The conflict of the Social Security Institute

The democratic consolidation process

In the analysis of the political transitions, the researchers describe a series of elements necessary to explain the present stage of the Salvadoran political process. A political transition is a group of characteristics of a new political regime that can be distinguished by its new nature, very different from other processes. However, this change does not mean that the new regime does not keep the characteristics of the former one, in this case that would be the authoritarian period. This could mean that it is possible to return to the past. That is why Samuel Huntington talks about the “democratization waves”. With this concept, he analyses the process of change as well as the process of returning to an authoritarian stage that the apparently successful transitions have experienced. Once the political changes take place -the transition-, a consolidation phase emerges. The success of the phase depends on how skillful the politicians are to give life to the new institutions. It also depends on how compromised they are to gradually end with the authoritarian past. That is why the consolidation is a difficult task that takes time. The main political and social actors must get involved in it.

As far as the democratic consolidation stage is concerned, Ismael Crespo (1995) examines the fact that there is a certain way to understand it, which is not compatible with the political objectives that should be expected at this stage. “To use the notion of a democratic consolidation as the process that strengths the system to assure its persistence and its stability, and therefore prevent the possible crisis (…) is not enough”. This makes it difficult to identify the limits of the new regime. During the consolidation period it is necessary to worry about the capacity of the regime to turn democracy into a “orderly and competent” system, according to the new rules of the political game. That is why this author proposes a conceptual distinction between “persistence, stability, and democratic consolidation”.

The persistence and the stability of the system should be two of the main concerns about the new regime immediately after the transition has taken place. Once the former “stages” are reached, the arrangements to accomplish the consolidation process have to be made. What happens is that when the democratic consolidation process is mentioned, the political activity must be transferred from the “construction axis”, which is the main objective of the transition, to a new moment in which this one becomes the starting point. Such consideration allows the people to have the proper mental attitude to undertake the social challenges. And it should also contribute to widen the horizon of the future reforms, in order to be sure that the society can enjoy the main postulates of a democratic process, which is nothing but the ideal of a social equality among the individuals.

Besides from these considerations, it is valid to sustain that the new Salvadoran regime has gone through the persistence and the stability stages, since both concepts are about surviving, about continuity, and about a minimum level of competition among the actors of the political system. However, the weak spot here is the consolidation itself. This definition is closer to what Terry L. Karl calls the construction of a frozen democracy. In other words, it can be observed that “the emergency and the exclusive institutional frames, where the caution to add new actors to the political arena as well as the explicit reduction of the issues that could be added to the government’s agenda, end up with the democratic conception of politics”, (Crespo, 1995;24). In summary, in this frozen democracy only the needs and the demands of a reduced group of actors are satisfied. That is why the legitimacy of the regime, which should at least respond to the demands of the citizenry, is seriously questioned.

In addition to the strictly political mistakes that the consolidation process has to deal with, certain economic and social problems can also be added to it. They are connected with the need to look for “the transparency and (…) the free, equal, and active social participation to set the public policies” (Alcantara, 1995; 32). It is evident that in the Salvadoran case, this is still a very delicate issue. A reflection should be made about the enormous social differences observed in the country, for which the public power does not have a satisfactory answer. Ever since the transition began, despite that certain improvements have taken place, the social problems have not been seriously discussed.

On the other hand, it is also important to make an emphasis on the lack of political will of the groups that have led the transition. Both the social and the political exclusion of any disagreeing voice, are a serious and a permanent threat for the Salvadoran democratic consolidation. The governmental authorities keep operating, despite the adoption of the basic democratic rules, with a tacit exclusion of the majority’s interests.

According to the former ideas, it is necessary to pay attention to what Francisco Weffort (1993) considers as an a priori condition to be sure about the performance level of the democratic game’s rules. “The level of performance of the basic rules, regarding the procedures of a democratic policy, indicates the existence of certain fundamental social conditions”. In summary, a democracy does not operate automatically, it involves the content and the state of the interactions that take place in the society. Those contents are nothing but what Tocqueville considers as the conditions of a minimum social egalitarianism, required to support the political equality. That is why Weffort asks if it is possible to have a political democracy in societies such as ours, marked by critical social conflicts, where the social inequality is the main rule of life. Even if the author does not give a definitive answer, he observes that under these circumstances it is not possible to consolidate a democratic process.

Therefore, the main challenge for the social and the political actors emerges if they want to continue with the reforms that could guarantee the advance of the democratization process. In this context, the minimum social equality reveals itself as one of the most critical problems. The poverty that of most of the population suffers has not become less critical during the transition. The social inequality has increased and everything that it means in terms of social resentment, apathy against the democratic regime, a lack of participation in the country’s institutional life, and a little hope in the capacity and the will of the leaders to change this situation.

It is also important to consider the deficiencies of the new institutions and its incapacity to accomplish its objectives. An active institutional performance is crucial during the democratic consolidation stage. A group of institutions capable to fulfill the aspirations of the population in the context of a democratic game are, in a way, the closest mirror in which the democratic process should take a look at itself. From this point, the selfish interests of the influential people should descend to a secondary level of importance, in order to leave some space for the “strict application” of the legal dispositions. However, in our case we do not only see a disposition towards that, but what is even worse, a considerable number of institutions tends to dilapidate the minimum share of legitimacy that they had left during the first hours of the transition.

In addition, there is another issue: the articulation of the relation between the civil society, the state, and the political system. To achieve all of these goals, it is extremely necessary that during the democratic consolidation stage the transition arrangement opens itself –which is eminently elitist in the Salvadoran case- towards other stamentums of the society. In this sense, to achieve an actual consolidation it is necessary to include in the political agenda other interests that are not eminently the ones of the elite, and go beyond the satisfaction of the political aspirations of the main actors. The economic and the social challenges become unexpectedly important. Therefore, the participation of the social organizations is crucial in this context.

To have an idea about the achievements of the Salvadoran political process regarding this issue, the country’s social and economic data and the way in which the national income is distributed among the population are both available. The palpable frustrations of the population and the complete disapproval of the political class also characterize this situation. It is evident that there is nothing much left to do, and that it is necessary to work if we do not want to continue living with the spectrum of a permanent transition, waiting for the social explosion and the authoritarian reactions to “restore the social order”, a problem that has characterized the Salvadoran History.

An enormous responsibility is over the shoulders of the main artisans of the national politics. They do not only have to learn to think things over and distinguish the social changes beyond the purely electoral objectives. This is the time to reflect about the consequences of the reforms and to start setting new goals. The next elections might be the right scenery for this purpose. In this sense, the political actors should make their proposals more specific. Probably the society has to get more involved in order to star a new transition, and start thinking about delegating new responsibilities to other actors different from those who conducted the transition. Maybe in order to complete the country’s transition it would be necessary that the right-wing starts to experiment what it means to be at the opposition.

The balance of the Salvadoran economy for the first semester

When an economic balance of the Salvadoran economy took place by the middle of this year, it was important to notice that –even if no one wants to be pessimistic- there were clear alert signs about the country’s performance. The production grew slightly, and because the construction sector grew in a disproportionate way thanks to the reconstruction that took place after the earthquakes, the commercial balance continues to reflect high deficits. Such deficits that are compensated with the remittances, while the fiscal deficit increased in relation to the last year, when the situation was not positive anymore.

Actually, the economic activity does not seem to reflect any major changes in relation to the last years, specially during the second half of the nineties, when the rule was (and it still is) a slow economic growth. The growth of the fiscal and the commercial deficits, combined with a growing flow of the family remittances, are the ones that in the end support the alleged macroeconomic stability that the government claims to have reached by itself.




However, if the country’s main economic indicators are examined, the intensification of a potential imbalance can be noticed, and this will eventually compromise the viability of the Salvadoran economy. The Central bank of Reserve (BCR, in Spanish) offered an examination of the macroeconomic results for the first semester of 2002. The information about the production, the prices, the external sectors, and the fiscal sectors gives even more support to the idea that the macroeconomic stability is too precarious to boast about it, and that the economic growth is going through one of its worst moments since the last twelve years.

Based on the Index of the Economic Activity Volume (IVAE, is Spanish), during the first trimester of 2002 a larger growth was experimented (if compared with the last year). However, the growth still remains at inferior levels than those reached for the same period in 2000. By June, the growth of the IVAE was established in 1.2%, which turned out to be a superior result if it is compared with the 0.78% obtained in 2001 (in the context of the earthquakes). On the other hand, that 1.2% was inferior to the 1.44% obtained in June 2000. The year would be closing with levels inferior to those reached in 2000, when the GNP grew only 2%.

The situation turns even more critical if the sectional behavior of the IVAE is examined. In the first place, the agricultural production descended, and its IVAE fell in 1.95%. In the second place, during the first semester of 2002 the industrial sector did not grow as much as it did in the last two years for the same period. And, in the third place, the transportation system fell in 2.77%. Finally, the most unusual fact was the fall of the financial sector’s IVAE, which has traditionally been considered one of the propellers of the GNP’s total growth. In the first semester of 2000 it grew 12.61%; and in 2001, 5.29%. However, in 2002 it decreased by 5.65%.

Those sectors that grew more than others during 2001 were the construction, the commerce, and the electricity sectors. The first one had a surprising IVAE growth, which reached 17.85% during the first semester of the year. This was the result of a considerable increase of the public investment in the reconstruction, and it favored the growth of the IVAE (or it blocked the possibility of a decrease) in the first period of the year.

In this dark scenery, at least the inflation indicators are good news because according to the official information, the Consumer’s Price Index (IPC, in Spanish) grows slower. During July 2000, it reached 2.92%, while in 2001 it reached 3.57%, and in the present year it barely reached 2.51%. It is important to say that, behind those low rates, some notorious inflation process is also hidden, and this is related with the increase of the housing market and with the utilities (most of them are already privatized), which went through an annual growth of 18.12% for July 2002.

The balance of payments presents a positive balance of $140.4 million for the first trimester of 2002. This is an encouraging piece of information; however, with no intention to underestimate it, it hides the fact that without the family remittances –which reached $447.4 million-, the deficit of the balance of payments would have been approximately $307 million.

Behind this activity we can find the continuous growth of the deficit of the balance of trade, which reached $1,221.4 million between January and July in 2002. This amount would represent a reduction of 2.5% if it is compared with the same period in 2001, when it reached $1,252.6 million. Although it would seem as if during that period the increase of the exportations was superior to the importations, the truth is that the behavior has been atypical. The exportation activity practically remained steady (increased by $9 million) and the total importations experimented a slight reduction (they fell in $22 million).

However, if we exclude the importations of the maquila, we have that the importations fell from $2,305.9 from January to July of 2001 to $2,249.6 million during the same months in 2002. This idea is congruent with the fall in the growth rate of the IVAE from the productive sectors that demand a smaller amount of materials. The maquila, instead, continues to grow, although at a slow pace now, and its exportations only grew 4.4%, from $953 to $994.9 million between the formerly mentioned periods. Its added value, on the other hand, fell from $269.2 to $255.2 million. This means that either a reduction of the salaries or that a reduction of the businessmen’s surplus took place, or probably both.

The public finances continued to deteriorate despite the governmental efforts to reduce the regular expenses in 15% for the present year, which actually has not been a possible task, at least if we refer to the governmental institutions. In June 2002, the total amount of the regular expenses was reduced only in a 3%, but the total expense was increased in 5.49%. This, added to the weak growth of the income (3%), favored the growth of the fiscal deficit for the first semester of the year. By June 2002, the fiscal deficit –without including the donations- reached $218.9 million, and it represented an increase of 14.78% in relation to the same period for 2002 when it reached $190.78 million. When the donations are included, an increase of 21.5% can be noticed between the period from June 2001 to June 2002.

This quick glance at the macroeconomic behavior reveals the constant deterioration of the economy. Without exaggerating, it must be said that there are unsustainable economic dynamics that deserve to be analyzed with more attention. Therefore, they need to be adapted to the public policies, as the balance of the first semester of 2002 reveals. The economic sectors and the remittances are facing a decreasing growth rate, the maquila generates a smaller amount of added value, and the fiscal deficit has grown, even after the dismissal of 7,000 workers of the state. If it had not been for the additional investment flows generated by the loans to reconstruct certain areas after the earthquakes, the growth would have been practically nonexistent or it would have turned into a decrease.

The situation does not allow us to hesitate: the ARENA government must face the fact that its economic stabilization measures –excepting those that control the inflation- are not working, and that nothing has been done to reorient the direction of the economy towards the productive sectors. It is a naïve and irresponsible to pretend that with an economy based on remittances and the textile maquila, or that simply with the negotiation of free trade agreements, we will be able to succeed in the global economy context. These are unrealistic pretensions, since inside the country we suffer critical economic, environmental and social contradictions that need an immediate resolution.