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     Proceso is published weekly in Spanish by the Center for Information, Documentation and Research Support (CIDAI) of the Central American University (UCA) of El Salvador. Portions are sent in English to the *reg.elsalvador* conference of PeaceNet in the USA and may be forwarded or copied to other networks and electronic mailing lists. Please make sure to mention Proceso when quoting from this publication.
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Proceso 962
August 8, 2001
ISSN 0259-9864
 
 
 
 

INDEX

Editorial:  Violent vacations again
Politics:  From alcohol and other demons
Economy:  The public finances’ difficult situation
 
 
 
 
 

EDITORIAL

    The August vacations have recently ended and, as in other similar festivities, the media reported alarming amounts of dead and injured people. As well as in other occasions, car accidents and gun shooting are the main causes of injuries and homicides. As alarming as these numbers can be during the August’s celebrations —738 injured, and 56 deaths—, the constant violence that grows during the vacation periods, and the social acceptance of such violence that goes beyond those periods, are even more alarming facts.

    To realize the “constant violence” we do not have to go that far back in time, it would be enough to examine the last two Eastern celebrations, last year’s August holiday, and last Christmas and New Year celebrations. These are, according to the national press, the most relevant data: while this year’s Eastern vacation left a total amount of 90 deaths, and 328 injured people. Last year’s Eastern vacation left behind 110 deaths and 1,663 injured. Meanwhile, last year’s August festivities left as a result a total of 35 deaths, and 138 injured. Last year’s Christmas and New Year parties left behind 36 deaths and 280 injured.

    The chosen period of time is too short to rush into conclusions about what celebrations are the most violent ones —Eastern, August, Christmas or New Year’s—, but it is not too short to say that, at least in 2000 and 2001, the Eastern festivities have been more violent than the others: 200 deaths and 1,991 injured. As a counterpart, the August festivities in both years left 91 deaths and 876 injured. These differences are not a reason to be happy about, since the loss of human lives or the pain of the victims and their families is always present as an undeniable reality.

    When this information is added, we can have an idea of the enormous levels of violence that prevails in the Salvadoran society, as well as the serious and unsafe situation that the citizens confront. In fact, just with the 2000 festivities and so far in 2001 —which add up to 35 days— there was a total of 327 deaths and 3,147 injured-, which is an average of 9.34 violent deaths and 89.91 injured a day. These numbers are even more alarming if we place them into the social violence context that goes beyond the traditional festivities and celebrations that have been examined in this article.

    We have to take all this very seriously, with the risk to fall into simplified interpretations of the violence situation in the country. One of these plain interpretations might be, precisely, to try to sell the thesis that —which might be done because of ignorance, the wrong intentions, or even both— the violence that is generated during the Eastern celebrations, August’s or Christmas’ is not just something exceptional, but that it exclusively obeys to incidental factors, and that are, to a certain point, out of the authorities’ control, and even out of the control of the people who provoke them.

    Those who explain the situation through this thesis seem to expect that the vacation period ends to count the deaths and the injures, or to take certain precautions expressly designed for the exceptionality that the vacation periods represent with their violent results. Once the exceptional situation is over, the precautions taken —inefficient most of the time— are unarticulated, since going back to normality does not require them.

    This perspective has to be thoroughly examined, mostly because it operates without facing reality. The high levels of kidnapping, family violence, rapes, gun shooting crimes, robberies, and the street fights that daily happen, either during festivities or out of those periods, only indicate that the deaths and the injures left by the vacation periods are not something exceptional, but one more expression of the unsafe and critical situation in which the Salvadorans permanently live in.

    In other words, in El Salvador  “normality” is violence and insecurity. And if there is a reason to take the violence problem seriously during holidays —besides the pain that it leaves among the surviving victims and the relatives of the deceased—  it is because this violence is articulated in a context that nourishes it and increases it. It is this  “normal” situation of violence and insecurity the one that has to be urgently taken care of, with creativity and efficiency. On the contrary, it will be leaving behind irremediable losses everywhere.

    The emergency measures, purely occasional, must be substituted by a prevention and treatment strategy for the violence problem —based on its diverse manifestations and consequences. A strategy of that nature will not work while in the official and the media circles simplified versions of the problem persist. It will not be able to have positive effects either while the citizenry is not willing to give up the life styles that turn into a fact that in El Salvador aggressiveness and abuse are normal situations.

    To accept that the social harmony in this country cannot be different from what it is now means to accept that we do not care about our own happiness and safety. It is possible that the disrespect for the others in the Salvadoran society has grown so strong as to turn into a radical scornful attitude to our own life and the others’. It is possible also that that it is just about a temporary misinterpretation about what it is truly important. Hopefully this might be the case, since on the contrary the country will be condemn to a worst social and human decay.

POLITICS

    That the Salvadoran society is as an easy target of alcohol abuse, delinquency, and corruption, among other demons, is an undeniable fact. The still unbearable images —made public last year—, of the drunk people who suffered under the influence of altered alcohol, which claimed the lives of hundreds of them, is too evident. The alcoholics that walk down the street or the repeating news about accidents caused by drunk drivers are facts of our daily lives. The tribute that the society pays to the common or to the organized delinquency, or the corruption of both the political and the judicial systems, are repeatedly discussed issues among the national context. That is why, in the end, to talk about alcoholics, a delinquency, corrupt politician and judges is nothing new.

    However, the curiosity to discuss such matters does appear when some institutions intend to attack the problems previously mentioned in this article. That is the case of the recent order of the San Salvador County House, which forbids to sell alcohol beverages in restaurants and its consumption at public places after midnight, until six in the morning of the following day. Such decision has had a cascade effect on the rest of the metropolitan area counties. Many of them have already announced their decision to go further on the same line that the capital’s mayor’s office has gone.

    Some fast opinion polls indicate that a good part of the population approves the San Salvador’s County House’s decision, restricting the sales of alcohol beverages during certain hours of the night. The recent deaths caused by drunk drivers, the violence, and the street disorders caused by the alcohol consumption are too fresh in the minds of the people who live in San Salvador. To testify this, there is a high number of victims left behind by the recent August vacations.

    However, despite the popular claims, this measure is not unanimous among the opinion builders. Some of them see the danger to meddle in the lives of the citizenry; others, instead, question the juridical support that allows the county houses to take care of this problem with a simple order. In the meantime, others defend the perspective of the alcohol beverages’ sales people, for whom the recent municipal order means an important recession for their business. In summary, a series of arguments, some more sophisticated than others, question the San Salvador’s County House’s order.

    About the foundations of this measure, it is evident that controversy cannot be avoided. Even more, when some State entity takes decisions to regulate the individual behavior, the most diverse reactions are inevitable. However, the bottom line issue, and which should definitively matter for the present discussion, is the one about the safety of the Salvadoran society versus the respect for the rights and the habits of certain individuals. If the liberal defenders of the individual freedom are willing to sacrifice the safety of the majority for the satisfaction of a few, it is clear that the municipal order is out of place.
 
    Instead, if the social safety is acknowledged over the individual hedonist enjoyment, the emphasis of the analysis changes. Precisely in this line, besides considering the problem of the disasters caused by alcoholics, the other serious social health problem that must be considered is the extended alcohol beverage abuse. Only from this perspective, the arguments of the defenders and the detractors of the capital’s county house’s decision can be relevant.

    In the first place, we have to remember the yearly thousands of alcohol victims in the country. In the name of so many innocent blinded lives it is necessary that the society questions its strategy about alcohol. In that sense, the initiative of the capital’s county house is more than justified. On the other hand, it is interesting to observe that the opposition of some sectors to this measure is of the most aberrant hypocrisy. Those same sectors are the ones who usually denounce the passiveness of the authorities, especially the one of the municipalities, about the scandals that the drunken individuals usually cause on the streets. Then again, it is unconceivable that the most critical ones, who usually ask for the authorities intervention against alcoholics, get angry for just some little money that their sponsors will not make.

    It is precisely this hypocrisy that freezes society when it comes to many other controversial problems. Defending the economic interests and the pockets of some influential groups, the treatment of the most crucial problems of El Salvador is put on hold. This situation, evidently, promotes impunity, corruption and other social problems.

    However, on the other hand, not to attack the problem is to forget the great challenge that this means for the national public health. In this case, we do not only have to talk about poor drunk people, man and women, laying on the streets; but also about the alcohol effects in the families and the society in general. Despite that there are no statistics that might help to make strong conclusions about this issue, nobody ignores the amount of unarticulated families, whose members are affected by the addiction of the others —that is the wife, the husband, or the older brother. >From this perspective, to ignore that the regulation effort started by the County House of San Salvador opens the door to attack the problem in its plenitude, is an unexplainable blindness.

    The order of the San Salvador County House might not be perfect for the solution of the alcohol abuse problems that go on at every social and age level of the Salvadoran society. However, it allows to undertake such a thorny issue. If the Ministry of Health really took care of the Salvadorans’ health, it should interfere in this matter. But since it is not even dealing with the alarming number of children who die of either pneumonia or hemorrhages, it is difficult to conceive that it might acknowledge its responsibility in this case.

    Despite of this situation, the collaboration that the alcoholic beverages’ selling and consumption measure demands from municipal and police authorities is a good example that must be outlined. When you think of the official party’s strategy to discredit any effort that comes from the San Salvador County House to improve its inhabitants’ living conditions, the collaboration effort already mentioned turns out even more notorious.

    The least that the citizenry is expecting is that its urgent economic and social needs are considered a priority before the habits that undermine the social harmony.  As for the relations between the municipality and the PNC, the collaboration achieved in the alcoholic beverages’ selling and consumption regulation issue might extend to other areas in which the authorities’ team work becomes necessary.

    The crisis of the public finances is a reality that has been pointed out since 1996, by the economy’s different sectors and analysts. This issue has appeared in practically all the situational analysis, and it has acquired alarming dimensions. The perspective of the public finances has become worst after the earthquakes’ impact, the pensions system reform’s fiscal costs, and the dollarization. It should be considered, for instance, that recent data estimate that the fiscal deficit could go from 3% of last year’s Gross National Product to 5% in the present year.

    This is the context that explains the assignation of Juan Jose Daboub —President Flores’ man of trust— to the Internal Revenue Service, and, most recently, the announcement of a 15% reduction of the common expenses in all the State dependencies for next year. According to Daboub, this reduction in the common expenses could lead to a public investment increase. This statement is both unsatisfactory and confusing, since at the same time that the measure is presented as an austerity proof of the government’s, it is also being announced that the expense would be used in the investment area anyway. Obviously, this would mean that the fiscal deficit would continue with its growing tendency.

    However, beyond this contradiction, it is worth it to reflect about this extreme measures adopted by the government, because this points out the present crisis of ARENA’s economic model, and at the same time it reveals the disadvantages to adopt a relaxed economic policy, which does not respond to the present economic problems.

    One of the main objectives of the economic reforms implemented since 1990 was the correction of the fiscal deficit. For that reason, a tax reform model was designed, which was to be applied later, and which has included, fundamentally, the following tax measures (or aimed to affect the revenues): the creation of the Added Value Tax (IVA, in Spanish), to substitute revenue stamps; the elimination of the exportation tax; the drastic reduction to the importation taxes; the reduction to the industries income tax; and finally, the patrimony tax elimination. An expenses defined policy has not existed, and it has grown steadily along the last decade, even with the measures that were intended to reduce it, as in the case of the pension system’s privatization —for which the State will have to pay, along the years to come.

    The results of this ambiguous reform, in terms of the fiscal deficit control, have been negative in the mid term. Despite that the tax collection was substantially increased with the creation of the IVA, the elimination or the reduction of other taxes neutralized the initial positive effects. For 1996, the fiscal deficit had gone so out of control as to reach an amount close to 2% of the GNP; for 1999 and 2000, the fiscal deficit surrounded a 3% of the GNP, and for 2001 it is expected to reach up to 5%.

    On the other hand, the implemented tax reform has created a strong dependency on the IVA, which approximately represents a 70% of the revenue. This means that the former depends, fundamentally, on a tax that is charged to the product consumption and that, therefore, it is paid entirely by the consumer.

    The public finances’ crisis was predictable, however, this was not a reason for the ARENA’s governments to accept the need to implement new tax reforms (or even counter- reforms). Even to this day it seems that, for the third ARENA government, the important issue here it is not review or to go deeper into the tax reform. According to President Flores, “to raise the taxes is an option that would negatively affect the families…”, that is why the announced expense reduction would have been adopted.

    President Flores and Minister Daboub seem to forget that the expense reduction would also cause an impact in the Salvadoran families, especially in the ones that depend on the State’s social services, as far as such reduction would affect the strategic sectors that are already extremely unattended, such as: education, health, housing and civilian safety. The impact over the different sectors will be definitively significant and generalized, since, according to President Flores, the measure will be applied all over the State’s dependencies. This posture has promoted immediate reactions from the agriculture and education ministers and from the Supreme Justice Court’s President (which the Constitution allows to define its own budget).

    This situation is of a considerable importance, it is intended to make believe that the expense reduction at the governmental institutions can be managed without major problems. For President Flores “There is no ministry that cannot make an effort (to reduce its expenses)… from stationery materials to the gas use”. This statement has two mutually excluding implications: it suggests that the ARENA governments have dedicated themselves to happily spend the contributors’ money and that, therefore, to act against the efforts to correct the fiscal deficit; or it suggests that for the government it is not important the presence of an organized and a strong enough State to intervene in the regulation of those areas in which the market does not work.

    Some examples of the former ideas are:  the offering of  basic social services for the poor sector of the population, the consumer’s protection, the regulation of the free competition, the civilian safety, the justice administration, the protection of the natural resources and the environment, among other subjects.

    However it might be, the signals that are sent along with this measure are not encouraging at all, since in El Salvador what we require is not less of a State —just as the public officials want to make us believe— but more of it, only better organized to obtain the maximum results out of a minimum amount of resources. In two words, a strong and a efficient State. To intend to resolve the increasing fiscal deficit problem with a reduction of the expenses is as intending to cure a dehydrated patient cutting down on his serum infusions.

    The public finances’ problem also requires to be seriously examined from the revenue perspective, since in the end the problem that has to be resolved is the public finances capability to finance the public expense and not as much an excessive public expense. This last idea cannot be applied, however, in most of the cases, to institutions and unnecessarily expensive policies, for instance, the Defense Ministry, the government’s excessive and unnecessary “political advertisement”, and also the high costs of the pensions system’s reform as well as the dollarization’s. However, in most of the cases, the truth is that the institutions require a strong budget support, for instance, in both the social and the economic development areas.

    The present fiscal crisis is not only a result from the earthquakes’ impact —as many public officials insinuate— but mostly a result from the tax reform and the delay of the respective corrective measures. Even privatization itself has not given any major results in terms of correcting the public finances problems, which in the end, are nothing but a new example of the present economic model’s crisis.