Proceso 910
July 12, 2000
ISNN 0259–9864
 
 
 

INDEX

Editorial A project without a future
Politics Challenges to Public Security
Economy The economic situation during the early months of this year
Society Public Transportation: a multifaceted problem
 
 
 

EDITORIAL

    The U.S. ambassador to El Salvador just made a gift to the National Civilian Police (PNC) of a modern, million-dollar apparatus to deal with emergency calls from the population and maintain a register of the subsequent police action. The same embassy gave this apparatus, known as 121, where groups of delinquent police were operating. A curious coincidence it turns out to be that this donation should have been given after the Legislative Assembly lifted the constitutional impediment which blocked the extradition of Salvadoran nationals and so paved the way for the signing of a contract on this subject with the United States and also after the right-wing block and the Flores administration had accepted with abundant willingness —trampling upon the Constitution in the process— the establishment of a U.S. military base on Salvadoran national territory. Perhaps one does not have to go far in assuming that the ambassador wished to implement the donation of the equipment before leaving her diplomatic post in El Salvador. But, then, it may only be a fortuitous coincidence. Whatever the explanation might be, the circumstances surrounding the million-dollar donation have not gone unnoticed. On the other hand, one should not look down one’s nose at such a donation, either.

    Meanwhile, as the U.S. ambassador and the press-worthy Chief of Police of the PNC —the best functionary of the current government, according to President Flores’ public evaluation of him—, demonstrated to the press the modern, million-dollar equipment, two more kidnappings took place: one the son of a transport bus business in La Paz and the other, the well-known telecommunications businessman, Jorge Zedán —the very same who presented the legal complaint against CTE-Telecom and the same, also, who revealed how CTE-Telecom re-routed telephone calls after allowing them to take a detour through the State Intelligence Organism, where they were listened in on and processed. It turns out to be very difficult to accept the idea that the motive behind this kidnapping could be attributed to common crime alone. It has been proven that these groups involved in kidnapping have not only an economic motive but also political, personal and social interests, and the like. Moreover, such motivations disguise themselves as common crime and are accepted as such. They could be part of the inevitable current of crime, which is drowning Salvadoran society. Although an attempt has been made to separate kidnapping from the interception of telephone calls, the circumstances surrounding these acts do not permit a possible relationship between the two without conducting a careful investigation. If there were one, it would be a serious error, but this would not be the first time in El Salvador that powerful people commit this kind of mistaken analysis. Power blinds them and brute impunity covers them with its heavy cloak. At a simultaneous point in time, a business specialized in bringing and sending correspondence between the U.S. and El Salvador was obliged publicly to denounce the fact that its branch offices in the central area of the country have repeatedly been the object of armed assaults.

    This would not be the first time that an act of publicity by the PNC, starring its chief of police, coincides in time with the occurrence of new criminal acts. Only a few weeks ago while this same police chief was triumphantly announcing the capture of a band of kidnappers, two well-known businessmen were kidnapped. Appearing to be confused and surprised, the police chief declared that it appeared as if the bands of kidnappers were not afraid of the police. A little while later, he added a recommendation, which is unworthy of the chief of police: he recommended that the rich take the appropriate precautions not to be victims of kidnapping. New acts occurred at the same time that the U.S. government handed over the new equipment to deal with the emergency calls. This makes evident, once again, the low level of efficiency in the ranks of the PNC, among which groups of thieves, kidnappers and murderers have been known to proliferate. It is the very police force itself which does not tire of publicizing in the news media, the criminal actions and assaults which, according to the police itself, are inflicted by organized crime, but without organized crime showing any sign of being seriously affected. The support which the U.S. Embassy is giving to the leadership of the PNC in terms of advisors, diverse training and multi-million dollar equipment makes it an accomplice on the matter of police inefficiency.

    Modern, multi-millionaire equipment such as was donated by the U.S. government to a police such as this serves for very little. The same might be said of its advisors and training. It is of little use to know where the crime has taken place and what the police have done with regard to the specific act. Equipment, advisory teams and training such as those given by the U.S. government are abundantly useful in the fight against crime, but only if they are put in the right hands and used in an intelligent way. Well-founded doubts exist concerning the intelligence, capability and honesty of the current police on the question of how to use U.S. aid in a correct manner. It is absolutely necessary to modernize the state, providing it with knowledge, training and modern equipment. But modernization does not lead anywhere when state institutions are administered by people who are incompetent and criminal as well. When the executive power does not exercise control over them, out of ignorance, impotence or because it is implicated in the actions, when government functionaries lack the will-power and/or the indispensable ability to use, efficiently, the means placed at their disposal and when right-wing legislative deputies can think of nothing else, at each new kidnapping, than to promise to tighten up the laws still more —as if this were a legislative challenge, ignoring or not knowing that all is linked directly to the chief of police of the PNC. Doubtless, there are more honest citizens than criminals, but the latter have the power and exercise it in an arbitrary and oppressive manner, to a certain extent, owning to the actions of these same deputies.

    The recent kidnappings and assaults confirm the fact that security and stability cannot be expected of the ARENA administration; it is, rather all to the contrary. In its efforts to free the market and reduce the state, the ARENA administrations has weakened its own institutionality to such an extent that corruption and incompetence have set up shop in its institutions, and put them to work in their service. The dogma of the free global market to which the aforementioned measures respond promised large investment, numerous jobs and future property. But instead, insecurity and instability reign rampant. No one, at this point, can be sure whether investment will come to El Salvador. It is most probable, however, that it will not —at least not in the volume hoped for by the ARENA administration—, given current circumstances. And so it is that one of the central pillars of President Flores’ optimism reveals dangerous cracks and fractures. It would seem that the fate of the Salvadoran right is the creation of chaos, just as is the case with the all of the right wing that believes in a free global market. Its belief in this dogma has led it to attack social cohesiveness, the business environment and basic human security. The insertion of El Salvador into the free global market, U.S.-style, which has been guaranteed, for the moment, has brought with it only poverty, insecurity and chaos.

POLITICS

    Not a day passes that news items do not place in public evidence the serious public security problems faced by Salvadoran society. Sadness arising from the murder of a loved one, uncertainty because a member of the family has been kidnapped, the desperate call of a person who has just been assaulted are the too common images which fill the television screens and the pages of the local press. Compare this situation with the despair of grieving families and the feeling of impotence in a terrorized society without he inefficiency of the organisms and institutions charged with citizen security. The gravity of the current crisis is, in good measure, the result of incompetence, lack of responsibility and arrogance with which the topic of public security in El Salvador has been dealt with.

    Since the Calderón Sol Administration, the voice of alarm has been lifted concerning various institutes of civil society on the question of the crime wave and the problem of security in general. During that period, however, the preference was to cover up reality in order “not to affect the image of the country abroad” —as it was said then— or, simply, the desire was to lay the problem aside by means of the proposal of reform measures for the laws to fight crime and the promotion, by means of the “good offices” of the press, of the re-instatement of the death penalty.

    Finally the hypocrisy of the authorities on such a complex question contributed to aggravating the problem. Today, common and organized crime has increased. This, at least, is the way a good part of the population sees things, according to recent public opinion surveys. Today the situation is so alarming that “image makers” had to recognize the problem and even ask for foreign help in order to strengthen the criminal investigation units and establish measures such as the “faceless judge”. All in all, what are the authorities doing? Are they dealing decisively with the problem? What does the population expect or hope for? These and others are the questions which we must reflect upon.

    As the result of successive complains about the infiltration of organized crime in the National Civilian Police (PNC), public authorities have created a commission to clean up the PNC. By the bye, the Law of Police Agents and the Organic Law of the PNC have been reformed, elevating it to the category of a Law of the Republic in order to make internal units charged with monitoring compliance with police discipline more agile. And so —in the opinion of the Minister of Security— “police conduct will be judged on the basis of the moral integrity of the evidence and not on judicial proof alone, as is the case at the present time”.

    There is no doubt that these actions are important in the sense that criminal infiltration of the police is a serious and alarming fact. Cleaning up the police force, removing corrosive elements, ought to be considered the correct road to solving the problems of fighting crime. Nevertheless, cleaning up the police force —which, in and of itself, is not even posed in a basic way— is not the panacea of solutions to the problem of public security. If cleaning up the police is an important and urgent item at the time when criminal acts and participation on the part of the police is worrying the population in general, the question of how to handle and administer the police force ought not to be a matter to be laid aside lightly.

    Complaints about dubious police conduct are not a recent phenomenon. But at this point in time, the President of the Republic ought to pose the problem in a more deeply radical manner. And this would demand an examination of the role of Mauricio Sandoval as Police Chief of the PNC. Complaints against this person have been heard from the moment he took up the position. In the first place, he has not complied with the requisite of being a university graduate, which would require his being able to show an academic degree. In second place, the use of funds by the police force to fund the heavy burden of publicity campaigns carried out by a company which, it would seem, is the property of the police chief himself has been the basis of constant complaints. In the third place, he has been linked to illicit telephonic wiretapping and espionage activity when he was the director of the State Intelligence Organism (OIE). These points require serious investigation about how appropriate this man is to be police chief, given that the topic of cleaning up the police force is on the agenda at the present time. On an additional point, the current crisis of public security after Sandoval’s having been a full year in office, causes doubt as to his ability to lead the police force.

    Clearly it is not only a question of the PNC Chief of Police. If it is true that Mauricio Sandoval is directly responsible for the functioning of the police force on the question of citizen security, he is not the one finally responsible for the design and implementation of a national public security place, which should be the province of the Presidency of the Republic. On this point, President Flores has shown a rather large lack of capability when it comes to understanding the complexity of citizen security. He has not been able to present to the citizenry a public security plan, nor has he dealt with the problem in its different dimensions. On the contrary, he has become lost in pretty speeches that do not issue in any action. Flores has assumed the traditional thesis that the solution to the problem of insecurity consists in getting rid of criminals, without directly and fully dealing with the problem of generalized social violence in the country.

    In fact, the violent pattern of conduct which Salvadoran society is experiencing requires more than temporary decisions to publicize actions by the presidency and the police force. Serious reflections must begin on the question of patterns of social conduct, which reproduce violence in social relations among individuals. And this is a task which should involve all of society.

    Impunity, on the other hand, must be dealt with and struck down. The feeling one has with regard to the functioning of state institutions is dominated by the overpowering impunity which certain elements of white-collar crime enjoy, as Belisario Artiga, Attorney General of the Republic, has pointed out. One cannot help but laugh as the authorities rend their garments when prominent public personalities or important businessmen are kidnapped as much on the question of drug traffic as on the topic of kidnapping, only some few criminals are presented publicly and these do not, in any way, represent the highest spheres of organized criminal activity. So, for example, no trouble is taken to investigate the links between kidnappers and the whereabouts of the large sums demanded of the victims’ families. This attitude cannot but be interpreted as incompetence and/or complicity. In this way, deficiencies in the institutions charged assuring compliance with the law and dealing out justice support crime and generate impunity when they do not systematically cover up for criminals.

    For all these reasons, people continue to lack confidence in these institutions. Not only is there little confidence in the police, given the fact that a good number of its members are uniformed criminals, but many people are also sure of the fact that when they complain about a criminal act, in the case of kidnappers, for example, the police will do-nothing or will help the criminals. In this sense, if the authorities do not wish the situation to become more complicated, they must begin to take up the problems in another way. President Flores ought to send out loud, clear signals that he has distanced himself from the activities of his predecessor, at least on the question of organized crime. An open and serious national discussion on citizen security would be a good beginning.

ECONOMY

    During the first half of the year 2000, the economic situation does not seem to have gotten substantially better, although President Flores and his economic cabinet members would like us to believe otherwise. Reviewing the short-term indicators published by the Central Reserve Bank (BCR), the following behavior is to be noted: a reduction in economic growth, an increase in inflation rates, a deterioration in the balance of payments, a reduction in Net International Reserves (RIN) and an increase in the foreign and domestic debt balances. In summary, short term indicators demonstrate that the phase of slow growth has still not been overcome and that macroeconomic stability appears more and more fragile, without even considering new inflationary effects which are the results of measures such as the reduction in the subsidies for the consumption of electrical energy and the incorporation of the Value Added Tax (IVA) to the distribution of potable drinking water and medicine, for example. Below the behavior of production, prices, public finances and the foreign sector is analyzed for the early months of this year.

    According to BCR statistics for the first trimester of 2000, the tendency of the GNP is not very encouraging because a review of its behavior during the first trimester highlights the fact that the annual variation was 2.2%; this is lower than the GNP for the first trimester of 1998 and 1999, which was 3.2% and 2.85%, respectively. This implies that, for the first trimester of 2000, the GNP’ s tendency is still high, but at a lower and lower rhythm. This is similar to what is revealed by reviewing the behavior of the Volume of Economic Activity Index (IVAE), which grew by 2.71% during the first four months of the year 2000, which is lower than 3.68% and 5.06% observed for the first trimesters of 1998 and 1999.

    The most dynamic sectors of this period were the financial sector which showed a variation rate for IVAE of 11.02%, the agricultural and livestock sector with an IVAE of 7.28% and the industrial and manufacturing sector with an IVAE of 4.3%. It should be noted that the agricultural and livestock sector presented a variation rate which was relatively high for the first four months of the year because, during the same period for the year 1998 and 1999, a decrease was observed (-2.38% and -0.17%, respectively). On the other hand, although industry has had the second sector with a greater IVAE for April of this year, it really grows at a higher rate than what might be revealed by the fact that its variations of IVAE have held firm at above 8% for 1998 and 1999. On the other hand, the sectors with greater growth were transportation, construction and commerce which reflected variations of 3.57%, 1% and 1.02%, respectively.

    The behavior of the Consumer Price Index, for its part, reveals inflation accumulated at 3.1% for the month of June, 2000, which is greater than the -1.6% obtained for the same month during 1999, although it is still lower than 3.8% obtained for the month of 1998. Greater inflationary pressures seem to have been experienced during the month of June, when the monthly inflation rate reached 1.1%, the highest observed for that month since 1996; while at the same time, for the same period the annual variation of the Consumer Price Index was 3.6%. The greater inflationary rhythm noted as coinciding with the elimination of the IVA exemptions on agricultural and livestock products and with the permanent increase in prices on fuel. The categories which felt higher inflationary rates than average have been food, which showed a monthly inflation figure of 1.4% and housing with a monthly inflation rate of 1.2%.

    This behavior makes one doubt that the end of the year will be reached with inflation holding firm at the rate of 2% and 4% posed by the government in its financial monetary program, especially because after July IVA was added to pharmaceutical products and upcoming months are said to show a projection reflecting the reduction in subsidies on the consumption of electrical energy and the incorporation of IVA on the consumption of potable drinking water.

    On the question of public finances an accumulated deficit during the month of May is noteworthy, which excludes donations, of -267 million colones while for the same month during 1999 the figure was -12.5 million colones. It should be noted, however, that although these figures might reflect a deepening of the fiscal deficit, in practice the effect of the addition of IVA to agricultural and livestock products and medicine has yet to be documented and analyzed. And so the effect of the reduction in subsidies on the consumption of electrical energy will translate into a lessening of income. This is to say that by the end of the year a reduction in the fiscal deficit as compared with 1999 will be felt, although at the cost of an increase in the Consumer Price Index which has already begun to be in evidence.

    In analyzing the behavior of the foreign sector, the balance of trade deficit for the month of May was noted as reaching 644 million dollars, which is greater than the deficit for the same month during 1999 which was 612.3 million dollars. This broadening of the deficit is explained as a result of the increase in importations which went beyond 1,650 million dollars during May of 1999 to 1,901 million during the same month for the present year, while exports increased from 1.037.5 million in May, 1999 to 1,257 million dollars in May, 2000 —an increase of 220.5 million dollars which, however, was not enough to compensate for the increase of 251 million dollars experienced as a result of imports.

    On the question of the balance of payments, the deterioration in the capital and financial accounts is especially noteworthy, in that it surpassed 137.1 million dollars during the first trimester of 1999 reaching a deficit of -92.8 million dollars during the first trimester of 2000, as a result of the deterioration in the financial accounts and especially of passive and active reserves. Consequently, the balance of payments surpassed 79.9 million dollars during the first trimester of 1999 to a deficit of -97.8 during the same period for this year.

    Data on Net International Reserves permit an understanding of its evolution from the month of June, 2000, the date for which a level of 1,905 million dollars is reflected, which would imply a reduction of 3.95% in relation to the month of January, 2000 which, in turn, broke with the tendency towards an increase which has been observed for several years now. Finally, it is important to point out that available data also indicate an increase in the foreign debt which has been 19,699 million colones during December, 1999 to 19,878 million during the month of March, 2000.

    Without taking a pessimistic attitude, it could be said that during the early months of the year clear signs point to a reduction in economic growth rates, a loss of the most significant successes in economic stability (reduction in inflation rates and positive balance of payment balances) and a deepening of the pre-existing destabilizing tendencies (broadening of the balance of trade deficit and the public sector deficit). This panorama obliges us to think in terms of new strategies to deal with the big economic problems because, as shown by the data, the economic policy measures seem not to be having the desired results. This problem is not new and has been ignored by the two previous government administrations as well as the current one. Nevertheless, the situation seems to be deteriorating more and more, and this poses the necessity for more profound measures of a structural kind which might assure greater economic growth rates and macroeconomic stability.

SOCIETY

    New threats of a transportation stoppage, the same demands and the same proposals for solution. The public transportation problem in San Salvador —where their sequels appear in a more dramatic way— continue to be the hard bone to swallow for the authorities who have a place reserved at the discussion table. For several months now, passenger transportation businessmen, representatives of the Transportation Vice Ministry and the San Salvador Municipality have participated in all kinds of meetings and have speeded up the rate in the application of important highway projects in order to end the problem. Up to a few days ago, solutions began to emerge in the process of reaching joint accords. The incorporation of the municipal initiative on the topic seems to have been decisive in the signing of an eight-point agreement by means of which regulation of traffic might be effectively achieved in the downtown area of the capital city. Nevertheless, the very complexity of the problem and the already characteristic lack of conformity exhibited by the owners of transportation lines continue to give rise to certain doubts in the development process of this big project.

    During recent weeks, diverse demonstrations by public transportation owners seem to focus on a doubtful objective: participation in the mechanisms to be followed for the reordering of traffic in the capital city together with an upheaval in their battle against “arbitrary measures” by the Vice Minister of Transportation. In the first case, negotiations and agreements are sufficient to lower the pulse of interests which surround the plans for recuperating the small downtown area of the capital city. In spite of this there are those who will now allow their arm to be twisted and pooh-pooh the agreements. Among these are to be found Genaro Ramírez of the Passenger Bus Owners’ Association (AEAS) who insists that the eight-point document only contains “some measure for dealing with traffic congestion and [guaranteeing a situation in which] bus-stops might really be used for loading and unloading passengers”. In the second case, the unflinching opposition of the bus-drivers again comes to the fore when they must deal with any kind of measure which affects the game established by the bus-drivers themselves in dealing with the capital city streets.

    These are the cards the transportation line owners always place on the table. The ambivalent manner of dealing with things characteristic of the outgoing Vice Minister of Transportation, Julio Valdivieso, opens the way for decorating their complaints with all kinds of artifice and sleights of hand. This is the way they used the necessary tools for winning some few overwhelming victories. The delay in the approval of obligatory vehicle insurance, the pardoning of a good number of fines imposed on bus-drivers, a reduction in the severity of the application of transportation regulations, etc. Now the signing of the agreement with the municipality and the Vice Ministry takes place together with the latent threat of carrying out a national transportation stoppage in which some 7,000 units will take part. Likewise, the tendency of the sector to manipulate policies which attempt to respond in a more serious and long-term way to their problems is already well-known, as is their stubbornness in demanding that each of their whims be placated (see Proceso 903). These and other matters characterize the posture adopted by the bus-drivers along the rocky road towards straightening out the traffic situation in the country.

    But the impediments to the urgent restructuring the public transportation structure of San Salvador do not only provide an unfavorable scenario in which to negotiate with these bus-line owners. In fact, if the problems which arise from this situation have reached such an extreme it is because of the fact that they are linked with other kinds of phenomena to which they have not yet received any response. According to data provided by the capital city municipality by the Greater San Salvador Metropolitan Area Planning Office (both for 1999) and by the Vice Ministry for Housing and Urban Development (1995), during the course of the accelerated development of the problematic traffic situation in the downtown center has not only had some influence on the negligence by the authorities in the application of regulations and pertinent legal dispositions. The disproportionate growth of the informal commercial sector should also be taken into account —this being the almost exclusive source of income for the majority of the street sellers in the area have— it having been found that in specific sectors of the capital city provide a relatively favorable spot for stationing themselves and conducting business.

    It is enough to review the existing studies to see that there is where 90% of the busses which circulate in the metropolitan area are concentrated (some 636 transportation units are concentrated in an area of a little more than 30 city blocks at peak traffic rush hours). This area is also the same area where the whole of all informal street venders in the capital —more than 4,000 persons— are concentrated as well. Some 54% of these have taken the streets and sidewalks. The backdrop of this situation is to be found in the fact that for part of the municipal population, this tiny downtown center is an attractive center of commercial and economic activity. As opposed to what many people believe, there are approximately 13,000 people who live there: these are not simply people who pass through the area. Some 95% of homes which are still standing are inhabited. At peak rush hours the number of people who get on and off of the buses varies between 8,000 and 10,000. These figures cannot be ignored when considering the reordering of traffic patterns for busses in the downtown area.

    In this sense, to the transportation problem must be added another matter and that is that sooner or later the authorities will have to find a solution to the reaction of bus passengers to the measures which might be taken to reduce the traffic patterns of public transportation. Evidently, downtown San Salvador is and has been a place of small, straitened dimensions. But it might be the case that those who carry out their activities do not see it as small and it does not, therefore, appear to them to be in any way positive that they be deprived of the means which permit them to move and move them to a place which is a threat to pedestrian foot traffic. To this must be added the poor vehicular traffic control policies in this area. It would do little good to withdraw 60% of the bus-routes from the San Salvador streets —a proposal which came up after the signing of the agreement mentioned above— if it is taken into account that there would be another problem of worrisome proportions to be dealt with: that of the daily circulation of 90% of the taxies and 70% of registered automobiles in the whole metropolitan area which takes place in this tiny downtown center.

    So it is that as long as there is no short or medium range plan to alleviate the crowded situation of small sellers on the streets, effective demarcation of area for parking, the construction of alternate transportation routes and of guarantees of security for those who live and move about the downtown center of San Salvador, the progressive withdrawal of busses from the downtown area will do little to relieve the problem of urban transportation in San Salvador. The results of the studies are illustrative and leave no room for doubt with respect to what ought to be done and the urgency with which the work must begin. Meanwhile, the agreements on these questions are few and the willingness to carry them out in a practical way are yet to be seen. Overcoming the obstacles which the transportation line owners set up will be one of the goals which the authorities will have firmly to hold on to if they wish to deal effectively with the efforts which have, up to this point, been carried out. But what should be set in motion as soon as possible is the way in which each of the parts of the profile of the transportation problem will be fixed into an integral strategy for dealing with it and finding a long term solution.