Zelaya says he is running a loan with CABEI to transfer funds to mayors, but the petition will be presented to the new Assembly, which takes office on May 1, and opposition mayors are asked to wait.
Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya said yesterday that he could not “force” him to pay the fines he owed to town halls for more than nine months, most of them in the hands of the opposition until April 30.
According to Zelaya, the resolution of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice did not oblige him to pay the mayoralties immediately, but instead ordered him to take “measures” to cancel the debt.
You can read: Finance Minister on Fodes: “I can’t force myself to pay”
“The resolution of the Chamber is quite clear, it is said: the minister is ordered to carry out the steps within his powers aimed at making the payment of Fodes, because I know that I cannot force myself to pay it directly. It is not an order of the Constitutional Chamber, “the official said during a television interview.
However, on February 4, the Chamber ordered the Minister of Finance to carry out “immediately” the administrative and financial procedures for the funds to be paid to the mayors.
He also ordered them to make a transfer schedule, so that the delay in the payment of mandatory compliance is not “repeated”, because it is the law of the Republic.
Mayors have issued notifications to the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the minister for non-compliance with the Chamber’s resolution, but Zelaya defies them. “I don’t care if I go to the Prosecutor’s Office,” he said yesterday.
The treasury has stopped transferring money to 262 mayors since June 2020. By January of this year, the debt amounted to $ 360 million, as reported last month by the president of the Institute of Municipal Development of El Salvador (ISDEM), the mayor of San Salvador, Ernesto Muyshondt.
To that debt is added the February payment that they were not transferred either and there are no signs that they will be paid soon.
Some municipalities have had to suspend their waste collection service due to lack of funds to pay for the service. Photo: EDH / Archive
The President of the Corporation of Municipalities of El Salvador (COMURES), Milagro Navas, expressed his hope that once the elections pass, they will start paying their debt, but the Minister of Finance has another plan. “(Mayors) have to wait for the codes until we have the approval in the Assembly; I can’t pay them and I risk not paying the external debt “, he declared.
While the government makes them wait, in many municipalities they are making adventures with resources, and some mayors have announced that they will not be able to offer services such as garbage collection because they do not have money to pay.
This is the case in municipalities such as Quezaltepeque, where the outgoing mayor Salvador Saget considers that the position of minister is political, after the majority obtained in the February 28 elections.
“They think that when the new mayor comes they will give him 12 months of Fodes and I think they will come to solve everything and no, the mayors are indebted; it is a pity that a direct order of the Supreme Court is not respected, “he said.
In San Antonio de la Cruz, Chalatenango, residents will not receive the waste collection service due to the lack of Fodes.
He will participate in the new Assembly
The official added that he is looking for a loan with CABEI (American Central Bank for Economic Integration) to pay Fodes and that he will present the proposal to the next Assembly on May 1, when the mayoralties won by New Ideas will take office.
“We asked CABEI to help us with the funding so that we could transfer it and they said yes and, in due course, we will take it to the Assembly,” he said.
In the new Assembly, the ruling party New Ideas will have the majority of seats and will be in favor of Nayib Bukele’s government.
The management of a loan with CABEI, which the Minister of Finance provides, contrasts with what the Court of Accounts indicated that they had money for Fodes.
Read also: Residents of San Antonio de la Cruz will not receive waste collection service due to lack of Fodes
“According to the data, in the preliminary financial analysis of the audit team, we confirmed that there were funds for the transfers,” said Roberto Anzora, president of the Court of Accounts, in November last year.
In what Zelaya said he will apply for a new loan to pay Fodes, former finance minister Manuel Enrique Hinds believes the government must first present the full account of each of the items. “You can’t go out and say: today I have for Fodes and tomorrow I say they have nothing else. It should really tell the state of the nation’s finances. “