EL SALVADOR: A DISAPPOINTING FIRST TWO YEARS FOR PRESIDENT ANTONIO SACA.

El Salvador's President Antonio Saca stepped up to the podium in the legislature early in June to give an account of his first two years in office. Saca has seen a decline in his popularity and a general impression that he has little to show for his tenure. Of greatest popular concern is his

"People think delinquency has increased despite all the government plans to combat it. Looking at the polls, we note that the people feel insecure, that they fear something could happen, and they demand something be done," said vice rector of the Universidad Centroamericana Jose Simeon Canas (UCA) Rodolfo Cardenal.

The UCA's Instituto Universitario de Opinion Publica (IUDOP) conducted one of the polls. The UCA survey found more than 55% of the population believing the problem has gotten worse. These findings were confirmed a day later when a survey commissioned by La Prensa Grafica said 60.3% of its respondents believe that Saca was not resolving the problem, while 33% thought he was solving it. Official figures indicate that violent acts in general increased by 5% in the first quarter of 2006, bringing the total number of murders in this country of 6.9 million inhabitants to 1,434. The total number of murders for 2005 was 3,812, or 10.4 per day. Last year under Saca, El Salvador recorded the highest murder rate in the last seven years.

Mano dura bluster gone

Saca has stepped back considerably from promises of quick fixes to the problem (see NotiCen, 2004-06-24). In the campaign that brought him to the presidency he was quick to blame the Los Angeles-spawned gangs for the violence and proposed continuation of "super-mano-dura" policies for their quick eradication. But after two years of unabated insecurity, Saca says, "This problem of delinquency must be resolved in time....Today, we have new modalities in crime, I recognize these problems, and we're going to work on them in the coming years."

Another of Saca's campaign promises still in need of work is economic improvement. Citizens are leaving the country in greater numbers than ever to seek their fortunes on the other side of quickly rising steel fences on the US border. Salvadorans left behind have become more dependent on the remittances (remesas) the successful economic refugees send home. An estimated 2.5 million Salvadorans in the US, a third of their country's population, sent back almost US$3 billion last year. That amounts to 80% of the national budget, or 17% of GDP. These figures are projected to go higher in 2006.