Julio 4, 2007
Proceso 1248

The fictitious success of the police

It seems that since July 5th of 2006 all of the branches of the Salvadoran police force have been working to find Mario Belloso, a man charged with the death of two policemen in the context of a demonstration in the area of the University of El Salvador. Almost a year later, the National Civilian Police managed to arrest Belloso, and since that day –on July 2nd 2007- the governmental officials and the media keep bringing up the subject as if this were a transcendental case. They make it seem as if the life of the nation depended on the arrest of Mario Belloso, and as if now that he has been caught the society can finally breath with relief once they have found out not only about his keen movements to evade justice for a year, but about his military skills; his revolutionary “egocentric” personality; his ideological influence in different schools; his skills to direct via Internet his men of the “Lemmon Brigade” and his international connections; his strategy to develop a dangerous (and a powerful??) urban guerrilla… In other words, the Salvadoran society was sheltering, and at the same time it was being possibly threatened by the love child of Osama Bin Laden and Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

The police was not behind a common suspect of murder, but against a true monster. Or a demon –just like El Diario de Hoy refers to him-, “those that for decades have been promoting resentment and hate among the different social circles, in the plazas, at the universities, in the newspaper articles along with its editorials and in the alternative radio stations, those that have been preaching sermons that manipulate the Evangelism of Jesus”. That is why his arrest should be celebrated. They say that “the arrest of this murderer is a complete operational success in a strategically negative scenery”. Although quite confusing, these ideas that belong to Joaquin Villalobos not only point at this allegedly successful police investigation strategy that led to the arrest of Belloso, but to the consideration of how important it is to start deactivating an “urban guerrilla that is dangerous, although it is a marginal guerrilla politically speaking”.

In other words, nothing more can be asked to the National Civilian Police as far as the investigation of this crime is concerned, because of their successful operation to arrest Belloso. And if that is already a reason to be satisfied, another important accomplishment is that with this “they have also affected the actions of an incipient guerrilla” that was “ready to attack”, just like in 1972, “when a command of the incipient guerrilla killed two agents of the National Guard near the former location of the Bloom Children’s Hospital”.

In this environment of governmental self-indulgence, some of the public officials that have had the most mediocre performance have taken advantage of the situation to try to look good occupying undeserved spaces in the news media, through which they have tried to clean up their act by spreading just about any kind of ideological poison against the social and the political opposition. Rodrigo Avila and Astor Escalante have said the silliest things about the meaning of Belloso’s arrest. For Rodrigo Avila it seems as if the PNC is the best police force in the whole world and as if he were its main strategic leader. On the other hand, Astor Escalante, along with President Saca and other members of ARENA, has insisted on the idea of connecting Belloso with the FMLN by interpreting his activities as part of a strategy promoted by the left-wing party in order to impose communism in El Salvador.

Ad this is the interpretation that should lead people to understand the tremendous amount of attention that this case is getting from the media. On the one hand, the country has a police force that is permanently questioned because of its incompetence, its lack of professional skills, and its connections with the organized crime world. To magnify the importance of Belloso means to magnify at the same time the quality of the professional skills of the police because that was what led to his arrest. If people just see this for what it really is –a criminal as many of those that live in the country-, then all the time and the effort invested to chase him and arrest him would only reveal the police’s actions as a sample of this institution’s incompetence. If so much effort has been invested to arrest one person in order to bring it to the courts, how much effort will they have to invest on disarticulating the organized crime nets that operate in El Salvador?

There will be those who will say that this is asking for too much. We agree on that. However, what can be said about the investigation of the rest of the events that surrounded the death of the two agents that belonged to the UMO? Have they investigated where did the bullets come from? Have they found out what is the identity of the person who wounded Gerberth Rivas, the Dean of the Multidisciplinary Faculty of Medicine? About these issues, that are way much simpler operations than arresting Belloso, there are no results from the police or from the Attorney General’s Office. To find out about these cases they do not have to go beyond the structure of the police. The same thing can be said about the crimes (extortions, drug trafficking, vehicle theft) in which members of the police corps are involved in. There are no successful strategies here, and there are no successful strategies either when it comes to resolve the murder investigation cases, the kidnaps, and the disappearance cases that occur every day in the country.

On the other hand, they are using the police work in a dangerous manner. Very few cases could be so politically positive for ARENA and the right wing in reference to the upcoming elections of 2009. The image of Belloso is magnified as a criminal, but also as a national threat, that is a threat against the nation that ARENA and the right wing have magnified at their own convenience. This political intentionality –as well as the pretension to clean-up the image of the National Civilian Police- has turned Belloso into something that he is not. It is clear that the objective is not to destroy him –it is not necessary to be an analyst to see that he is destroyed since the day when the thought about shooting that M-16 against the policemen-, or not even to politically destroy the FMLN (the convenient opposition), but to discredit and disarticulate any organized social resistance that does not follow the line of thought that ARENA and the right wing have.

The calculations of the political parties

In the pre-electoral times the actions of the political parties are usually more of a façade than anything else: their propaganda comes out before the period officially established by the law, they get involved in dirty campaigns, they make an endless list of promises, they make accusations and use fallacious arguments, they behave with a questionable attitude, their debates are almost invisible, there is a lack of viable proposals, among many other aspects.
            Despite the fact that the 2009 electoral period is getting closer, the formerly described environment is in the air. This is not a pre-campaign strategy –in the strict sense of the term-, it is a tense interaction between the political institutions. On the one hand, the friction between ARENA and the FMLN has been present especially among its respective legislative fractions in reference to issues such as the acquisition of the public debt. On the other hand, the so called “small parties” –the PDC and the PCN- have also been involved in a controversial situation by announcing certain changes and by keeping a tense relationship within its internal structure. This dilutes the energy of the political parties before the presence of the population, and reduces the possibilities of reaching an understanding between the political forces.
            To all this we can add an Executive power that is incapable to resolve with its public policies the most crucial problems of delinquency and the civilian insecurity, a couple of factors that dilute even more the already questioned image of the official party.
            In this context, there are elements that have cleared the way for the political parties: the separation of the general elections –distributed in two different periods: the first one to elect the municipal governments and the congressmen; and the second one to elect the Executive power- and the alleged lack of viability of the residential vote, just like the Supreme Electoral Court announced it.

The profits
ARENA has been the first party that has traced its strategy; it did that even before the last official decisions that have to do with the electoral matters were made. Despite the fact that ARENA did not seem openly interested in the separation of the elections, in the end this party obtained several benefits from that measure. This is how in connection with other small political parties such as the PDC and the PCN, the already mentioned separation of the elections opens the possibility of an evident encounter between the right wing party and the FMLN.
            This separation will give the political parties more time to keep up with their electoral campaigns. ARENA will take advantage of this situation because it is the political institution that has more resources to deal with a campaign.
            In addition, with this change the small political parties have been able to accomplish a lot with the new distribution of the electoral periods. They will be able to get congressmen and municipal governments without having to be under the shadow of the most important parties (in the past, parties such as the PCN and the PDC have complained about this disadvantageous situation).
            With the procedure usually followed during the general elections, according to the logic of the parties, the number of votes would probably be unevenly distributed by the electorate. That would not favor the small parties, but it could give ARENA the possibility to count with the support and the votes of the PCN and the PDC inside the Legislative Assembly. In this sense, this is nothing but another resource to save the particular interests of the small parties and, above all, a way for the right wing of making sure that its members will get a share of the legislative representation they long for.
            Inside these calculations, however, the decisions made by the PCN are especially noticeable. In the beginning, the present Mayor of San Miguel, Will Salgado, had announced probably too soon his intentions to run for the presidency. However, his desires have been neutralized by the party that carried him to his seat in the municipal power sphere. In this case, it seems that Salgado stepped out of the boundaries established by the party, a party that has been able to keep an internal cohesion due in part to its institutionalization and, above all, to the power that some of its leaders have.
            Behind this decision, that also brought with it the expulsion of Salgado from ARENA, this party hides its interest to keep its hegemonic idea of power. In this sense, everything seems to indicate that Ciro Cruz Zepeda, the present secretary of the PCN, made an agreement with the official party in order to unite the right wing block expecting to neutralize the FMLN. Zepeda has declared that the intentions of the PCN never have been associated with a desire to return to the Executive power his party once held.
            Along the history of the PCN, this party has strengthened its presence inside the institutions of the State; that is how it has been able to remain alive in the political ground. The interest of the PCN –and its history- can be explained and understood through this connection, thanks to which the PCN has been designated to administrate very important institutions such as the Comptroller’s Office.
            Fortunately for the PCN, this party has become the third party with more electoral support, although this is not always an achievement in itself, because in the 2004 presidential elections this party was not able to reach the minimum amount of votes and, in theory, it had to disappear. However, this party’s capacity of pressure and power made it possible for its members to get a favorable decision from the Supreme Court of Justice, that actually kept the party alive.
On the other hand, a fundamental feature of this political institution has been its tight relationship with ARENA, a “marriage” that can only be explained through their common ideological bonds and their mutual support in order to keep their respective shares of power.

Saca calling
President Antonio Saca once again disrespected his duties by declaring before the press his invitation to keep a united right wing in order to fight against the FMLN in 2009. This is how he has made sure that in order to keep the governance of the country healthy the most convenient attitude is to create a right wing block capable to neutralize the opposition from the left wing in their race for the presidency.
            The announcement does not seem to be that odd because ARENA has a very clear objective: to try to keep at any cost its power in the Executive lounge. In order to do that as well with the help of a media strategy, the President has disguised the fear of his party to an electoral defeat. They have justified their intentions to keep a united right wing block with the excuse of strengthening the level of governance in the country. In this sense, it seems that there is an “urgent need” to avoid at all cost any possibility of a triumph for the left wing. It is not the duty of Saca to ask for the support of the right wing parties, given the nature of his position.
            However, the reason –the alleged sense of governance- given by Saca for the idea of a united right wing is just false. According to the President, the governance of the country would be at stake in the next elections. Nevertheless, what is actually at stake here is the amount of power that the right wing has or the disappearance of the left wing project, something that frightens the most conservative sectors and the economic elites of the country, represented by ARENA.
            Beyond the fears of the parties, it is necessary to say that the sense of governance does not depend on one specific political party; it depends on the capacity of the governments to resolve the problems of the population, as well as on the will of the citizenry to accept both the rules of the game and the governmental measures. In this sense, in the recent history of the country, neither the Executive power nor the rest of the institutions have resolved the needs of the population. On the other hand, the population itself has not been satisfied by the measures that have been promoted.
            The sense of governance in a pluralist political system can be reached through an agreement between the political forces and the civil society, and not through advertising campaigns promoted by the media in order to discredit the opponent.
            The construction of a right wing block –of any shape- in the 2009 elections will only be one more sign of the wear and tear of ARENA, a situation that can be seen as an advantage to launch a viable, a creative, and a democratic left wing alternative; however, this is a highly unlikely possibility.

Other articles featured in this issue of Proceso:

Close to cynicism
A couple of newspapers at the service of the global brands
July 5th: What is the public opinion waiting for?
The opportunity is still there
The events in Suchitoto