Will we continue to live with barbaric practices?

The new public security plan (II)

The Comptroller's Office: the sharing out of a quota of power

The situation of public finances

WILL WE CONTINUE TO LIVE WITH BARBARIC PRACTICES?

Demonstrating an absolute lack of knowledge about the nature of the problematic of violence, our Legislative Assembly set its seal of approval upon the creation of a state of affairs in which Salvadoran society can arm itself and maintain its arms. And with this they foment precisely the confluence of problems resulting from this measure will —far from diminishing— intensify. Beyond even the technical specifications of the law for possessing and carrying firearms —that is, the specific caliber and type of arms which civilians may possess—, this measure, which will, therefore, legalize the possession and bearing of firearms, which is to say, it will legalize the possession of an instrument of death. No one should harbor the slightest doubt about this, especially those who, having knowledge of the approval of the said law, will run immediately to the establishments where arms and munitions are sold in order to arm themselves correctly.

We should all be clear —government entities above all— that arms are made to kill and that armed persons —be they parent or children at home, a colleague at work or the person at the table next to you at the bar— are a threat in the immediate context in which they are acting. In a situation where arms are involved, any dispute or discussion, as irrelevant as it may be —motivated by jealousy, nasty looks, opposing visions of things, rivalries of any kind (who, for example can drink more beers or drive the fastest)—, tend to end in tragedy. And this because of the cultural patterns of bragging and showing off to which many Salvadorans are given —loud talking, bragging, killing each other and arrogance of all kinds— when they feel that they are in control of a situation, either for money they have, physical force or their pistol.

One of the most serious problems in El Salvador after the war is violence and, as serious studies on the question show, one of the factors which make possible all of this is the possessing and bearing of firearms. The authorities, through the Ministry of Public Security, have made public their commitment to face the problem of violence in all of its forms; nevertheless, the Legislative Assembly, with trumpets and drums, approve a law which favors violence by means of firearms and which, moreover, makes their eradication difficult because there are more and more people legally armed in the streets and in homes. We are faced with a frightful incoherence among state institutions, the consequences of which, once more, will be felt by those who have no money to buy an arm as well as by those who refuse to live in a state of barbarity (both groups are at a disadvantage in comparison with those who are armed).

During the post-war period —although continuing a tendency begun in the context of the civil war—, in Salvadoran society a dangerous division was wrought among its members: those who had arms (many of them criminals of diverse kinds) and those who did not have them. Some clear minds managed to perceive that the task was to disarm those who are armed, under the guise that the more arms for civilians, the better the possibilities would be for violent behavior with deadly results. It is a shame that this initiative never enjoyed the total support of the authorities nor of civilian society, a part of which continued to believe that the best way to guarantee one’s own security was to have a gun.

The Legislative Assembly, advised by a legislative commission made up of minds not so lucid, such as that of Colonel (deputy for ARENA) Sigifredo Ochoa Pérez, has opted, against all rationality, to favor possession and bearing of arms, under the supposition that, with more armed civilians, the greater their capability for self-defense would be, and so, withal, criminal violence would diminish. The argument is a specious and simplistic one, but more cannot be expected from a legislative commission in which the word of a colonel such as Ochoa Pérez carried decisive weight.

Things would be different if, in that commission, perspectives from such disciplines as sociology and social psychology were to be taken into account, from which perspective the arming of the citizens cannot but contribute to aggravating the problem of violence. Definitively speaking, while in El Salvador important decisions continue to be taken by incompetent persons —in the case which we are examining now, a military person, who, for distortion of a professional nature, will almost always believe that the use of arms is the remedy for all social ills—, nothing more than bad solutions for serious national problems can be foreseen.

Among the justifications given for approving the law for the possession and bearing of arms —a law which favored even the possession of "modified" combat caliber arms such as the deadly AD-47, G-3 and M-16—, deputy Ochoa Pérez has stated that the law will help honorable and honest persons defend themselves against crime. This may be; but there are a few things which must be considered in order to see the matter in all of its complexity. First, with a gun in one’s hands, even honest and honorable persons become potential assassins and, as a consequence, those around them —friends, relatives, neighbors—become possible victims. Secondly, who or what decides when a person is honest and honorable and when he or she is not? A police clearance? An identification card? A driver’s license? Any sane person knows that those kinds of documentation guarantee nothing because the most dangerous criminals —those who are involved in organized crime— are, in public the most honest and honorable (we remember little Robert, such a good boy); that is to say, those who will legally carry arms which allow them to commit kidnappings, assaults, fraud and to traffic in drugs.

The matter is very clear: were the possession and bearing of arms by civilians not legal, predictably a good part of these arms would find themselves concentrated in the hands of those who wish to commit crimes. This, in some way, could contribute to the confrontation of that particular focus on violence in which firearms are the instrument of the privilege of terror in the hands of criminals. Multiplying the possession and bearing of arms in the hands of such honest and honorable persons as well as those who are not, but appear to be —because they have the political and economic resources to pass for honest—, the rooting out of this focus of violence is more difficult. The founding fathers have decided that it will be thus. They have, in this way, decided that we will continue to live with barbaric customs and practices.

THE NEW PUBLIC SECURITY PLAN (II)

In our last number, reference was made to one of the central points of the new security plan called "police efficiency". This is the aspect given most relevance in that plan. In it, a series of "immediate actions" designed to implement the model in the short run, with which Flores would comply with his promise to begin the fight against crime beginning with the first weeks of his administration. Some of these measures are: 24-hour patrols, patrols inside public buses, greater presence in the areas with greater incidence of crime, to create a select taskforce to fight organized crime and to create an inter-institutional liaison , among other measures. Although only a little time has transpired since the first measures began to be implemented, we can see what results have been obtained up until now.

On June 27, the magazine "Enfoques", a supplement of La Prensa Gráfica, published a report in which they said they would "take the pulse" of the first efforts to carry out the plan. The results of the evaluation are not so promising as might have been expected, although there have been certain positive advances. At the beginning of June, in the central area of Zacamil, an area chosen for the implementation of the pilot plan (and for this reason equipped their police patrols with new vehicles and more police agents) crime has diminished by 40%. In Soyapango, however, a 25% increase in crime has been noted for the same period.

One of the problems with these new measures is that if the patrol inside the public buses succeeds in reducing the assaults in the public buses, obviously it is not possible to cover all public buses and, moreover, it limits the police force’s strength and ability to fight other kinds of crimes. The fact that, for example, the theft of vehicles has quadrupled in Soyapango is proof of that. On the other hand, nothing has been done to put a stop to breaking and entering in homes and street assaults, criminal activities which also affect the population.

There are weighty reasons to think that a greater number of police agents is not necessarily the solution to the crime wave. Nevertheless, for the success of the new plan that seems to be indispensable. First of all because each police sent to patrol the public buses is one police agent less patrolling the streets, and, secondly, because if this Model for Public Security has required the lengthening of the work period for police agents, thereby, it is evident that there is a deficit in the number of police agents. In fact, the Director of the National Civilian Police, Mauricio Sandoval, has demonstrated the need to increase the current number of the 18,000 police agents to 21,000, as a requirement for the successful implementation of the security plan. The aforementioned report indicated that in Ilopango, a total of 63 police agents must provide security to more than 127,000 inhabitants. The correlation is one police to each 2,022 civilians, while, according to Sandoval’s calculations, the ideal correlation is 3.5 police for each 1,000 inhabitants.

The increase in the number of hours worked, in addition to being questionable in and of itself, contradicts the very premises of the document Model for Public Security. Towards the end of the document there is a section entitled "social actions", in which the following objectives are proposed: an improvement in police morale, the creation of an attitude of commitment towards their work and an improvement in their self-esteem. So then, only with difficulty can these three goals be achieved satisfactorily with an increase of four hours’ work time for the police agents.

As might be expected, there have been complaints about the implementation of this measure. Of course, the most difficult consequences have fallen on the shoulders of the police: they now have less free time for themselves and for their families; some have to sleep in the prefect offices, which is extremely uncomfortable because of the precarious situation of these buildings; and nothing, moreover, has been said about salary increases. But even should there be salary increases, the police themselves have declared that the 12-hour workdays are too demanding, which, in addition to obstructing the possibility for raising the "morale and self-esteem of the police agents" and creating an attitude of commitment towards their work, still slows down the "police efficiency" which the plan aims to implement.

Let us look now at the problem of the insufficiency of "immediate actions" currently being implemented. The New Model seems to give priority to common crime as against organized crime. It might be said that one must begin somewhere. This is all well and good, but one would have to make an effort to take all angles into account (or at least all of the pointed and irregular parts) of the crime wave? As was pointed out before, dealing with certain angles implies, for a deficient police force such as we have, not taking care of others. We are faced with a vicious circle that will not be broken until the National Civilian Police is not equipped with the human and technical resources which are necessary and until it has an integral strategy to provide a solution to the phenomenon.

The plan in question mentions organized crime and proposes the creation of special forces to fight it. But it does not explain the concrete measures needed to implement it. It is a well-known fact that to effectively to fight organized crime, serious improvement in the intelligence apparatus of the National Civilian Police are needed. Unfortunately, this is very costly. In fact, according to declarations by Mauricio Sandoval, approximately 100 million colones would be required to implement the plan in its entirety. That it could be possible to allot that amount of money for the police is yet to be seen.

The question, then is if the New Model for Public Security will have to limit itself to confronting those who steal purses on public buses and to imprisoning gangs only when their slim resources permit it —so that all in all it would not be as new as it aims to be— or if Francisco Flores is willing really to begin to fight crime in El Salvador in a new way —which would imply confronting it in all of its dimensions. It will not do any good to have created a new plan if the country does not have the necessary resources to implement it or if the Flores administration does not plan to earmark the required funds to carry it out. We would, therefore, face another problem because it is not only that the current number of police is insufficient to implement the plan, but that the very plan itself could not provide follow-up to the fight against the crime wave in all of its aspects.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that there is a certain discontent among the police over the polemical debates surrounding the penal codes. It should be pointed out that diverse political and social sectors —among which the media occupies a privileged position— have contributed towards the creation of an image of some of the codes as being too soft. Certainly, if there are occasions in which the prosecutor’s office or the prisons free criminals against whom the police have overwhelming proof, this will serve to create a lack of motivation among the police agents and continue the practice of impunity. But it could also be the case that the police agents, supported in this supposed weakness in the codes, are avoiding compliance with their work in an efficient manner. Doubtless, the relationship between the police and the laws is something which the New Model ought to take up and to which, as with many other points, it does not pay attention.

THE COMPTROLLER´S OFFICE: THE SHARING OUT OF A QUOTA OF POWER

The polemic begun in the Legislative Assembly around the ratification of Francisco Merino as president of the Comptroller’s Office could easily become one of the most infamous pages in the political history of the country. The elements which give life to this new scandal are legendary. In the first place is the incoherence of it: the insistence upon the ratification of the president of the institution charged with monitoring and controlling all of the entities and organisms of the public sector to a functionary whose family holdings have grown out of all measure and economic logic and who has been publicly pointed out for his participation in a case of fraud against public property.

In second place, there is blackmail: Merino, trying to unblock the discussion in the Legislative Assembly, threatens to make public certain reports which would compromise the sectors who oppose his ratification, among which stands out President Flores himself. In third place, political deals: in the heat of these discussion and in good part thanks to the influence of Flores, ARENA, the PDC and the PCN openly confirm —and without a trace of shame— what was vox populi: the election to first and second level posts in the most important state institutions (the Comptrollers’ Office, the Public Defender’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office) depends on a sharing out of quotas of power, in which process influence peddling and the use of the state for sectarian party goals are the principle guidelines.

In this context, it is interesting to analyze, on the one hand, what this discussion in the Legislative Assembly says about the correlation of forces at the heart of ARENA and, on the other, what the existence of the pact between parties implies for one of the most relevant institutions in the country.

What has definitively placed the ratification of Merino in full view is not the report of the Probity section of the Supreme Court, nor his work in the Comptroller’s Office, nor that he complied with or did not comply with the requirements of the law. It is, rather, the dilemma of some of the ARENA deputies who are indecisive about whether to obey the dictates of their head of faction or —making use of an independence never shown in any situation before— to oppose the ratification of Merino. It looks, at first glance, as if to obey would mean honoring the pact for the sharing out of state institutions signed by the PDC, the PCN and ARENA. On the other hand, to use their independence and abstain from giving their vote to Merino would imply that they were trying to breathe new live into the Legislative Assembly —the fresh air that brought Flores to public administration; a Flores with whom the deputies who have declared themselves "rebels" declare themselves to be identified.

At first glance, it would seem that the push and pull between the groups who make up the ARENA faction of the Legislative Assembly is an ethical dilemma. It is a dilemma which poses itself at the point in time during which they are called upon to elect a functionary upon whom serious and well-founded doubts have tainted his integrity and honesty. Nevertheless, the dilemma is not an ethical one, but rather a question of power: to ratify Merino would mean, on the one hand, to comply with the pact established with PCN and, on the other, to close off the possibility that the Comptroller’s Office could investigate frauds and administrative anomalies committed by previous administrations —especial that of Cristiani. For the question to become an ethical one, not to support the ratification would have to have as an objective making public and open the problem of the existence of the pact and the posing of the need to seek candidates outside the parties who established the pact.

This is not what the deputies who oppose the ratification pursue. Behind the ostensible desire to make themselves independent of party lines is the figure of Francisco Flores and his struggle to extend his power. It is not unlikely to suppose that the repeated interventions of Flores in the debate seek more to impede the arrival of one of the unconditional supporters of the Cristiani group to the Comptroller’s Office than to question one of the most perverse political agreements ever heard of. At this stage in the game, it is clear that the non-ratification of Merino will not in any way imply that the pact would be broken. The question does not consist, then, in whether an individual who could be controlled or not by the parties who make up the pact will be elected; it consists, rather, in who will have the greatest influence over the functionary.

On the other hand, the dynamic which has been unleashed in the Legislative Assembly reaffirms several things about ARENA: first of all, inside the party there are groups engaged in a struggle for power against each other: the Cristiani group, the Flores group and the Calderón Sol group, although the strength and characteristics which distinguish this last one are still not fully clear. Secondly, thanks to the leveling of forces between two of these groups (that of Cristiani, which holds economic power and is in charge of the leadership group of the party, and that of Flores, who has control of the Executive branch of government and wields a great deal of political power) opens up the possibility for engaging in open dissent and of making critical declarations, with which the fractures in the "granite-like unity" of ARENA are accentuated even more fully.

With respect to the Comptroller’s Office, it is necessary to recognize that its mission and the weight of the institution charged with monitoring state entities and the functionaries who make it up did not enter into a state of crisis with the arrival of Merino. Everything points to the fact that the pact dates from a long time ago, for which reason the functionaries who have headed the institution have operated inside the limits and exigencies which the pact imposes. "Thou shalt not monitor or review members of the signatories of the pact" and "thou shalt use the reports of the institution as specific political situations arise and in favor of the needs of the signatories of the pact" have been the commandments which have oriented the activities of the Comptroller’s Office.

In this way, the institution which, by constitutional mandate, is charged with the independent monitoring of the Public Treasury and the Executive Branch and any private interest is transformed, through political practice, into an institution acting through blackmail and covering up, dedicating itself, in this way, to maintaining loyalties and guaranteeing benefits. There are already precedents for this institutional deformation and the most representative of these is the naming of Peñate Polanco as ombudsman for human rights. Nevertheless, what hangs in the balance here is something much more serious. With the existence of the pact and the naming of puppet functionaries to the presidency of the institution, the possibilities for modifying this traditional government practice in El Salvador are cut short at the root as are the possibilities for laying the foundation for the development of a transparent and efficient state.

The country is currently passing through a serious crisis of institutional incoherence. State institutions which ought to overlook the protection of the citizen faced with abuses of power (such as the Ombudsman’s Office for the Defense of Human Rights) and for the crystal clear transparency of public administration (such as the Comptroller’s Office, of course), are strained through the sieve of purely party-directed decisions, and not only take to their breast functionaries who by trade ought to be investigating themselves, but see their labor completely diluted in their efforts to exercise a purely political job. "A new way of doing politics" is spoken of with much enthusiasm, but when the mechanisms for monitoring are not guaranteed in such a way that they do not run only through already well-known channels, the ideal is a dead letter or, even worse, a mere slogan.

THE SITUATION OF PUBLIC FINANCES

Public finances currently represent one of the major obstacles for the implementation of successful development plans, not only because of the unbalancing effects of the fiscal deficit upon the macro-economic environment, but also because of the limits imposed by social investment and the implementation of projects for the encouragement of production and employment.

In good measure, the slight budgetary apportionments for education, health, housing, employment and employment benefits, environment and the agricultural and livestock sector are explained by the insufficiency of income from tax collection which would cover public spending. Paradoxically, during the decade of the 1990’s the ARENA administrations dedicated themselves to developing important tax reforms, within which are especially to be highlighted the elimination of taxes on exports, patrimony and inheritance, the introduction of the Value Added Tax, the removal of customs and duties and the reduction of income tax for businesses.

These reforms provoked a situation in which the structure of tax income would come to rest basically upon the Value Added Tax and income tax. Although the total amount of taxes collected has been increased, it has not been possible to do this in sufficient amount to finance growing state expenses. In recent years, the global deficit of the government —excluding donations— has suffered a tendency towards topping out which will be more evident at the end of 1999 because it is expected that for this year, the fiscal deficit will reach 2.3% of the GNP when in 1998 it was only 1.3%.

This dynamic raises reasonable doubts about the margin for maneuver which the government has for implementing its announced plans for the extension of small credits, the broadening and amplifying of agricultural and livestock production and the construction and rehabilitation of infrastructure, for example. In what follows below the evolution of public finances during the decade of the 1990’s is examined in order to present evidence that these policies place the heaviest burden on the salaried sectors of the population and that it is, therefore, important to implement new fiscal measures which would increase the income from the taxable bases of the sectors with the greatest income.

The principal characteristic of the ARENA tax reform has been its clear aim to place the greatest tax burden on the salaried sectors. The introduction of the Value Added Tax, the elimination of the taxes on exports and the reduction by half of the income tax obey a clear adherence to that goal. In the first place because the Value Added Tax permits businessmen to discount the payment of the tax, which means that the tax is actually paid by the consumers who are not registered as tax contributors of the Value Added tax; this is to say, the salaried sectors. Secondly, because the businessmen now pay less income tax and, moreover, were exonerated from the payment of taxes on exports.

The elimination of these taxes and the acceleration of the process of removing customs and duties are contradictory measures not only from the point of view of increasing tax income but also from that of stimulating domestic production. In fact, businessmen from the areas of shoes and textiles have already indicated the negative effect of the opening of the market on their production and sales.

The tax structure resulting from the ARENA reforms rests, fundamentally, on the Value Added Tax together with income tax, which, for 1998, presented 82.6% of the total taxes while for 1991, for example, income tax and stamp taxes —which the Value Added Tax replaced— hardly represent 56%. The greatest increase in taxes has been, without doubt, in the taxing of sales by means of the introduction of the Value Added Tax.

Total tax income has been increased by close to 130% since 1992, owing to the open expansion of the Value Added Tax and income tax. The former went from 2,880 to 7,539 million colones, between the years 1993 and 1998. And more, for 1999 income from the Value Added Tax is expected to increase in an unaccustomed measure because the rate would be increased to 18% when during recent years the rates have been growing by an average of approximately 10%. While, during the discussion of the General Budget of the Nation for 1999, the increase in income from the Value Added Tax did not appear plausible, with the fiscal measures proposed recently by the Francisco Flores it does seem possible to reach this increase given that the plan is to apply the Value Added Tax to basic grains, vegetables, fruits, milk and medicine, all of which had previously been exempt.

The income tax, on the other hand, went from 1,257 to 2,952 between 1993 and 1998, on the basis of an increase in tax charges for salaried sectors because, as was previously mentioned, the rate for income tax on businesses was cut in half. As in the case of the Value Added Tax, for 1999 a strong increase is expected on income from income taxes (34%), which contrasts noticeably with the stagnation in income for the period 1996 and 1998. Very probably, this increase in income is obtained through the inclusion of income tax for businesses with income less than 75,000 colones, a measure which was also recently announced by the president.

On the whole, the panorama in public finances shows that what the new government proposes is to continue to maintain the tax charges over the sectors of lesser income. As the proposals for eliminating the exemptions on the Value Added Tax on some basic food basket products show together with the payment of income tax by contributors with incomes less than 75,000 colones. This strategy, although it could contribute to collecting funds for implementing development projects, comes from the resources of the sectors with the lowest income, who, in order to receive compensation for their quota of sacrifice, ought to be beneficiaries of social projects or the infrastructure which is implemented.

In an effort to fight the deficit in public finances, fiscal policy has separated itself from the great goal of reducing poverty, with the aggravating factor that the deficit has not even succeeded in being contained, nor has it dedicated greater resources for social inversion. In this context, it appears clear that what is required is the adoption of new measures for increasing fiscal income from higher taxes on businesses and not only for the salaried sectors.