Center for Information, Documentation and Research Support (CIDAI)
E-mail: cidai@cidai.uca.edu.sv

Central American University (UCA)
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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.

     Subscriptions to Proceso in Spanish can be obtained by sending a check for US$50.00 (Americas) or $75.00 (Europe) made out to 'Universidad Centroamericana' and sent to the above address. Or read it partially on the UCA’s Web Page: http://www.uca.edu.sv
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INDEX

EDITORIAL

    During the last days of April, the city hall of San Salvador revealed the new municipal regulation titled “Ordinance for the transparency in the municipal administration and the civilian participation at the County of San Salvador”. The document explains that its objective is to “promote, establish and regulate the mechanisms that will allow the organization and the practice of the civilian participation, and the transparency in San Salvador’s city hall, realizing that these are the fundamental aspects to achieve a local development”. As it can be inferred by the quoted text, the ordinance points at two crucial issues for the democratization process, not only for the local governments, but –in general- for the social life as a whole: the transparency of the resources’ administration and the civilian participation in the public affairs. It is not necessary to add that both aspects are attached to each other, since a mature and effective participation –in a local level, for this case- can only be considered with those characteristics if it is based on transparent information mechanisms. The city hall of San Salvador has undertaken that double challenge, the new ordinance is its specific expression.

The ordinance’s structure, in fact, is a reflection of the bottom line objective that encourages it: contribute to the construction of a citizenry sense among the Salvadorans that live in the city. For this purpose it is necessary to promote the civilian participation process in an active, conscious and critical way, not only at a personal level, but also inside the organizations to which they belong. Where will that participation take place? Is it related to the decision making process and to the actual actions aimed to achieve the desired level of development?

As it can be seen, it is about a new way to understand the municipal administration in San Salvador. This administration has been traditionally understood as a centralized exercise of the local political power, for which the citizenry is only a group of passive individuals who receive the decisions made at a higher level –for better or for worse- of the municipal administration. This traditional feature of the municipal government is more likely to be combined with an authoritarian interpretation of power, than with a democratic vision; even more so, it is not a coincidence that this perspective was shaped by the military regimens that took control over the national life during most of the 20th century.

From this perspective, the initiative of the capital’s city hall represents an innovation in the way that the exercise of the municipal power has been understood: according to the municipal government’s proposal, it has to integrate the citizens to its work as an active part of it. These citizens must be aware of their rights and their duties, but they should also be clearly informed about how the city hall is administrating the human, the financial, and the material resources.

It is evident –if the ordinance is thoroughly examined- that San Salvador’s city hall is putting an enormous weight over its shoulders. New responsibilities are added to the ones that already exist, and this time they are related to the promotion and the organization of the civilian participation, and to the explanation of the events. This is not an easy task. A lot of energy will have to be invested in these activities. Therefore, the fundamental question is if they have that much energy –and not only the will- to carry on with the project. Otherwise it is very probable that the purposes might not be completed, as it usually happens with many other laudable but unrealistic goals.

The project has two faces: one of them looks at the resources and the strength the city hall counts with to get ahead with the up-coming new challenges. The other face looks at the citizenry. And it happens that the kind of citizen that is planned to shape with the new ordinance is a mature citizen who is aware of his rights and duties, but who is also willing to undertake community service and its responsibilities. The cultural tendencies that predominate in El Salvador –that is, the lifestyles, the daily activities, and the public attitudes- indicate that that kind of citizen has to be created, since, for the moment, it seems that he does not publicly exist.

Obviously, it is important to be aware of the exceptions, that is, about the existence of individuals and groups that will be willing to assume, based on their civilian maturity, a compromise related to the public resources’ administration. However, the exceptions are, in this case, the confirmation of a worrying rule: the privatization of the social activities and the abandonment of the public space by many important sectors of the population.

Without a doubt, it is not easy to go against these cultural and social dynamics. It is harder to revert them and transform them into a completely opposite factor: an organized civilian irruption into the public affairs. This does not mean that nothing can be done about it. However, that “something” that can be done must be measured and placed in the wider context of the cultural, social, and economic activities that move the country, which are closely related to the important changes in the world favored by the globalization process. To disregard the plan from these dynamics is to turn the promotion of the organizational tasks and the social participation into a dead end, or –what is worse- into a black hole that consumes more energy and resources without actually obtaining the expected results.

However, since the main purpose is to start walking in order to defeat the social lethargy, San Salvador’s city hall has taken the first step on that direction. The worse thing that can be done is to place obstacles to the construction of a dream that is intended to achieve with the ordinance about the transparency and the civilian participation. Without a doubt, those who encourage the ordinance are aware of the problems that can be expected. Hopefully, they will be able to identify, among the different objections and critics that their approaches will go through, the observations that will help them to shape their proposal with the purpose of making it more effective.

    The Salvadoran society is getting ready for the new elections. In one year, the congressmen and the mayors that will be elected will take over their duties. The political parties are getting ready for that. And inside their “general headquarters” the pre-electoral environment is already in the air. ARENA is preparing itself ahead of time. It seems that Francisco Bertrand Galindo is the party’s new “strong man”, and he is preparing the ground to start the “war against the FMLN”, just like La Prensa Grafica revealed it on April 29th. While the electoral programs are not made public -to carefully analyze the parties’ electoral and municipal proposals-, it is convenient to review what they promised during the last campaign, and determine up to what point they granted what they promised. More specifically, this article will examine ARENA’s “2000-2003 Electoral Program”, its proposals, and their accomplishments, a year away from the next elections.

In the occasion of the legislative and the municipal elections of 2000, ARENA presented an electoral program. The main issue was security. With its well-known “successful attitude”, ARENA proclaims itself as the only actor of the national life, responsible for the changes that took place during the last decade. In its “Compromise 2000” it intended to call the attention of the Salvadorans over a series of issues that occupied an important space inside the public debate. The proposal was summarized in “four compromises”: “ A compromise with security, the new opportunities, the civilian participation and with your future”. In each one of these areas, the official party established its procedure plans for the legislature that will soon take effect. All of that was crowned with a lapidary phrase, according to which “politics mean service”.

The compromise with security absorbed the problems that the Salvadorans said they suffered at the time. “Our legislative compromise –can be read in the document- includes measures that intend to achieve the tranquility of the Salvadoran family; that is, security in all of its possible expressions: civilian, juridical, and territorial safety”. The ARENA spokespeople wanted to show their close relation with the diagnosis prepared with the different opinion polls, according to which, “the present insecure situation has become the most harmful problem that affects the Salvadorans in their daily activities”. To complement these purposes, they intended to encourage “legislative initiatives that can consolidate the state of rights, the juridical security, and also neutralize and control any kind of violence, improving the results of the fight against organized crime and the drug-dealing activities”. In addition, they intended to improve “the safety systems for the population in case of disasters”. As specific measures, they presented, among the most important ones, the creation of “effective laws that are able to punish delinquency and fight the organized crime; encourage the respect to the law, the family’s safety, and reinforce the prevention system against disasters”.

Now, almost at the end of this legislature, the safety issue, in all of the elements identified by ARENA’s legislative proposal, remains as the continuous headache for the Salvadoran families. However, the worst aspect of all this is that the laws encouraged by the official party have probably created more insecurity. It is the case of the controversial “law of the firearms”. A recent reunion with the experts on this subject just ratified what some critical sectors had always discussed: the safety problem cannot be resolved by giving weapons to the population, since this turns the security and the social violence into a more complicated problem.

In regard to the issue of the new opportunities, ARENA’s legislative program had as an objective to “create the environment in order to generate more and better employment and income opportunities for the Salvadorans”. For the ARENA congressmen, this compromise would be achieved by “reinforcing the legal frame in order to encourage the national and foreign investments that create jobs; encouraging a legislation that promotes an agricultural development to eradicate the rural poverty; supporting the micro and small business companies; encouraging exportations; educating young people to improve their skills; and promoting the budgetary responsibility”.

There is no doubt that different legislative reforms have been approved to make it easier for the foreign capitals to establish themselves in this country. However, something that not even the most enthusiastic ARENA follower can deny is that those initiatives have not contributed to substantially improve the life of most Salvadorans. And there are two reasons that explain this idea. On the one hand, the announced amounts of employment opportunities have not been generated. On the other hand, many of the business companies that have been installed in the country, under the protection of the governmental promotion, pay starvation wages to the workers, making it impossible to evaluate their contribution in terms of the creation of new opportunities.

In reference to the civilian participation issue, ARENA’s legislative proposal wanted to present an open and sensitive environment by discussing participative democracy. That is why the party’s ideologists took advantage to present a new slogan: “politics means service”. For that reason, they gave a new purpose to their mission as ARENA’s congressmen. “It is about being a participative parliamentary fraction, open, respectful and transparent, that can encourage the governmental performance; to be a promoter of democracy and the state of rights and, represent the values of the national identity; looking after the welfare, the progress, and the freedom of all Salvadorans”. In this sense, they thought that they had to promote an “efficient, transparent, and participative legislative administration”, as well as to “encourage the legislative support for an economic and social development of the municipalities and the governmental decentralization”.

It is evident that, so far, none of the ARENA items about the civilian participation have been materialized. There are no records of any official actions in that sense. Differently from the promise, the decentralization activities that have been promoted along this legislative period have been systematically blocked by the ARENA congressmen.

About the compromise with the future, ARENA’s legislative proposal wanted to present an environmental concern. They wanted to make sure that “our Salvadoran family experiments sustainable economic improvements to reach more comfortable living standards, without inheriting the same problems to the future generations”. A series of measures were designed for this factor: to examine the legislation of San Salvador, in order to stop the environmental deterioration, to provide enough legislative support for the territorial rearrangement and its development; to legislate in order to guarantee a sustainable development for the environment; and support the development of an strategic infrastructure to support the production.

Once again, reality reveals itself as a complete failure. The ecological movements can bear witness to the country’s environmental deterioration. That is why no one can talk about the sustainability of the goods’ production structure in this country. It is also questionable to talk about not inheriting the problems to the future generations. On the contrary, the future is now even more compromised than ever. What would the ARENA members say about this legislative balance? Does the war remain as the legacy of this country? Does ARENA deserve another three years to keep making mistakes? These are, without a doubt, some of the questions that Francisco Bertrand Galindo will have to answer to the Salvadoran voters, beyond his anti-communist rhetoric.

    According to the last governmental assessments, the year 2002 will bring a relative improvement to certain important economic indicators. According to the president of the Banco Central de Reserva (Central Bank of Reserve, BCR in Spanish), Rafael Barraza, a 3% growth rate and a 2.5% inflation rate are expected for this year. The Internal Revenue Service (Ministerio ed Hacienda) stated that, during the first three months of the year, the fiscal deficit had dropped by 0.6% of the GNP, a considerably small amount if compared with the 3.6% of the last year.

The already mentioned amounts do not reflect any major changes for the projections presented by the government by the end of 2001, when the growth rates were established in 3%, and the inflation rate was also established in a similar percentage. It can be said that the inflation rate has been reduced. However, so far it is not easy to predict the fiscal deficit’s behavior; the 0.6% is only a preliminary number, and does not entirely reflect the recent tendency of the formerly mentioned variable.

If a production growth rate close to 3% were reached, it could be said that the most optimistic goal was to be achieved. It is necessary to consider that, during the last years, the growth rates have barely reached numbers close to 2%; even last year, it went down to a 1.8%.

Without trying to be pessimistic, it must be said that there are international tendencies and external factors that do not allow an acceptable level of certainty for the macro-economic projections. What is clear is that most tendencies indicate a stable low economic growth.

After all, it would not be the first time that the government inflates the growth rates. In 2000, the government announced a 2.5% growth rate, which in the end it turned out to be 2%; later on, they ratified that it was actually 1.8%.

However, beyond the numbers, it is necessary to ask what caused the low economic growth, and what possibly caused the extension of this phenomenon. A very clear tendency is that the added demand –supported by the family remittances and the jobs at the maquilas- has considerably grown during the last years. The problem is that the satisfaction of that demand fundamentally happens through an increase of the importations, and not because the domestic offer increases. Therefore, the added offer has grown due to the encouragement of the importations, rather than to the encouragement of the internal production (which also has implications over the commercial deficit).

This could partially explain the slow growth tendency; however, it is necessary to remember that, presently, there is a double imbalance related with the external context, and which threatens to grow worse: a decrease in the textile maquila’s growth rates, a lower growth of the family remittances, and a prolonged and abrupt fall in the international prices of coffee. The prolonged agricultural crisis’ effects have already been mentioned at the internal context, as well as the industrial setback and the intense fiscal pressures derived from the public investments, required to recuperate both the infrastructure that the recent earthquakes destroyed, and the amortization of the debt that the State acquired under the present pension system’s model (Proceso 981). At the moment, however, it is necessary to consider that the characteristics of the external environment show certain tendencies that would be a menace for the two stronger columns of the economy: the maquila and the family remittances.

The government’s statistics show that the maquilas will tend to reduce their activities. The growth rates of the maquila’s exportations went from 20.7%, in 2000, to only a 5% in the last year; the projections made at the beginning of the year estimated that during 2002 they could only grow 4%. This estimate is consistent with the contraction detected by the Salvadoran Association of the Tailoring and Dressmaking Industry, according to which between a 10% and a 15% of the 122 factories that are part of the association have experimented a reduction in their activities, and that situation is not over yet. It is estimated that, from a total of 250 factories, only three have suspended their operations; however, if the numbers are added, 700 job positions have been closed. Last week, a factory that employed 1,200 people was closed.

The behavior of the family remittances had also been showing a reduction practically since 2000,but its situation would grow worse during the following months. In 2000, the total of remittances was added up to $1, 900 million; that is that they grew 8.6%. For the present year, the official projections indicate that the remittances will be increased in $76 million, that is, in only a 4%.

The growth of both the maquila and the remittances depends on the dynamic of The United States’ economy. That is why when the demand is slow it directly and simultaneously affects the Salvadoran economy. If the remittances fall, it is very probable that the maquila activity falls too, and vice versa.

It would be necessary to wait for the added demand to grow less than it did the last year. For the growth rates to go from 1.8% to 3%, as the BCR predicted, other factors would be necessary. For example, a vigorous recuperation of the agriculture and the non-maquila industry, or a higher flow of the international loans offered for the post-earthquake reconstruction. However, with the fall in the prices of coffee and the dry-season threats, the perspectives for the agricultural sector are not so flattering. Meanwhile, although the industry is growing, that growth keeps slowing down, and 2002 will not be the exception. With this situation, the perspectives of a higher economic growth will again depend on what happens at the external environment, and not on what the government does with the economic policy.

Facing this reality, it is not necessary to be pessimistic to accept that the national and the international scenery is not favorable for an economic recuperation, at least under the conditions in which El Salvador –and many other neighbor countries- has gone into the globalization process. Globalization does not necessarily mean that the countries should give up their possibilities to develop their economic policy; on the contrary, it requires the design and the implementation of insertion strategies for the productive sectors to be absorbed by the globalization process, and the mitigation of the economic imbalance that El Salvador presently experiments.

During the nineties, it was believed that by opening the markets and that by the implementation of privatization and deregulation, a healthy and vigorous economy would be achieved. However, the truth is that the use of sectional policies for the productive support has been overlooked, evading the adoption of compensatory and prospective measures that support the agricultural and the industrial production. With this situation, the economic growth and development probabilities have been depending more and more on factors that go beyond the government’s control. Even if the dependency relation with The United States is accepted, it would also help to accept that it is possible and necessary to promote an economic model with internal growth poles, less dependant, more productive and with a higher level of integration between the demand and the domestic offer.
 
 

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