According to analysts, the budget was not a serious plan, but a campaign tool. In addition, they criticize the fact that it uses its position and state resources for proselytizing.
President Nayib Bukele has not stopped the campaign since he took office and now continues to proselytize using the discussion of the 2021 budget as a campaign letter and trivializing its importance.
Roberto Rubio, executive director of the National Foundation for Development (Funde), claims that President Bukele took advantage of the fact that the Assembly did not have much prestige and that the majority parties have already ruled and it is “wonderful” for him to fight with the Assembly. and accuse her of ruining her projects, even if she counterbalances her power and demands an explanation.
“The typical populist blames others. He never accepts his mistakes and wants everything to be approved for him and never in the history of the Peace Accords, a budget has not been presented as the Executive wants it, for the Legislature to exist exactly, not to approve everything what he wants, “says Rubio.
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As for the weekend’s commercial on the budget, it reflects the fact that it does not explicitly ask the population to vote, but maintains its strategy of “generating conflict as part of an electoral strategy through tweets and while the country is problematic, he (Bukele) continues in an electoral reality, he submits everything to the electoral process because the objective of the populist is to concentrate power ”.
Leonor Selva, a political analyst and deputy candidate for Nuestro Tiempo, points out that a president has never been seen in the country discussing important issues such as the nation’s budget and pension system reforms in a campaign sport and not as a serious public policy.
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“The announcement of the alleged play, which is more of a suicide as a country, the idea of spending the budget in four months, which is not a play because it does not harm traditional parties, but hurts the citizen who will have to pay that excess of funds that will be lost in four months, which are election months “, says Selva. He believes the president intends to spend public money as part of an election campaign and not as an investment plan for the country and the population.
Clearly, it’s an election letter, it’s a white paper to ministers telling them to ‘spend all the money so it looks like we’re working’, when in reality for the country, which already has 90% debt, this is a suicide “, Selva points out.
FMLN MP Víctor Suazo states that the electoral intention of the executive has been highlighted since the beginning of the budget presentation.
“The spot was prepared from the beginning and when I saw the budget and analyzed it, I saw that the objective with which it was presented was not to make this budget an economic tool for reactivation, but rather an instrument of populism. in which the expenses were increased. that they had no maintenance in terms of income “, says the legislator.
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He adds that the government has made a fictitious projection of revenues to support expenditures that have not had support over time, which has meant that it could make electoral use of the budget through promising works without the necessary resources.
Suazo explains that the Executive filed a request for the issuance of bonds for $ 1.342 million, which later said they did not need them, but these funds did not reduce their spending, which claims that from the beginning the draft budget was an electoral strategy.
“Now I come and make a new spot, which is very long, more than six minutes, which is very expensive and shows that what the Legislature did when it reduced the advertising budget is correct,” he says.
In that place, the deputy criticizes the fact that the Executive presents projects “that have nothing to do with what they presented (in the budget) and want to make the population see that it is good to reduce the projects of municipalities and NGOs.”
Improper use of state resources
Eduardo Escobar, the executive director of Acción Ciudadana, believes that President Bukele makes a hypothesis that they will win a majority in the Assembly and that they should not use state resources to promote a political party or to indicate a favorable election result.
“The spot, as indicated by the next Assembly, asks the population to support new ideas and use state resources. This is what is doubtful, that the position predominates in order to carry out a partisan policy, as he uses his figure of president to carry out this type of propaganda, which the Constitution forbids ”, Escobar underlines.
Rubio, from Funde, points out that the president uses the budget as a political weapon for discussions and with statements that the budget will be spent in four months, in addition to being illegal, it is not viable because the works projects are carried out with staggered payments. compared to the fact that the levels of execution of public works by this government and other governments were between 70% and 80% of what was budgeted in one year.
“This government that has looked pretty inept, with these levels of under-execution that we have, nothing assures us that this government will be so capable of executing at 90% or 100%, if it has not even managed to executes the El Salvador hospital that was to be in May and they have not finished it yet, which makes what he proposes feasible, in operational terms “, says Rubio.