Mayo 30, 2007
Proceso 1243

Three years with the Saca Administration
The President of El Salvador reaches his third year in an administration that has almost completed more than half of the presidential period. In a couple of years he will be closing his administration. This means that the time to make promises is basically over, and no one can really expect something different from what has been accomplished. At this point, all that can be done is just evaluate his performance.
            A portion of the presidential duties have to do with the poverty in which many sectors of the society live. During his presidential inauguration speech he did not hesitate to say that he would fight against poverty, and that the social problems would be more important than the economy. In a country that has no memory, some people easily forget the commitments that the presidents make. That is why it would be wise to remember what Saca said about poverty on June 1st, 2004:
“No one in El Salvador should be subjected to poverty. Those of us who are working to conduct the destiny of the country should definitively fight against poverty at all times. Our Government will immediately build the foundations to consolidate a net of social welfare, and its objective will be to offer the necessary encouragement to all of those compatriots who are in a disadvantageous economic situation and to those who live in the margins of the society, in order to bring them back to a productive life status”.
            Three years later, that commitment –a substantial commitment coming from his administration- has not even been partially accomplished yet. The net of social welfare that he mentioned –the Solidarity Net- was not only created much later than it was originally established and with obvious electoral purposes, but it was also built over a weak foundation unable to efficiently pay attention to “all of those compatriots who are in a disadvantageous economic situation…”. One of the weakest features of the Saca administration is the fact that it does not count with enough resources to resolve the problems created by poverty, or to deal with the improvement of the social security system and the welfare of the people. No one knows how in just two years he will be able to overcome the fiscal problems of the government, especially if the main strategy is to keep increasing the external indebtedness level (because it is seen as the solution for most problems) instead of reforming the taxation in order to deal with the social responsibilities of the State.
            The rest of the governmental responsibilities have a political nature. Saca made specific promises connected with the political situation of the country, that is: to guarantee the safety of the citizenry, to work for a sociopolitical negotiation strategy, to defend the law and to defend democracy.
            When the role of the President is examined in each of these categories, there is nothing clear about the whole situation. The safety of the citizenry is an extremely deteriorated factor that is going through a crisis of its own. Even if Saca is not the only one responsible for this situation he is definitively one of the people mainly involved in this case. After all, the public safety policy –its design and its implementation strategy- is the responsibility of the Executive Power. There are so many flaws in this policy       –assuming that this policy actually exists- and they have to do with the incompetent team of collaborators that surrounds Saca in the Ministry of Security and Justice. Both fanaticism and incompetence go definitively hand in hand in this institution –as it has also happened before in the Ministry of Governance-, and this can only intensify the degree of inefficiency inside this organization.

            President Saca´s skills to deal with the sociopolitical negotiations have not improved in the last three years either, and it seems that this is going to be the general tendency. He has not been able to make any important political pacts with the opposition or to promote a considerable level of social consensus in reference to the most crucial problems of the country. In this society, his most important audiences have been the members of the business elite, as well as ARENA itself, the PCN, and the PDC. ARENA is such a priority for the President, that in the last three years he has always mixed his presidential duties with activities as the president the COENA. This behavior has led him to a relation of permanent friction with the opposition, and to coexist in a  disrespectful environment where the fundamental legality of the country is permanently violated. Out of all the presidents that ARENA has had, it is probably Saca the one who has not been able to separate one role from another. That has been his political strategy: he has used the presidency to promote his party.
            Therefore, the legal system of the country has grown weaker because the person that has to defend it has not done much to fulfill his duties. The incipient Salvadoran democracy has not improved either, and it could not be any different than that. When a president does not respect the Constitution or the law, his main interests are associated with his political party, and his “audiences” are the wealthiest people of the country.
            In the light of the most essential social concerns, Saca has not behaved at the height of the circumstances. He has put the country on the verge of a social crisis, something that has no precedents in the post-war era. The advertising agents of the government might say whatever they please –to use the presence of the KGB in the eighties or to speak bout the closing of Radio Caracas Television of Venezuela-, but at this point the Salvadoran society is trapped in a terrible social deterioration stage, a deterioration that also affects the economy, and the Saca administration is mostly responsible for it. The government should concentrate more of its resources and its efforts on solving the problems of the country, before worrying about the difficulties that the businessmen of the foreign media might be having.

Three years with Saca: mistakes and debts
Impunity in the judicial system, disrespect for the human rights, inadequate economic measures, an inoperative civilian security system, corruption inside the public administration areas, ideological manipulation of the governmental projects, a poor and a disrespectful presidential performance … this is the legacy that Saca might leave behind his administration after three years.
            Even if he is not responsible for all of these problems, the President and his party are mostly responsible for the critical social, political and economic problems of the country all combined in the last 18 years. The least that can be expected is that Saca and his team is able to publicly admit this administration’s mistakes in an honest manner.
            The performance of the present administration and the history of ARENA as a government show that when it comes to analyze the whole situation the negative aspects are more visible than the positive ones. The debts, most of all, are connected with a couple of critical areas: the economic situation and the sense of a generalized insecurity in every circle of the society.
            In addition to this diagnosis, something that that most people know about at this point, in the last three years the President and his cabinet has deteriorated the social gaps even more. It is impossible to hide the political, the economic and the cultural deterioration of the society. The main victims of such deterioration are still those majorities that live in poverty, and the minorities ignored by the governmental authorities.
            Beyond the fact of taking the official discourse to evaluate the third year of the Saca administration, it would be convenient to contrast the promises of his electoral campaign with the specific actions of this administration. It is also necessary to evaluate the public policies that they designed and its results not through the governmental indicators –most of the times these indicators are not reliable pieces of information and they are subjected to manipulation- but with a question about the results that the administration has obtained and if these meet the people’s expectations and fulfill their needs.

Is El Salvador changing?
The Salvadoran population has found out about the alleged governmental achievements through advertising campaigns in the last three years. According to the most recent campaigns, the Saca administration has characterized itself because of its “historical combat” against extreme poverty through the Solidarity Net. However, this is a misinterpretation of reality because  this program has no historical features at all and it has not helped decrease the extreme poverty levels. The Solidarity Net is nothing but a palliative measure for some of the sectors that live in poverty, and this does not resolve the immediate situation of the families involved and it does not eliminate the critical social conditions that intensify the extreme poverty factor. Therefore, in spite of the existing social policies, if compared with the former presidential administrations, the approach of such policies is a very poor strategic background that will not become a historical achievement.
            Among other results, the government also stated that tourism had definitively taken off; however, the slight percentage of growth in that sector can hardly be considered a boost for the Salvadoran economy. Those who usually see the benefits of this sort of improvements are the businessmen linked to this sector, and not the population in general. As a result of a successful governmental administration people expect the development of not just one, but of several sectors. In addition, the country has a high unemployment rate in spite of the presidential discourse, and the concentration of the income in just a very few hands is still the golden rule for the national economy.
            El Salvador has certainly gone through several changes; however, these are not positive changes because everyday the poverty levels increase and there are almost no development alternatives for the population. Under such logic, we could say that the Saca administration did make some changes: the lack of political negotiation, the permanent state of insecurity, and the high rate of violence, just to mention a few of those “changes”.

No negotiations
By the end of the Flores administration, the Salvadoran economy was already adopting dollars as new national currency, the country was still the faithful servant of the American interests, the government supported the invasion to Iraq, and El Salvador was among the most violent countries in Latin America. The arrival of the Saca administration in 2004 did not bring any substantial positive changes. Even if in the beginning the President seemed like a new kind of leadership opened to negotiations and with a profile that also seemed closer to the average Salvadoran, with time that personal image that the media promoted is not a credible profile anymore. In spite of the efforts made through the advertising strategies, the president has not only displayed his political intolerance, but also his reluctance to negotiate with the different sectors of the society.
            In his speeches, President Saca keeps announcing his intention to implement negotiation lines with both the political parties and the society in general. However, his privileged audiences are usually businessmen and the members of his party. His negotiation tables were just a superficial measure and there was no negotiation at all among the parties, they did not discuss the most critical problems of the country or the alternatives to deal with them.
            On the other hand, the main feature of Saca´s campaign was an emotional display of promises aimed to those social sectors that are more vulnerable to this sort of strategies: women and the poor. However, his administration has not adopted effective public policies to end with the social problems of the most vulnerable sectors.
            According to an opinion poll conducted by the Institute of Public Opinion of the Central American University  aimed to evaluate the third year of the Saca administration, the President obtained 5.71, the lowest overall “disapproval” rating for Saca if compared with his initial 7.27 overall approval rating.
This indicates that the population has not perceived any improvements. Among other results, 47.1 of those interviewed indicated that they have seen negative changes throughout the last three years, among them an ineffective combat against criminality and delinquency in general, and the lack of improvements in the economy.

Security and the actions to neutralize violence
Up to this point, the cabinet of Saca has focused on both the security an the development issues of the poorest municipalities of the country, but so far their strategies have not really worked as expected. In other words, both issues have just been propaganda material. In the case of the collaboration of the poorest sectors, the social policies have been designed not to promote a decent level of human development, but to minimize –and in addition to that obtain electoral support- the effects of a growing inequality in the country.
That is why this policy is focused on the sectors that live in the most unfavorable conditions. However, this is not a structural solution, because while the State lacks the financial capacity to boost integral social measures this inequality will remain the same. In fact, the solution is to boost social fiscal reforms able to provide the country with a higher income level, and not use just a few resources to a superficial social policy with the excuse that hey are fighting against poverty.
            On the other hand, as far as the security issue is concerned, the average number of daily homicides is the most adequate indicator to evaluate the results of the cabinet. The governmental apparatus that is supposed to take care of the civilian security is very weak: it has incompetent public officials, it lacks economic resources, it lacks coordination and team work, it uses a repressive approach; in just a few words, it lacks a civilian security strategy.
            Even if the public officials deny this situation or even if they try to minimize the criticism against their performance, the fact that Saca is launching what he calls a Delinquency Prevention Integral Plan is an unmistakable sign of the present needs. This plan is also after political interests, because with it he intends to make his administration look efficient while his mind is set on the 2009 presidential elections.

The future
After examining the three last years of the Saca administration, it is not difficult to imagine what his presidential performance will be like in the next two years. ARENA will keep working with the same neoliberal measures that it has promoted since this party arrived to the Executive power.
            In matters of security, no changes should be expected because, even if this administration announces new measures, the problems with violence and criminality have to be resolved through an effective and an integral proposal with enough and adequately administrated resources, an not with isolated plans that are managed with no coordination at all.
            On the other hand, negotiation actions only seem to live through the presidential speeches, since in the administration of certain ministries and in relation to the loans, Saca has not given any signs when it comes to the intention of negotiating with the opposition. For the President, to negotiate and to reach agreements means that either others have to accept the measures his administration proposes or that he will be asked to make superficial changes to the policies and to the proposals.
            That tendency will not change in the next couple of years. And this is so because that time will be managed with the electoral campaign in mind –a campaign that the political parties are already working with-, that is why Saca’s cabinet will try by all means to appear before the eyes of the public opinion as an efficient cabinet concerned about the population. Once again, the institutional image promoted by the media will be more important than the design of actual plans to transform the situation.
            The government’s economic administration strategy will keep working for the now “turned” transnational business elite and not for most of the population. Therefore, the Saca administration in this third year should receive a negative review. Only those who lack common sense can see any achievements, especially because of this administration’s reluctance to negotiate and the deficient skills of the government.

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