The President announced on Twitter that 75% of the Fodes will be managed by an institution established by the Executive. The mayors, including those of the New Ideas party, will have to request permission from a new state unit.
In a bombardment of advertisements on Twitter created by President Nayib Bukele, of changes to his government officials, he also reported that he will send a proposal to the new Assembly so that the mayors receive less money from the Economic and Social Development Fund (Fodes) and that the resources are centralized in a state institution that it will create to manage the public resources allocated to the municipalities by the constitution.
Mayors no longer receive 10% of the state’s current income, but 6%, Bukele explained on Twitter. In addition, a “Government Department of Municipal Works” will be set up with government funding, which will approve the projects requested by the mayors.
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Practically speaking, with this announcement, Bukele is leaving his own elected mayors bound, as the Feb. 28 election results of the New Ideas party, the political institution Bukele considers to be the official party, account for more than 57% of the 262 mayors who own the country.
“We will show (again) that you can do a lot more with less. The money is enough if no one steals, ”the president wrote.
The distribution of the Fodes would remain the same as envisaged in the current Fodes law: 25% for operating costs and 75% for works, but the mayors will not have the opportunity to decide which works will be performed and which will not, despite that it is the councilors who are well aware of the needs of their communities.
The new Assembly which takes office on May 1, 2021 will be majority controlled by deputies of the New Ideas party, so making a change in the law in Fodes to reduce the percentage from 10% to 6% could be done by the executive. done without any problem.
Only 43 votes are needed to make this reform, and there are more. What the government cannot do is permanently withdraw the allocation of financial resources to the state for the operation of the mayors, as that is contemplated in the republic’s constitution.
What President Bukele does not explain is where he will get the money to create more bureaucracy with the new “National Directorate of Municipal Works”, bearing in mind that that new institution will be responsible by not transferring the money to the accounts of the mayors. to manage month after month millions of dollars of current state income that comes from Salvadorans’ taxes.
The new national directorate announced by Bukele will be headed by Álvaro O’Byrne, the current director of FOVIAL.
The role of the Municipal Development Institute (ISDEM), which is currently charged with depositing the money that the Ministry of Finance sends monthly from the Fodes to the municipal accounts, also remains adrift.
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Bukele’s announcement follows a Treasury Department default with the municipalities of more than $ 300 million since mid-last year.
The head of the department, Alejandro Zelaya, has repeatedly reiterated that they have not paid it because public finances are not sufficient, but Bukele’s announcement suggests they are waiting for the new mayors to take over to make the payment effective.
Before the elections and during the election campaign, the opposition parties stated that the government had not turned over the Fodes to the mayors, using it as a ‘political tool’ to leave them at an ‘electoral disadvantage’, in addition to the fact that neither did it transfer them, they provided the advance of the political debt.
“They will kill the FODES, municipal autonomy and decentralization. Another spectacular institutional setback for our country, ”the Mayor of San Salvador, Ernesto Muyshondt, criticized.