Country Commitments
El Salvador's participation in the Open Government Partnership, reflects the commitment of the country that seeks to enrich and strengthen the management of government and public administration in its commitment to a strong democracy and equitable development and inclusive that allow citizens to play a substantive role in the decisions that mark the country's direction.
This Action Plan for Open Government falls under the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Policy (PAT) of the Salvadoran government, which is currently in consultation and which in turn is part of the guidelines and commitments made by management President Mauricio Funes in the Five Year Development Plan 2010-2014 (PQD). Importantly, the guidelines regarding anti-corruption and transparency, were incorporated into the plan from a broad public consultation with the participation of various entities of the executive, civil society organizations, media unions, business associations and institutions academic.
In particular, the PAT aims to help realize the challenge of "To constitute a public sector responsible, efficient, effective, modern diconcentrated and decentralized to provide services to the population quality, that is has sufficient resources to meet so with adequate powers by the Constitution of the Republic and which has a system of accountability, responsive and transparent "(PQD, page 49).
This challenge is assumed given that the measurement of transparency and corruption in El Salvador has shown in recent years poor performance in key aspects such as access to information, accountability and combating corruption and also in relation to transparency in governance, particularly in relation to resource use and effectiveness of government work.
From the vision outlined in the PQD promoting transparency and fighting corruption are imperative for national development and are designed to strengthen public confidence in the state, to ensure democratic governance, to strengthen the standards of professionalism in public service, increase efficiency and effectiveness of the state, to create a better environment for market development and improve public finances.
Driven by this conviction, the Government of El Salvador is committed through the Action Plan for Open Government to take measures to keep the country moving forward in transparency and, thus, strengthen existing practices to prevent and combat corruption, ensure access to information, manage public funds, promote integrity in public and private sectors, promote citizen participation, and provide public services.
These are the Salvadoran Government's overall objectives to be achieved through its Plan of Action for Open Government and participation in the Alliance for Open Government (PMO). The objectives will be achieved through improvement initiatives of the new measures currently in progress and development as well as the participation of public and private actors at the national level in the different components of the action plan, through the implementation of the new communication technologies and efforts to encourage citizen participation in building a more just, freer and more egalitarian.
Below, please see this country's letter of intent.
El Salvador, like Latin America, evidence that higher corruption levels lower than Europe and Africa. Table of Global Corruption Barometer 2009, compiled by Transparency International in 2010, the country has an average score of 3.6 on a scale from 1 ("not at all corrupt") and 5 ("extremely corrupt"), in an investigation that sought to identify public perceptions of corruption in state institutions, political parties, private sector and media.
In the area of Central America, El Salvador is the country with the lowest public perception of corruption in the state. The data are: Costa Rica: 78%, Guatemala: 75.5%, Honduras: 70%, Nicaragua: 67.5% and El Salvador: 64.6% (Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador, 2010, p. 95, Ricardo Córdova Macías, José Miguel Cruz and Mitchell A. Seligson Wings).
However, the fact that the perception of corruption in the country is located in a comparatively lower than many countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa or Central American neighbors, does not mean that the actual levels of corruption do not constitute a threat to democracy and development.
Indeed, the perception of corruption and lack of transparency in the country have produced various synergistic negative phenomena, that this policy is intended to revert to lay the foundations of a National Integrity System.
The Latinobarómetro 2011, argues that democracy is one of the fundamental requirements "dismantle corruption" to restore public trust in the political system (Latinobarómetro 2011, p. 16). Indeed, the state's credibility is eroded when the regulatory system can not evolve as fast as they develop corruption and show strong results in the reduction or eradication. In El Salvador, the lack of effectiveness in curbing corruption in the last 10 years has resulted in the loss of confidence among citizens in the State institutions responsible for providing it, democracy and development opportunities (Latinobarómetro 2011, p. 35).
This loss of credibility in public institutions is manifested in the emergence of social prejudices that lead to think that in the country, responsible for acts of corruption is not pursued, much less punished and settle more to acts of corruption that have been unpunished despite large sums of money involved learned from the public treasury and to be known throughout society and public opinion.
As a result, today in El Salvador shows little willingness to make citizen complaints and a collective belief that those who denounce corruption is impaired. It also generates the feeling that you have to take advantage of corruption to achieve personal goals. The Latinobarómetro, 2011 (p. 64) illustrates this when he says, for example, that in El Salvador by 43% of people think is bad for democracy "leapfrog" the regular procedure to run an errand. That means there is a 57% who think otherwise, that is, to be morally relaxed.
This has had a negative impact is that during the last ten years, corruption has been eroding the trust that citizens have about the political system and other important conditions for the implementation and development of democracy, as illustrated Cordova, Cruz and Seligson, in his study "The Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador 2010," asserting that "the extent to which respondents have faced more corruption and more corruption have perceived among public officials, to that extent their support system significantly decreases "(p. 80 and 103).
Indeed, it has been generated in the country characterized by an anti-social tolerance to corruption. The constant triumph of corruption is not punished for justice, has returned to its perpetrators, successful actors in a scheme of upward social mobility. With this, the culture of integrity has been changing towards an anti-corruption tolerance (Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador 2010, p. 83). This counterculture has increased after the repeated social discourse of candidates and political groups in joint election, they promised a fight against corruption and then, once they get to positions of public power have not fulfilled those promises. This will give a significant depletion of the concept of corruption in the social imaginary (Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador 2010, p. 87).
Comparing the evolution of perception of corruption nationwide that offer documents "Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador": 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010, and its item and tools of transparency, identifies the instruments and mechanisms of accountability have changed little and are not suitable for efficient citizenship over the years. It is found that existing tools are inadequate and are not effective for citizens to access information in an open, timely, regular, complete and accurate so that their power and enables them to exercise greater levels of demand and control.
When the current government took office in 2009, the executive leadership, citizenship had only the Law on Procurement and Contracts Public Administration (LACAP) and the Ethics in Government Act (LEG) and legal mechanisms to demand transparency. It is clear that while these laws are important, are insufficient to achieve effectiveness in achieving its purpose of reducing corruption and creating accountability. Under this assumption, the current government in an effort to complement these instruments, has been developing a series of new procedures and tools (see attached document "Steps and tools anticorruption and transparency implemented by the Government of President Mauricio Funes in the period 2009 to 2011 ".
In connection therewith, Latinobarómetro 2011 illustrates that "the right of access to information emerges as a key to the whole system of corruption to function effectively" (p. 67). This implies, among other things, that citizens should have the tools necessary and sufficient to control the actions of government, ensure the accuracy of the information provided, especially regarding its organization, operation, management of resources and processes in decision-making.
So when the public does not have adequate instruments to exercise control over governance, its relationship with the State is based on speculation or perceptions rather than objective facts of reality.
For example, according to the document Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador 2010 (p. 94), 66.7% of Salvadorans believe corruption among public officials is very or somewhat widespread, slightly more than 25% consider that is far from general and only 8.2% think it is not widespread. What these data show is that people have no instruments to verify their perceptions, generating social unrest, loss of confidence and rejection of the public administration based on subjective dimensions.
On the other hand, it is appropriate to emphasize the data "also indicate that the perception of government corruption has decreased in 2010 compared to previous years. While in 2006 and 2008, the perception of corruption in government was shared by nearly 70% of the Salvadoran population, in 2010 the proportion of Salvadorans are saying that public officials are corrupt was reduced to 64%. " (Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador 2010, p. 94).
In conclusion we can say that in El Salvador, the lack of transparency in the last ten years has been a constant in the administrations of government, which, regardless of what they have done in the field of corruption, has had the effect to encourage social suspicion against state institutions and officials. This indicates that the present Government, as well as efforts to curb corruption, will have to face and overcome the inherited problem of the breakdown of relations with citizens, in an area where government and citizens must act as allies. Only then can have a citizenry that has an interest and power to fight corruption and be a counterweight to those groups of economic, political and social corruption have fostered over many years.
In sum, although presently perceive little trust in the mechanisms of transparency and control corruption, so is that from the Executive Branch has begun a process that aims to make a citizen attitude timid and weak , becomes an action with power to exercise control and demands participation and social control.
To this end, as shown in the political history of the last ten years, systematically collected by the Vanderbilt University in its report "The Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador" - citizenship should not only have the tools and legal instruments and social that allow monitoring the implementation of public and private sectors, but also should be aware of their rights and empowered.
