San Salvador.-The increase in violence in El Salvador in recent months, including massacres, killings of civilians, police, soldiers, and their families, has become a major concern for the population and the government.
Faced with the brutality sweeping the country, mainly attributed to gangs and organized crime, the government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén has sought new strategies to comprehensively eradicate violence ever since the beginning of his term in office.
The head of state has noted that this is not an easy task, and that the problem, which is rooted in periods during which the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) governed the country, showing complete disregard for the thousands of young gang members deported from the United States, can not be eradicated overnight.
The phenomenon has multiple causes, related mainly to a centuries-long lack of public policies to benefit the majority of the population, together with the repression of colonizers and dictators, the unequal distribution of wealth and the blind ambition of politicians who abandoned their functions to boost their bank accounts.
In order to tackle this serious problem, the government established the National Council on Citizen Security and Coexistence, composed of representatives from various sectors (political parties, churches, academics, journalists, etc.), which designed a plan for municipalities suffering from high crime rates.
At the same time, the President proposed measures to finance the plan, as it requires resources that the state does not have.
However, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court froze $900 million dollars in government bonds, destined to fund this fight.
The Mayor of San Salvador, Nayib Bukele, stated that the people would no doubt support radical measures taken by the President to put an end to insecurity, which claims the lives of more than twenty Salvadorans every day, while also stressing the interests that could lie behind the violence.
“We are clear that some in the opposition rejoice at these figures, they attempt to take advantage, in the most disgusting way, of the suffering of Salvadorans, to gain political leverage from the situation,” Bukele expressed through his Facebook account.
“It is clear that there are de facto powers behind much of this, with the interest of returning to the government (as a way to recover control over what they consider 'their ranch’),” the Mayor added.
He stressed that “there are many powerful people profiting from crime and the delinquency afflicting the country can not be fully blamed on the current government.”
In his opinion, with which experts coincide, the seeds of the violence in the country “were planted long ago by inequality, injustice, the destruction of the social fabric, incomplete and unfulfilled peace agreements, the discriminatory economic policies of the ARENA governments.”
Likewise, the notorious “firm hand” and “super firm hand” plans, launched by the administrations of former presidents Francisco Flores (1999-2004) and Antonio Saca (2004-2009) to curb crime, only resulted in exacerbating the violence and cramming prisons.
In this context, the three branches of the state, together with the Attorney General's Office, are evaluating a set of extraordinary measures, to add to those already being implemented, to stem the tide of crime in the country, Presidential Communications Secretary Eugenio Chicas reported.
“The discussion surrounds the need to respond rapidly, with energy, to citizen unrest and demands given the crimes that have been committed in recent days,” the official said.
He noted that a decision of this nature (decreeing a state of emergency) has important legal, political, economic and social implications; therefore it is an issue that should be thoroughly discussed in each of the organs of the state. He explained that none of the measures the government is considering to tackle this problem are “aimed at affecting honest citizens, but rather any public policy that may be adopted is intended to offer guarantees to Salvadoran families and to prosecute criminals.”
The population hopes that soon the government will announce new initiatives to put an end to this phenomenon: some talk of consolidating police and military intelligence in order to eliminate criminal groups; others advocate more troops on the streets to support the National Civil Police.
Similarly, a large section of the population believes that the transformation of Salvadoran society, with a more humane perspective, including the right to quality basic services, will be the definite long-term solution. (PL)
