Power struggle

The National Action Party (PAN): the rise of a political party?

Administrative inefficiency in the Banco de Fomento Agropecuario

Perspective on the conflict in the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (ISSS)

Document

News Briefs

POWER STRUGGLE

Speak directly to the population to explain the municipal government plan, meet with various communities to say hello and distribute little gifts of all kinds, project the image of a clean, successful candidate, a true believer with an intense family life are propaganda activities which Luis Cardenal, the ARENA candidate for mayor of San Salvador has engaged in and no one has been able to stop him. Cardenal says he is availing himself of his right to freedom of expression and association. He uses his party’s colors, symbols, music and images for what he says is not an electoral campaign because he is not asking the inhabitants of the municipality to vote for him.

It is true that the freedom of expression and association is guaranteed and must be protected, but it is also true that that right is governed by law —in the case of the municipal election, by a specific law which establishes the date upon which the campaign might begin as precisely one month before the elections themselves are held. Therefore, no citizen can arrogate to him or herself the exercise of a right which is regulated by law. On the contrary, anyone can do just as he or she pleases and alleges that he has the right to do so as a free person.

In the next act Cardenal is seen protesting because his principal contender for mayor —that is to say, the current mayor of San Salvador— is seeking re-election. Cardenal maintains that the three years of Hector Silva in office are three years of continuous propaganda. He is, in part, right. He is at a disadvantage. But this is the same disadvantage that every opposition candidate has who principal contender is the incumbent up for re-election. But these are just the rules of the game, as Cardenal is fond of saying, in another context. He has two options. Not to play because he is at a disadvantage or to change the rules. What he cannot do is to break the rules because he would then be making an attempt against the game itself. It is paradoxical that these peculiar arguments may not be applied to the market economy where the majority of citizens are at a disadvantage and where the rules in force are antithetical to the weakest.

As Cardenal violates the law, the government functionaries responsible for applying the law —that is to say, the magistrates of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal— prefer to see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil as the electoral campaign begins many weeks early not only in San Salvador, but also in other municipalities of the country. A convenient formality has been put into use in which the candidates are not engaging in electoral campaign activities by virtue of a technicality consisting in the fact that they are not actually calling for votes. Magistrates and candidates violate the law when it pleases them to do so in their own interests. It ought not to surprise anyone, then, that the citizen does just a little more. To proceed in a simultaneous and symmetrical way against the two big parties is to see the Supreme Electoral Tribunal acting as Solomon in alleging not to have power over the political parties and their candidates. Control over the electoral process has slipped through their fingers as the assassination of two opposition party activists shows —just as in the cases of assaults against others who are also members of the opposition and the anonymous propaganda, principally against the opposition, which has turned up.

The time period established by electoral law for the municipal campaign turns out to be a very short one for the parties and their candidates. They think that the more time they have the greater the possibility for winning votes when, in reality, it is the reverse —at least in the last elections. The majority of the voters (some 70%) decide whom they are going to vote for before the campaign begins and there are few who change their opinion during the course of the pre-electoral campaign period. On the other hand, the candidates do not take the campaign seriously as an opportunity for discussing the problems which the communities face. Instead, they speak of plans and make unreal and overly generalized promises to such an extent that it sometimes appears to be a presidential campaign. The municipal campaign ought to revolve around the two or three specific problems faced by the communities in the municipality. The competition for the municipality of San Salvador illustrates this fact. Cardenal and Silva are in agreement with holding a debate, but they debate about the debate and declare that when they do debate they will debate topics crucial to the municipality. This may appear to be a circular argument but it is not because what it really shows is the superficiality of the electoral campaign, the background of which arises from a power struggle between the representatives of the two big parties and not between those who could really be a better mayor or between different proposals concerning the principal problems facing the municipality.

Cardenal has two months to carry out an electoral campaign because he knows that he must overcome two obstacles which constitute his major disadvantage: (1) that of being almost unknown among the ARENA rank and file and the majority of the poor population of the municipality and (2) that he has, as his principal rival, a mayor with a successful track record. These reasons explain, but do not justify, the behavior of ARENA and its candidate. The re-election of a functionary is an affair involving two sides of the coin. If his administration is approved by the voters, with all probability he will be re-elected and his rivals have almost no chance. If his administration is not approved, with all probability he will not be re-elected and, as a consequence, his rivals enjoy a greater probability for replacing him.

Recently the volume of the campaign has been turned up to the point of physical aggression, reaching even into the range of illegality and even crime. In Metapán and in San Martin blood has been spilt. In San Salvador, ARENA begins to experiment with the pressure of a gap which cannot be closed in spite of the months of campaigning, the millions of colones spent and the low blows dealt to Silva and the FMLN. The struggle to recapture the municipality of the capital city has become a strategic one for ARENA. The electoral race for the mayor{s office is a rehearsal for the race for the Presidency of the Republic. Seen from this perspective, what would be best for San Salvador would be for it to occupy second place.

The attitude of the ARENA candidate for the Mayor’s Office of San Salvador projects the typical image of that party: the arrogance of someone who knows himself to be above the law and who considers himself to have the right to everything because he has the unconditional support of a powerful political machine. This is the real ARENA and not the one which in the campaign for deputies, promises to comply with and uphold the law.

THE NATIONAL ACTION PARTY (PAN): THE RISE OF A POLITICAL PARTY?

When ex–military officer, ex–ARENA party member, ex–member of the National Conciliation Party and (current) independent deputy in the Legislative Assembly Horacio Ríos announced that he would found a new political party made up of the controversial ex–Civil Patrol Agents, the news did not catch anyone’s attention. At first, it was easy to imagine that it was nothing other than one of these harmless movements which rise like bubbles during the pre – electoral period and disappear just as quickly the day after the elections. Recent experiences of a similar nature led by solitary demagogues which end up failing in their effort to become general secretaries in their own parties are a sign that nothing can guarantee that the National Action Party (PAN) —the political party recently founded by Ríos— is exempt from this fate. Nevertheless, to underestimate its electoral possibilities in the upcoming elections a priori could turn out to be, in the near future, a gross error in calculation.

To begin with, it would be best not to lose sight of the fact that Horacio Ríos is not just another Mauricio Meyer. We are dealing here not with a picturesque person arising from nowhere and moved by opportunism in order to aspire to public office. It is a question of a functionary whose experience as a militant in two different political parties, public positions of great importance, who has become a knowledgeable participant and observer of the interstices of Salvadoran politics. If Meyer, with his defunct political party LIDER, gave the impression of not being interested in anything other than surviving in political waters with the object of obtaining the greatest possible personal advantage, Ríos, in founding PAN, seems to be pursuing something more than personal gain —otherwise he would not have found it necessary to enter into commitments with the ex–Civil Patrol Agents.

It would be naive to rule out the possibility that Horacio Ríos wishes to catapult himself to a higher level, taking advantage of the support of a sector of the population which because of its relative strength and presence at a national level, demands political representation. But what is true is that, for the moment, there are no signs which would indicate this. PAN is the political arm of the ex–Civil Patrol Agents and Ríos is the head of a movement which, feeling itself abandoned by ARENA, is attempting to guarantee room in which it can monitor its own private interests.

The recent assassination of two militants of the PAN party (one of them a leader of APROAS) in Metapán, Santa Ana, has brought to light the incipient party which just now, when the electoral campaign is getting closer to its hottest point. "Political quarrels" is the hypothesis which immediately leaps out as the motive of the crime. The first in promoting this reasoning are the PAN party members for whom the assassination is the fruit of vengeance sought by ARENA against the ex–Civil Patrol Agents for having denounced the presumed buying of votes in the recently past presidential elections.

The PAN members declare that the assassinated militants had been followed for days before by one of the vehicles used by ARENA party members in that area for its political meetings. The leaders of ARENA, as well as the director of the National Civilian Police (PNC), Mauricio Sandoval, pressured him firmly to deny such accusations and hypotheses. What cannot help but give us pause is that the PNC has decided not to mount a search operation immediately after the act; this, however, is their habitual practice required in their regulations. The political motive, far from being ruled out, is under consideration by the Attorney General’s Office.

Should the suspicions that ARENA is responsible for the deaths of the two PAN party members turn out to be true, there would exist more reasons not to underestimate the political potential of PAN. It is not improbable that certain ARENA members might have been capable of dirtying their hands in allowing themselves to be led only by a thirst for vengeance. Neither is it that they have a come to see the assassination of the PAN party members as a necessity: In addition to the fact that the ex–Civil Patrol Agents had caused a public scandal which damaged the image of President Flores during the first months of his administration (which could have turned into a situation in which the "traitors" merited some kind of exemplary punishment), now the party which they founded can count on some possibilities of situating itself in the Legislative Assembly and in the municipalities, and this is something which the most troglodyte ARENA members cannot have failed to notice.

So now, beyond the lamentable act of violence of which the PAN militants were victims (which, as with many others, requires investigation to the fullest degree) and beyond the presumed implications by members of the ARENA party in the assassination, what is true is that —taking into account the high indices of abstentions which characterize the elections in El Salvador and being able to count upon the fact that PAN could receive broad support at the polls from the ex–Civil Patrol Agents and their families— that this new party could come to present surprising results in the March elections is a possibility which ought not to be taking lightly.

To suppose that PAN will obtain more or less successful results from its participation in the future elections give reason to conjure up three possible scenarios. In the first, the PAN party members, in spite of having become caustic critics of what is called the extreme right —made up of ARENA and its "satellite parties" PCN and PDC—, have only a few seats in the Legislative Assembly, which would restrict to the minimum its possibilities for protagonism as occurred and continues to occur in the PLD, the party of Kirio Waldo Salgado.

A second scenario might suppose that the PAN party would win a considerable number of Legislative Assembly seats in the plenary —just as the PCN managed to bring about in the 1997 elections— and this would permit them to assume a role in a strong center party, truly independent and capable responding to the challenges that it poses in its "Political Manifesto" —especially that of consolidating itself as an alternative faced with the "extremes" and to empower and support the agricultural and livestock sector of the country by all means necessary.

In the third scenario, once power has been obtained, it turns out to be evident that the founders of PAN are not authentically interested in responding to the problems announced in their document and limit themselves to becoming new ARENA "satellites"—beneficiaries of the favors which the official party offers under the table— or in the hope that the municipal and legislative elections will make them disappear.

It is clear that these scene Ríos would require an anterior condition in which the supposition that PAN might achieve some kind of relative success on March 12 would come true. But this is doubtful as yet, first of all, because it is not finally known yet how many ex–Civil Patrol Agents there are and neither can it be told what percentage of this sector will support the new party. Second, because the elections always hold an element of surprise which is difficult to foretell —in this case it could be that there might be a significant lowering of the level of abstentionism and the unexpected bounce back of some of the minority parties, for example.

However it may turn out, the most desirable would be that should a new political force would rise up in the country which would be willing to commit itself to act honestly and efficiently in the interests of the sector which it aims to defend, to respond to the challenges which it sets for itself in presenting itself as a new phenomenon and to contribute to the democratization of the country —which would presuppose its lending itself to the second scenario sketched out above—, instead of acting in such a way as to damage the efforts at democratization, as other similar parties have done, in their beginnings, to PAN.

ADMINISTRATIVE INEFFICIENCY IN THE BANCO DE FOMENTO AGROPECUARIO

The inefficiency of the state in the administration of its enterprises is one of the principal arguments brought out in recommending the privatization and reduction of public administration. Inasmuch as it ought to be recognized that the state is not necessarily synonymous with inefficiency, one cannot ignore the fact that many times the practices of functionaries in public administration makes them appear to be "inept" by definition. The foregoing could lead one to the erroneous conclusion that, in the search for efficiency, it is imperative to reduce public administration to its minimum expression when, in reality, there also exists the possibility of seeking new organizational forms which would make it efficient.

The majority of cases of inefficiency in public enterprise arise from the absence of sufficient regulations for guaranteeing compliance with objectives and goals. After ten years of ARENA administrations, there continue to be public enterprises which are hardly competitive unless this party promotes policies which break with the traditional forms of leading them —it might even be noted that ARENA functionaries have also fallen into practices characteristic of previous government which it has severely criticized.

One of the most illustrative examples is the arbitrary administration of the Banco de Fomento Agropecuario (BFA) during the last ARENA administration of 1994-1999. The leadership during this period gave rise to the use of operations for extending credit which favored the concentration of credit and the worsening of the financial situation of the BFA. Curiously, this is one of the public entities most pointed out by ARENA leaders as being inefficient and it is also pointed out as an outstanding symbol of the state’s lack of capacity for administering its enterprises. Nevertheless, the evidenced available suggest that the case of the BFA originated in diverse causes of the supposed inefficiency of the state. According to Roberto Lorenzana, FMLN deputy and member of the Economic and Agricultural Commission of the Legislative Assembly, the problem of the Banco de Foment has, more than anything else, been "the fraudulent handling of the institution, above all by the previous administration", which was headed by Raul Garcia Prieto, an influential ARENA party member.

The most concrete case which could give cause to the allegations of "fraudulent handling" would be the credit given to the society which acquired the El Carmen sugar refinery. Of these credits, the first was in the amount of 54 million colones and the second in the amount of 42 million, for a total of 96 million. The objective of these credits was to acquire the refinery and the second was to commence operations. The association receiving the funds had only to pay 5 million colones in order to make up the price of the refinery which, according to the BFA, was 59 million colones. It should be noted that this very refinery was valued, on a previous occasion, in the amount of 24 million colones by a U.S. business association.

The recuperation of these credits has become so difficult that the new BFA administration has demanded the cancellation of the entire amount of the second line of credit to be extended in December, 2000 (42 million colones), owing to the fact that the "Administrator El Carmen, S.A. de C.V." had not kept up with the payments on the first as with the requirement of naming an interventor who would guarantee that the credit would be repaid. According to the president of the BFA, Guillermo Funes, there are other outstanding debtors who are late in their payments to the bank, which makes one assume that the BFA has not been complying with its role as financier of small farmers. On the contrary, it would seem that the institution has extended credit to big agricultural and livestock and agricultural industrialist enterprises as in the case of the El Carmen refinery.

It is undeniable that the situation of the BFA is critical, but this has been the result of policies which have deliberately affected its finances. The first policy which provoked a disadvantageous situation for the BFA was that, as opposed to the re-privatized banks, it was not cleaned up in such a way as to alleviate lines of credit considered to be difficult or impossible to recuperate. More recently, and as has already been pointed out, there is evidence that ARENA party members have provoked rapid deterioration in the BFA finances when they assign high levels of credit to "big debtors" who are not paying back.

At any rate, in his inaugural address, the president offered to increase small credits for small farmers through the BFA, but what is certain is that in its current situation, the bank will not be of much help in complying with the president’s offer. The application of technical criteria will be lacking in the handling of the BFA, the cleaning up of its in-debt portfolio —as was done with the re–privatized banks— and the democratization in the assignment of credit so that this credit could be extended to small farmers and not to members of the politically and economically powerful circles.

PERSPECTIVE ON THE CONFLICT IN THE SALVADORAN SOCIAL SECURITY INSTITUTE (ISSS)

The strike of the workers and doctors of the ISSS currently in force will soon complete three months without there being, to date, any visible sign of the conflict being resolved in the short run. Even more, there appear to be dangerous signs that indicate that the search for a solution to the problem could turn in other directions instead of dialogue and negotiation. The government has begun a heavy campaign to defame and attack the trade union movement and its functionaries have let it be known that they are evaluating the possibility of ending the strike by other means. The trade union movement, given the refusal of the government to enter into dialogue, thereby responding to the conditions placed on that dialogue, is issuing more and more in a complete paralysis of the health system.

Doubtless, a factor in the inflexible postures and in the hardening of postures has been the lack of a board of arbitration. In the beginning, it was obvious that the tribunal (independent of whether its ruling was favorable to the government or to the trade unions) would not be able to resolve the problem. The reason is simple: the board of arbitration would only rule on the question of the collective bargaining contract, but not on the other two elements making up the leitmotif of the union movement: to wit, opposition to the privatization of the health care provision system and the reinstatement of 221 ISSS workers fired from ISSS. Moreover, the work of the board of arbitration took place in a context in which the unions were readying their arms for a long–term fight (for example, reviving the Tripartite Commission which included the Medical College, SIMETRISSS and the public health system doctors) and in which the government was intensifying pilot projects for the concessioning out of services.

So it is, then, that the true relevance of the board of arbitration in the Social Security problem was never in the nature of its ruling (which was truly equitable), but rather in the way in which the parties in conflict linked the work of the board with the continuance or cessation of the strike. For the unions, and for the reasons already indicated, the result of the arbitration was not, from any point of view, linked to the ending of the conflict. On the other hand, for the government —coherent with its line of reducing the trade union demands to purely salary demands— the arbitration would definitively resolve the dispute between the ISSS authorities and the unions. For this reason if —as has happened— after the ruling the unions persisted in continuing the strike, their movement could be characterized as illegal —i.e., its presumed political nature would be confirmed—, because it would be acting against the mechanisms legally established for resolving labor conflicts and it would open the doors for the authorities to use harsher measures in dealing with the problem.

As was to be expected, after the ruling the unionists and the government have continued to be engaged in a dialogue in which neither listens to the other. The small but significant opening provided by the establishment of a negotiating table closed as it faced the predictable chain of events: in spite of the fact that the unionists had momentarily renounced tying the initiation of negotiation to the compliance by the government to previously obtaining conditions (something which it is only fair to evaluate as positive), the government did not issue the formal and pertinent invitation, nor did it stop demanding the end of the strike as a pre-condition for initiation of dialogue nor did it desist from refusing even to comment on the reinstatement of the fired workers or the question of privatization (for the government authorities it could not even be discussed given that they were not selling the Social Security Institute, but rather concessioning out its services, something which is permitted within the legal framework of that institution).

Once the board of arbitration had issued its ruling, and given the new failure at initiating dialogue, each of the parties in conflict harded their positions. Rumors were even circulated that the government was contemplating, based on the thesis that it was facing a standoff with a political but not trade union movement, to carry out new firings, substitute those who were out on strike and, doubtless, the most serious of all, to order the PNC to evict the strikers. None of these rumors were discounted by the ISSS director in a recently programmed interview. The trade union movement continues to carry out its strategy to include public health service doctors in the strike and is beginning to make serious calls to other social organizations to join in their struggle —these being trade union and peasant organizations.

The paralysis of the public and private health care provision system and massive firings together with —or with the option for— evicting the strikers are, for now, the only two bets for ending the conflict. The situation is more complicated now that the date of the elections is nearing and it is obvious that the two principal parties in the electoral race will use —and, in fact, are already beginning to use— the problem of the Social Security Institute as an essential element in their campaigns against their competitor. So it is that the conflict is becoming a political conflict and is entering the front door of the national scene and with it all of the vices and miseries which accompany politics. Once again reason and dialogue are reduced to mere flutterings in the wind, to simple discursive remedies with no significant presence in the national maelstrom.

We present here the speech presented by the Rector of the UCA, Father José María Tojeira, S.J. to the opening session of the conference "Arms Proliferation and Social Violence", held on February 3, 2000.

VIOLENCE AND ARMS PROLIFERATION

To speak of violence and arms means that we must, in fact, deal with the concept of civilization. There will be those who declare that history is made by violent people and that, finally, the innumerable struggles and confrontations will speed up the progress of humanity. The passion of the strong to dominate becomes, in this way, the spur to history and civilization itself. Without slaves there would have been no culture and without violence there would have been no slaves.

Nevertheless, rationality constructed upon human dignity does not tell us this. It tells us exactly the opposite. That civilization and culture is constructed from the basic point of view of the human capability to resolve conflicts through dialogue, considering each other as equals, accepting diversity and tolerating differences. The use of violence, although it might be possible to submit it to rational use, continues to be an animal instinct when faced with danger. What is characteristic of human beings is the use of reason to resolve conflicts in a peaceful way.

To do this, we meet in order to debate the topic of violence and arms proliferation; such a meeting is a profoundly rational and civilized act characteristic as well of universities. The ancient biblical hope of turning swords into plough shares continues to be the slogan of all who think that human beings are at the center of all social construction of reality. And it is also the measure which we must propose for this country, El Salvador, a country which has bled so much, yesterday and today, although for different reasons, but always because of excessive confidence in weapons.

The task becomes more urgent when, within the processes of privatization, one can observe the tendency to legally privatize the security of the citizenry. Privatization as it is made sacred by the current laws governing the possession and use of weapons provides to the most violent, moreover, the faculty for using disproportionate force for the resolution of their supposed conflicts. The fact that the law does not even dare to require a psychological examination before authorizing a person to carry arms shows us that the declaration just presented is not false. And this because, in general, the most violent people are those who tend to buy arms when these are easily accessible.

El Salvador has taken a big step forward in ending a conflict by means of dialogue and negotiation. The key step in this process was the turning over of arms by what were then guerrilla forces and the reduction in size and budget of the Armed Forces. This generated the beginning of a new culture in the country: the culture of tolerance, dialogue and the negotiated solution to the conflict. Threatened by diverse factors, this culture still continues strong among diverse sectors of our society. But if there is anything which could threaten it, in its own dimension as a culture of peace, it is the proliferation of weapons. Just as an unarmed person is the symbol of dialogue and observance of the law which governs us all in an egalitarian way, the person carrying weapons becomes a symbol of the law of the strongest. And this is even more true when that person who, as a result of an accident, could be the victim of the private use of arms.

Symbols move and change us. Hopefully this dialogue and debate concerning the relationship between violence and arms proliferation might provide us with symbols for a culture of peace. Rationality is committed to the dignity of persons; such rationality is opposed to that instrumentalization of reason characteristic of people who place it at the service of inhuman interests. Rationality committed to the dignity of persons is indignant that the law of the strongest might be the symbol of our future. Given the proliferation of weapons and given the laws which permit it, there is nothing left but to appeal once more to the force of reason that it may impose itself over the rule of force.

ACCUSATIONS. Accusations of overspending, of a lack of 81 million colones and of driving the Municipality of San Salvador into debt in the amount of 75 million colones over a short period of time are the new criticisms aimed at Hector Silva. On February 1, Legislative Assembly Deputy Walter Araujo declared that he had a "file cabinet full of documents" which would demonstrate supposed anomalies in the capital city municipal office. The ARENA party charged various economists which analyzing the municipal budget for the last three years. According to that study, the program of spending and income of the Municipal Office shows a net indebtedness of 75 million colones and an accumulated deficit of 81 million colones. An analysis of the documents would show that, between 1997 and 1999, the municipality received a total income in the amount of 707 million colones while it spent 788 million colones, which leaves the deficit mentioned above. In the municipality’s income account, taxes were surpassed by their rates, the collection of which passed from 79 million in 1997 to 200 million last year. A growth of this magnitude would permit one to think that the Municipal Office would begin a serious process of improving its income. But, according to economists employed by ARENA, the Silva administration, this has not occurred, but an accelerated increase in spending as well out of proportion to investment (El Diario de Hoy, February 3, p. 6).

RESPONSE. Hector Silva, Mayor of San Salvador, declared on February 3 during an open meeting of his council that his administration is "successful". ARENA deputies were present at the meeting and they declared that in the administration of the capital city mayor’s office "corruption reigns" together with "a lack of transparency" in the financial balances. "We have presented a very gratifying administrative report", said Silva after maintaining that the encounter with his fellow council members that the meeting was a "rendering of accounts". Silva presented his council a financial balance of his administration begun in 1997. According to the mayor, the capital city municipality has spent, since then, 125.1 million colones in environmental protection, urban development, social security and community security Mr. Silva also revealed that 682 million colones (together with the private sector) had been spent on special projects such as the remodeling of plazas and capital city parks. "We want to know the total balances, cash flow and level of indebtedness" of the San Salvador municipality, stated the ARENA Deputy Rene Figueroa. Mr. Silva responded that the municipality can "assure you, with complete certainty, that [the level of indebtedness of the San Salvador Municipality] is much lower than that of the central government""( El Diario de Hoy, February 3, p. 8).

MORTGAGES. During the month of December, 1999, the San Salvador Municipality noticed that there were financial problems. Money was needed to pay for some of the projects and to reconstruct part of the Central Market, which was burned in 1998. The municipal council decided to request a bank loan. Thirty million colones were solicited. As guarantee, the Mayor’s Office presented the bank with a list of properties in hope that these would be accepted as collateral. Nevertheless, no one noticed that, among these properties, there were several green areas which, by law, cannot be accepted in trust as collateral. The bank executives did not accept the guarantees because of the problem of dealing with the property owned by the inhabitants offered up as mortgages. In his hurry to obtain money, Silva and his council "went to the limit". They offered several capital city plazas as mortgage including Centenario park, which was immediately rejected by the executives. On this point the Mayor’s Office declares that the loan procedure was legal. The general manager of the municipality, Mario Cerna, declared that all banks ask for guarantees and that there was no possibility that the mortgaged properties would be lost because "there was a capability for payment". Mr. Cerna even declared that the" payment capability had been substantially multiplied" (El Diario de Hoy, January 26, pp. 2-3).

NATIONAL ACTION PARTY (PAN). Two members of PAN were shot to death on February 1 in Metapán in the Department of Santa Ana. One of the victims, in addition to being a member of this political party was a high level local leader of the Association of Agricultural Producers of El Salvador (APROAS). Both were assassinated by a group of persons whose faces were covered. As if it was a matter of revenge or extermination, one of the attackers got close to the victims who was wounded and lying on the floor and fired two more shots into his head. Authorities charged with the investigation are not in agreement with the motives of the crime. Mauricio Sandoval, Director of the National Civilian Police, declared that the homicides were the result of personal feuds but the Prosecuting Attorney Coralia Emperatriz Vega declared that she was convinced that it was a political crime. "Yesterday [February 2] robbery as a motive was ruled out. Definitively speaking, there is talk that politics could be a motive because the parties involved, as much as those pointed out by the PAN party as victims, are members of political parties" declared Vega. To which she added: "from that point of view there is a political coloring, but we will investigate if there could have been personal feuds which at these levels could become political questions" (El Diario de Hoy, February 3, p. 2).