According to analysts, the budget was not a serious plan, but a campaign tool. In addition, they criticize that he is using his position and state resources for proselytism.
President Nayib Bukele has not stopped his campaign since taking office and now continues to convert by using the 2021 budget discussion as a campaign letter and downplaying its importance.
Roberto Rubio, executive director of the National Development Foundation (Funde), argues that President Bukele has taken advantage of the fact that the Assembly has not had much prestige and that the majority parties have already ruled and that it is ‘great’ for him to fight with the Assembly and accuse her of spoiling her projects, even though she wants to offset her power and ask for explanations.
“The typical populist blames others. He never accepts his mistakes and wants everything to be approved for him, and never in history since the peace accords has a budget been presented the way the executive wants it, there is precisely the legislative for that, so as not to approve everything that it wants, ”says Rubio.
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With regard to the commercial published on the budget over the weekend, he indicates that it does not explicitly ask the population to vote, but maintains its strategy of “ generating conflict as part of an election strategy through tweets, ” and while it is problematic, he (Bukele) continues in an electoral reality, submitting everything to the electoral process because the populist’s goal is to concentrate power ”.
Leonor Selva, political analyst and deputy candidate for Nuestro Tiempo, points out that no president has ever been seen in the country discussing important issues such as the state budget and pension system reforms in a campaign sport and not as a policy serious public.
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“The announcement of the alleged master game, which as a country is more of a suicide, the idea of spending the budget in four months, that is not a master game because it does not harm the traditional parties, it harms the citizen who will spend that excess money. that will be wasted 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 people.
“It is clearly an election letter, it is a carte blanche to the ministers telling them ‘spend all the money so it looks like we are working’ when in reality this is for the country, which is already 90% in debt, this is a suicide ”, Selva indicates.
The FMLN deputy, Víctor Suazo, argues that the Executive’s election intention was clear from the start of the budget presentation.
“The place was prepared from the start and when we saw and analyze the budget, we saw that the purpose with which it was presented was not to make this budget an economic reactivation tool, but rather an instrument of populism where spending became that they had no income, ”says the legislator.
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He adds that the government created a fictitious revenue forecast to support expenditures that were unsupported over time, which meant they could make electoral use of the budget by pledging works, without having the necessary resources .
Suazo explains that the executive has filed for the issuance of bonds for $ 1.342 million, which they later said they did not need, but that those funds did not reduce their spending, confirming that the budget project was a electoral strategy.
“Now they come and make a new place, which is very long, more than six minutes, which is very expensive, and it shows that what the Legislative Assembly did when it cut the advertising budget is correct,” he says.
In that place, the Member of Parliament criticizes that the Executive presents projects ‘that have nothing to do with what they have presented (in the budget) and want to show the population that it is good to cut back on projects of the municipalities and NGOs’.
Misuse of State Resources
Eduardo Escobar, Executive Director of Acción Ciudadana, believes that President Bukele hypothesizes that they will gain a majority in the Assembly and that he should not use state resources to promote a political party or indicate an election result that favor .
The place, which refers to the next Assembly, calls on the population to support New Ideas and use state resources. That is questionable, that the position prevails to practice party politics, as he uses his figure of president to carry out this kind of propaganda, something the constitution forbids, ”emphasizes Escobar.
Rubio, van Funde, points out that the president is using the budget as a political weapon for discussion and with the statements that the budget will be spent within four months, it is not only illegal but also not feasible as the works are being carried out with staggered payments. Besides the fact that the level of execution of public works by these and other authorities was between 70% and 80% of what was budgeted in a year.
“This government, which has proven to be quite incapable, with these levels of under-execution that we have, does not guarantee anything that this government will be so inclined to run 90% or 100%, if it hasn’t even been able to get into the hospital. El Salvador to execute that to be in May and they are not done with it, making what he proposes is operationally unfeasible, ”says Rubio.