work in such a casual way (strict legal monitoring does not exist) and, on no few occasions, these same agencies break the laws that they were charged with monitoring. In a few words, the citizens neither know the laws nor do they find in the governmental institutions for monitoring them a model to follow in respect for the law.

Thirdly, one of the major obstacles for re-ordering the city arises from its distribution in physical terms. Because of the absence of minimal urban planning and the excessive concentration of the social and economic life of the country in one geographical point, San Salvador is a narrow, labyrinthine, city which overflows as a result of the number of automobiles and inhabitants who move about the city on a daily basis. This is true to such a degree that the urban chaos of San Salvador and the environmental catastrophe which accompanies it call into question its future in terms of space for coexistence which ought to be formulated even more in the sense of its viability in the medium-range than in the possibility for inculcating some order —as minimal as this might be.

Fourthly, and finally, to re-order and re-organize downtown San Salvador implies that the interests of the sectors which make up its social, political and economic life would have to agree on a common objective. This is to say, order implies the capability for consensus-building. And this, as has been shown in an infinite number of national problems, is not one of the characteristics with which the social dynamics of the country is marked. So it is, then, that the challenge of re-ordering the city implies the inculcation of its inhabitants with a civic spirit which might orient their actions; a clear and well-known legal system in which the agencies charged with monitoring its compliance might be coherent and credible in their work; minimal planning for the physical growth of the city, oriented towards alleviating the existing urban disorder and to lay the foundation for reasonable development; and a strategy for the diverse sectors of the society to contribute from their sphere of activity to a common proposal for the creation of a space for harmonious and viable coexistence.

But, what has been achieved up to this point? The most important advance has been in the area of consensus-building and has been related to the ordering of vehicular traffic: the municipal authorities, the executive and vice-ministry for Transportation came to an agreement on uniting efforts for moving the bus terminals out towards the periphery of the city and of reforming the bus-lines, moving from a convergent model towards a linear or relief model. This takes place in the context of an incipient campaign on traffic education and a firming up of monitoring for compliance with the Traffic Law, both of which measures are being implemented by the Vice-Ministry of Transportation.

Arising from these matters is the last one: strict sanctions for busdrivers who break traffic laws, a matter which has evoked strong reactions from the population, especially from collective transportation businessmen, a sector which has come to see in sanctions for those who do not respect the traffic laws a measure directed against them and a serious obstacle for the functioning of their business. It has come to the point that there is a confrontation between the busdrivers and the authorities assigned to apportion fines (according to data of the Treasury Ministry, the busdrivers and microbus drivers owe the state approximately 100 million colones in overdue traffic fines) that the Alianza Intergremial del Transporte (AIT) called for and carried out a work stoppage on June 3, as a way of applying pressure in favor of their demand to pardon the fines.

The work stoppage in collective transportation this month is important not as another manifestation of arrogance and irrationality in a sector known for its anarchism, but because in it is possible to observe some of the attitudes which continue to be an obstacle for the re-ordering of the city. On the one hand, the measure of the public transport drivers' associations and owners' guilds is a response to a mentality in which the law is in clear and full contradiction with its private interests. In this sense, the busdrivers are not protesting the amount of the sanctions or because their interests in terms of fines might be high or because the infractions might be fair or not, but only for of the simple fact that they are not in agreement with the fact that the economic sanctions might be applied to them for running their business in the way that they have traditionally run it.

So it is that the attitude of the transportation businessmen towards the fines is not a result of a specific situation, but of their particular way of confronting the law. It is sufficient to see how the busdrivers have opposed and obstructed each one of the regulations which the Vice-Minister of Transportation has aimed to implement the ordering of the sector. For the busdrivers and microbus drivers measures such as obligatory insurance for damage to third parties, obligatory renewal of the vehicular registration and control of the emission of contaminating matter seen are only as attacks against their economic interests. The busdrivers, then, act as if they are above the law.

On the other hand, the work stoppage in transportation says much for the attitude of the agencies charged with monitoring the sector and the body of laws designed to provide norms for it. If the busdrivers were right about anything in their carrying out of a work stoppage it was in relation to what is not clear and is, in fact, ambiguous, in the transportation regulations, to which they themselves have contributed not a little. For example, it still is not fully clear who has the economic responsibility (the owner of the bus or the driver) for the harm caused in traffic accidents. This is owing to the fact that these obligations which the owner of the bus when he contracts the services of the bus driver to drive the bus are not regulated by the law. There are many blank spots in the law such as this (although one ought not be lose sight of the fact that the legal system permitted these owners to renew their traffic permits annually in spite of their not having paid their fines).

Moreover, although the traffic authorities have begun to be strict in the application of fines against those who break the law, the vacillation and excessive flexibility which has been demonstrated in dealing with the associations as a group has given rise to the idea that the businessmen should always get what they want. For their part, the members of the Legislative Assembly commission charged with dealing with the matter of the pardoning of the fines are showing signs that they may pardon the interests on the fines (although high, they are reasonable after three years of not having paid them) sends a dangerous signal to the citizens: the application of the law is inversely proportionate to the strength and influence which those who break the law can bring to bear.

The work stoppage in collective transportation and the actions which the busdrivers have carried out constitute serious obstacles to the possibility that the city could be re-ordered. On the one hand, what is not clear to the population is whether irrational conduct against the rights of others is subject to clear and irrevocable sanctions (in this sense, this state of affairs is symbolically important). On the other, it promotes an attitude among busdrivers and bus owners and their associations which operate outside the most elementary norms of civilized conduct.

SECURITY. President Francisco Flores and the Public Security authorities presented, on June 3, a new model for public security in which preventive patrols will be carried out 24 hours each day in the areas of greatest criminal activity. The plan additionally contemplates police monitoring on public buses beginning during the second week of June. Among the short-term measures is included a reinforcement and increase in service shifts for police agents. Flores indicated that the project is based on citizen participation in the involvement of all sectors of the population and the inter-institutional coordination to confront crime as a unified block. On this, Mauricio Sandoval, the Director of the National Civilian Police declared that the increase in labor hours for the police is a temporary measure which does not imply confining them to barracks. According to Sandoval, what is sought is to maintain a greater number of police agents active —more than are now active on regular shifts. The idea is clear: while more basic measures are being taken to confront crime, it is necessary to have recourse to a quota of sacrifice on the part of the police. Nevertheless, he explained that although reimbursement is contemplated for the police agents in terms of rest periods or release time, salary increases and payment for extra hours are not contemplated (El Diario de Hoy, June 6, p. 3 and La Prensa Gráfica, June 4, p. 12).

LACK OF AGREEMENT. The FMLN has declared the government proposed security plan for reducing criminal activity by 60% has, as its objective, "to return to former practices". FMLN deputy Manuel Melgar stated the opinion that when worktime goes from 8 to 12 hours a day "this is equivalent to confinement to barracks, which goes against the concept of community police". The plan can work only when and if "heads of organized crime are found and turned over to the justice [system]", otherwise it will be nothing more than "a publicity campaign". Kirio Waldo Salgado has proposed that "the confinement to barracks" be for a period of 72 hours, that is to say, partial and not total; that half of the week the agents be inside and the next week be outside on the regular beats. Nevertheless, the ARENA faction prefers to defend the ideas of the new government. "Give us 100 days. Give us the presumption of good faith", said Deputy Guillermo Wellman. "It is too soon to criticize a work plan when it has not even begun to function fully at an operative level", he argued. Some sectors have indicated that the plan contemplates mainly aspects that were developed during the Calderón Sol administration. Others hold that the plan could just stay in the dead letter file" (La Prensa Gráfica, June 5, p. 4 and El Diario de Hoy, June 6, p. 12).

BUSDRIVERS. A consensus was achieved on June 3 between the deputies and the populace: it was to reject the pardoning of the fines accrued by busdrivers and condemn the partial work stoppage in transportation which took place that day. The work stoppage was organized by the Alianza Intergremial de Transporte, but it was not supported by the Concejo Nacional del Transporte. The vice-minister of that agency, Julio Valdivieso, rejected the decision to paralyze service and criticized the confrontational measures used by the bus owners. "If things go back to normal we can sit down and seek an alternative within a legal context", he declared. "The infraction of the law was committed and [the fines] must be paid. What we can envision [is] that the very law [governing transportation and its regulations] provides an appeal mechanism. We are not speaking of a total pardon", he stated. The Vice-Minister admitted that the police agents of the Transportation Division could have applied some of the fines in an arbitrary way. "I do not have a closed [mind on the matter]. It may be that discretionary procedures [were applied]. If this is the case, they have rights and must prove it", the functionary argued. Nevertheless, the busdrivers are among the principal causes of traffic accidents according to official data of the Department for the Investigation of Accidents of the National Civilian Police. During the first three months of 1999 they were involved in 420 accidents (83% of all accidents) (La Prensa Gráfica, June 4, p. 4 and June 5, p. 12).