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Proceso 1149
June 15, 2005
ISSN 0259-9864
Editorial: Who judges the United States?
Politics: Is Saca actually fighting against corruption?
Economy: An intense week of negotiations in the American Congress
Who judges the United States?
American justice is, at least, kind of odd; there are
innumerable situations to tell the story. However, this editorial will refer to
one situation in particular: the case of the pastor from the Baptist Biblical
Tabernacle “Friends of Israel”, Edgar Lopez Bertrand, -known as “Brother Tobi”-,
who was arrested by the American authorities. To judge by the news in reference
to the case, Lopez Bertrand has been accused of allegedly lying to an
immigration officer of the United States in order to obtain a visa for a minor
that was not his biological daughter or his adopted child. If brother Tobi is
found guilty, he could end up in jail.
The objective of these lines is not to take a stand in favor or against the
Baptist pastor. If he is either innocent or guilty of the charges, that has to
be figured out in the court rooms of the country. A person that violates the
laws of a country when he has the obligation to obey them should not be allowed
to walk away without facing his responsibilities. This is exactly the point of
this analysis: that the authorities have the obligation to make those who
violate the law respond for their actions, independently of their economic,
political, social or religious tendencies.
The former thought sounds good and probably just a few people would disagree
with it. However, this is a problem if you properly look at it. Some people
suppose that, when somebody violates a law, the institution that has to judge
that violation has the necessary moral and legal solvency to do so.
Undoubtedly, it is wrong to kill, violate, steal, or forge documents. In
practically every occidental society there is a firmly established consensus
that those activities –among others- should be neutralized, and that those
responsible for them should be punished if they were to be found guilty. It can
be expected that those who judge the crimes of others and decide how they should
be punished are not publicly known as the responsible ones or as the accomplices
of similar crimes. If this were the case, not only the application, but also the
conception of justice itself would be in a critical situation.
The case of the pastor Lopez Bertrand is an invitation to reflect about this
issue. The Baptist pastor has been accused by the government of the United
States through its Immigration Office of lying to immigration officers in order
to fraudulently obtain a visa for a young girl that was not his daughter. If
Lopez did it, it was wrong; if they prove that he is guilty, he will have to be
punished. The situation is very clear. The problem is that the government of the
United States does not have any moral or any legal solvency to judge Lopez
Bertrand or others that might have committed worse crimes.
In the case of Lopez Bertrand, it has been revealed how angry the American
immigration authorities are because he lied. It seems that a lie is something
unforgivable for the government of the United States. However, oddly enough,
this is a government with special skills to lie. To other administrations –the
Reagan administration, and the Bush (senior) administration- lying was nothing
strange, but for the present administration it is almost a pathological
situation. The film maker Michael Moore has uncovered the lie that revolves
around George W. Bush: from his unspeakable business with the family of Osama
Bin Laden, to hiding the interests of the United States’ Government in the area
of the Persian Gulf and Central Europe, to proclaiming that Iraq hid chemical
mass destruction weapons. In fact, this has been the most critical lie, used to
justify the military invasion to Iraq, and the arrest of Sadam Husein, somebody
that, in the past, used to be an ally of the United States.
Michael Moore has also documented how skillful the Bush administration is when
it comes to alter documents, forge them, and hide information. This is nothing
new, and the Salvadorans find this conduct familiar: to this day, it has been
impossible to obtain all of the documents that might reveal what is the
situation between the United States’ Government –their military advisors, their
business advisors, and their ambassadors- with the Salvadoran Army and the death
squads during the eighties. The official version that comes from the United
States is an enormous lie: that they did not know anything, that they were only
advisors and that the members of the army did whatever they wanted, that the
death squads were beyond their control…
Perhaps Brother Tobi lied in his declaration before the immigration officers of
the United States; perhaps he also handed altered documents to them. As for the
United States’ Government that now accuses him, this country lied about the
alleged chemical weapons in Iraq, and, according to Michael Moore, high-rank
officials altered certain documents to blame Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden, and
Iraq for the September 11th attacks in 2001.
If what Lopez Bertrand did was true, what he wanted was to take a minor out of
the country. The lies of the United States’ Government and its false documents
have turned into the military invasion of a country, the loss of thousands of
human lives, the destruction of a valuable cultural patrimony, and, inside the
United States, the subjection of a group of civilian freedoms that the American
take for granted. From afar, the consequences of the lies told by the United
States and the falsification of documents are the worst kind of crimes.
In the United States, they consider unforgivable that somebody, in order to make
him or her dream about traveling to that country come true, lies to the
immigration authorities and gives false information. However, is it not also
unforgivable, and this time for all human kind, to lie and to alter documents on
behalf of the United States’ Government especially when they do this with
military invasions, death and insecurity? Who is judging the United States?
Is Saca actually fighting against corruption?
Corruption, according to the OAS and to other international
organizations, is a serious challenge for the social and the political life of
the less developed countries. Corruption undermines the development process
because it wastes important resources that could be invested to improve the
lives of the less fortunate ones. In addition, it undermines the institutional
foundations of the State of Rights. This is how in a resolution of this regional
organization, approved in 1992, it was considered that “corruption has a
negative effect over the international commercial transactions that attract the
investments, financial resources, technology, special skills, and other
important resources from abroad that promote the economic and the social
development in the world, particularly in the countries of the region that are
trying to revitalize or develop their economies.
The Development Program of the United Nations (PNUD, in Spanish), with its
report on human development (2003) in El Salvador, dedicated a few pages to
discuss the corruption issue. Beyond the results of this report, it reveals that
“corruption inside the government and the perception that the citizenry can have
about it are a couple of elements that can create a sense of distrust in the
governmental administration. On the contrary, probity and institutional
transparency are the elements that create a sense of trust in a public
administration.
Because of all of these reasons, and with the firm purpose of taking advantage
of the virtues of probity, the countries that belong to the OAS have adopted
specific measures to fight against corruption. The Inter-American Convention
Against Corruption (CICC, in Spanish) is a sample of this. The convention,
according to Cesar Gaviria, a former secretary of the OAS, was the result of the
decisions reached in the Miami Summit, back when it was barely accepted that the
corruption issue could be part of the international agenda. The intentions to
promote the initiatives of this nature had failed in the United Nations as well
as in the OCDE. In fact, they had systematically refused to undertake
responsibilities that would legally relate them with the combat against
corruption. Everyone knew that the legislation of some of those countries not
only punished the locals for bribing the public officials of other states, but
it allowed them to deduct from their taxes the bribes paid abroad.
El Salvador is a signatory of the CICC. Its political leaders during the
Calderon Sol presidential administration, thought it was good to sign and ratify
such convention. With that, this member of the OAS has to fulfill its
international duties and fight against corruption. In addition, it is there
because it is a way to survive. The document of the PNUD indicates that “El
Salvador, just like most countries of Latin America, is seen as a place with
high levels of corruption. From 1998, when the country was included in the base
of the opinion poll, to 2000, the Index Value was improving. Then it began to
decrease, reporting by 2002 a much lower value than in 1998”.
This indicates that those who had the obligation to fight against corruption
failed at some point. And, if it were possible to know who were the ones that
did not fulfill their duties, undoubtedly Francisco Flores and his ministers
were responsible in the past for the critical situation of the corruption level
in the country. The perception of the increasing levels of corruption takes
place precise during the presidential period of 1999-2004.
Perhaps President Saca decided to accept the resignation of his Minister of
Tourism to be congruent with the responsibility of the Salvadoran State in the
fight against corruption. La Prensa Gráfica indicated on June 10th that the
company of Luis Cardenal, Minister of Tourism, had won a public bid,
disrespecting the legal stipulations in these matters.
The next day the Minister resigned, while others applaud the “gesture” and speak
about the firmness of the President against any act connected with fraud, others
believe that the President should have thought about the good qualities of the
Minister before punishing this sin. According to a columnist of the newspaper
that we mentioned earlier in this article, President Saca should not have acted
under the pressure of the press. That is why he considers that “the mistake of
Cardenal should have been corrected, he should have been admonished and the bid
should have been declared null”. The columnist does not approve of the fact that
another newspaper would have been capable of speaking about the case.
“Sincerely, in this case I do not think that the press acted properly (…) the
case should not have been highlighted the way it was since there was not enough
evidence to see this incident as a critical case of corruption that had to be
resolved with the resignation or the destitution of the public official”.
It turns out that for the columnist in some cases we have to close our eyes
before corruption. A person with a good curriculum or with a transaction that
was not very profitable does not have to be punished. However, against this
vision, according to section v1.1.c of the CICC, you can consider as an act of
corruption “the actions of a public official that have the objective to
illegally obtain benefits for himself or for a third party”. In this case, the
Minister in question did violate the laws of the country.
On the other hand, it is a shame that Joaquin Samayoa, the author of the article
that was mentioned before, was not able to go deeper into his consideration,
according to which the President “did score an easy triumph through the
sacrifice of one of his best collaborators”. If he had analyzed this issue, he
would have been able to underline the hypocrisy of Saca when it comes to handle
the corruption cases.
While the President asks for the immediate resignation of his Minister for his
unacceptable behavior –which by the way was the right decision-, on the other
hand he just approved, with the complicity of the PCN, a leading position for
this party to continue administrating the Comptroller’s Office of the Republic.
The quick departure of Cardenal sounds like a slap on the face.
However, this is how Saca’s policy works. A hollow policy, but full of
spectacular actions. That is why it can be understood if the former Minister of
Tourism and his friends are trying to publicly reveal their deception. Cardenal
has the right to feel upset because with the decision of asking him to resign,
Saca is practically saying that he is a corrupted person, an awful influence for
the country, worse than the disgusting structure of power that he wants to keep,
along with the PCN, in the Comptroller’s Office.
An intense week of negotiations in the American Congress
This week there were a couple of voting rehearsals in
several committees of the United States in the context of the possible
ratification of the CAFTA. During the days that went by before the rehearsals,
there was a sense of fear in the American Parliament because the results of the
rehearsals would bring new dispositions to either approve or disapprove the
agreement. In the Congress of the United States there are, on the one hand, the
Republicans that support the position of President Bush: to approve the treaty
as fast as possible. On the other hand, there are the Democrats, and they
consider that the trade agreement could generate a loss of jobs in the labor
market of the United States and worse conditions for the workers of the Central
American countries.
Several Republican congressmen, despite the fact that they belong to the party
that supports the treaty, do not agree with the approval of the CAFTA. For
instance, last week, a Republican, Elizabeth Dole, suggested that some changes
had to be made to favor the interests of the textile companies. And for this
week, the Republican Saxby Chambliss –president of the Senate’s Committee of
Agriculture- said that Bush has to work harder so that the American producers of
sugar are not critically affected by the treaty.
The unions that strongly oppose to the treaty are represented by Republican
congress people. In the first case, Dole managed to make a pact with the
American Foreign Trade officials in order to have new considerations with the
textile companies. In the second case, President Bush had several meetings with
the congressmen that represent the interests of the sugar companies. To this
day, there are no specific results in regard to these negotiations.
What happened on Tuesday?
The first voting rehearsal took place in the Financial Committee of the Senate
and it was moderated by Charless Grassley, president of the committee. The
results of the rehearsals were 11 votes in favor, and 09 votes against the
treaty. It is interesting to notice that out of the 20 congressmen that belong
to the committee (11Republicans and 09 Democrats), two of each fraction were
against the position of their colleagues, that is why the results were similar
to the number of congressmen in the committee.
During the rehearsal, the Democrats were in favor to make certain changes in the
treaty. The amendments that they proposed were the following: the Democrat Ron
Wyden –who finally voted in favor of the treaty- said that it was critically
important to consider the amendment that proposes a special kind of training for
the Central American and the Dominican civil employees in order to make them
more competitive before the workers of the United States. Also the democrats
John Kerry and Charles Schumer asked for a special provision against child
labor. To these observations, Peter Allgeier, an important foreign trade
official, answered that the Central American countries are already working to
establish improved labor regulations.
Previously to the debates in the Financial Committee of the Senate, there were
five motions that involved the delicate issue of sugar. Despite the fact that
several members of the congress knew about this issue, these motions were never
formally presented in the discussion, that is probably why the sugar issue was
overlooked in this first encounter. The motions were the following: if sugar is
excluded from future commercial agreements, this should not negatively affect
other basic agricultural products; the International Commission of Trade of the
United States’ Government has to analyze the impact of the sugar program in the
consumption industries in the United States, to make sure that the American
sugar producers that either have or control operations in the countries of the
CAFTA-RD do not try to make profits out of the increasing access to sugar under
the agreement; to provide more security so that the beets’ sugar producers are
not affected by the importation of sugar cane; and to make sure that the
American consumers obtain all of the benefits provided by the agreements of the
World’s Trade Organization connected with sugar.
What happened on Wednesday?
The second voting rehearsal took place in the Committee of Media and Arbiters of
the Chamber of Representatives. For this day, the situation was much more tense
than it was during the first day. Many of the congressmen represented the
interests of the sectors that are against the treaty. In the committee the power
is divided between 24 Republican and 17 Democrat congressmen, out of which 14 of
them –independently from the party they represent- were against the commercial
agreement. During this day it was also expected that the congressmen that
represented the interests of the sugar industry could implement the amendments
in the treaty. This was a reasonable position, since those who are against the
treaty admitted that the most delicate issue inside the discussion was the sugar
subject, and they kept it like a card under their sleeve in order to use it at
the last minute.
The results were 25 votes in favor and 16 against. During the process, several
congressmen suggested that important transformations should take place in
reference to the labor issue. The first transformation was the faculty to
deliver periodical reports to show that in the countries that are subscribed to
the CAFTA they are trying hard to improve the labor regulations. The second
amendment was connected to the extension of the “commercial adjustment
assistance law”, which intends to train those that have lost their job because
of the international trade. There was a third amendment proposed by a Democrat
from New York, Charles Rangel, which intends that the countries that are part of
the treaty are able to harmonize their labor laws according to the regulations
of the International Organization of Work in a term of three years. This
proposal was rejected by the committee. In this day, in spite of the
expectations, they did not clearly discuss the delicate sugar issue. Everything
seems to indicate that the opposing sectors want to introduce this issue even
during the final occasion to vote. It is possible that the passiveness of the
congressmen that represent the interests of the sugar industry is due to
previous meetings held with the President of the United States.
And now what?
Due to the results of the rehearsals, there is a series of reactions in El
Salvador. The Minister of Economy, Yolanda de Gavidia, said that she is looking
forward for the ratification of the treaty before July arrives. For the
Executive power, the results of the voting open a set of possibilities for the
treaty to be ratified by the American Congress without any major complications.
For Salvador Arias and Hugo Martinez, both congressmen of the FMLN, the results
of both rehearsals do not necessarily indicate that the CAFTA will be ratified
by the American Congress. For both, everything is part of the political pressure
of the President of the United States over the Congress.
Certainly, nothing can be taken for granted. It is probable that in the first
rehearsals, many of the congressmen were not able to clearly reveal their
preferences. In other words, sometimes in the agreements of this nature several
congressmen at first try to distort the information that the rest of the
participants have. When this happens, there is the possibility that in the final
voting the results could be completely different from the one of the rehearsal.
In fact, this happened with the commercial agreement between the United States
and Australia, where one of the committees was against the approval, however, in
the end the results were different. The results indicate that during these days
the work of the sectors against the CAFTA should be more intense to avoid the
ratification of the treaty.
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