The Legislative Assembly’s Environmental Debt

The current term of the Legislative Assembly comes to an end in a couple weeks and their inaction on environmental issues has left a huge debt to the people the were elected to serve.

When the Legislative Assembly began its 2012-2015 term, the body’s President Sigfrido Reyes said, “the debate in the current legislature requires a dignified position of the Parliament. As the Assembly begins, it is faced with some formidable challenges among them is reducing the environmental vulnerabilities.” A month later, Representative Francisco Zablath, President of the Assembly’s Environmental and Climate Change Commission, said, “What the Legislators do or fail to do affects millions of Salvadorans, and for that reason our task is to legislate responsibly and focus on the common good. So I promise to address water issues in a holistic manner and with the benefit of the population being the center focus.”

But three years later, the Legislative Assembly has accomplished little in protecting El Salvador’s environment and natural resources. Legislators managed to pass a ban on circus animals, extend an environmental emergency declaration in Sitio del Niño, and removed toxic chemicals from San Luis Talpa. These are important and necessary actions, but there are so many other big environmental issues the Legislature failed to act on.

The most emblematic is the General Water Law, which was first presented to the Legislative Assembly in 2006. It is incredibly irresponsible that in 9 years legislators have yet to approve a law that regulates the use of water. El Salvador is on the brink of a water crisis, and the government must take action, but the legislature seems paralyzed.

Carolina Amaya, an environmental activist at the Salvadoran Ecological Unit argues that the reason they have not passed the General Water Law is that business leaders have close ties to right-wing legislators. These private, for-profit interests want to control water resources through privatization, and their representatives in the Legislature have been holding up the bill on the their behalf. Ms. Amaya says that giving private businesses control over water management would be like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

The Legislature has also failed to ratify an amendment to Article 69 of the Constitution, which would recognize food and water as a basic human right. The amendment was passed in April 2012 just before the last legislative term ended. But to become binding, the Legislature had to ratify it in this term with at least 56 votes, which they were unable to do. It seems like a pretty non-controversial bill giving people the right to adequate nutrition and water, and requiring the State to manage water resources in a way that provides people with adequate access to each.

Twice, legislators have tried to ratify the amendment, but the two conservative parties have voted against it without making any good policy arguments as to why. The Archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas, recently asked the Assembly, “the right [to food and water] is nothing you can deny, and will all due respect, and with all the respect I can communicate to the honorable legislators, I want to ask that you not reject the amendment and give this your vote, because if you reject it, you deny Salvadorans of their most important and fundamental rights.”

The reality is, however, the Legislative term will end in a couple weeks and with it the opportunity to make a substantial contribution to the country – elevating the right to food and water to a constitutional right.

The legislature also continues to ignore the proposed ban on metallic mining. In a conversation with the Movement of Victims Affected by Climate Change and Corporations (MOVIAC), Representative Lourdes Palacios, the Secretary of the Environmental and Climate Change Committee, recognized that the ban on mining has not been on the Commissions agenda and that they have not looked at the issue.

There are several other environmental issues that are important to Salvadorans and the natural resources they depend on but that the Legislative Assembly has ignored this term. These include the prohibition of toxic agrochemicals, passage of a food sovereignty law, and needed reforms to the Risk Management Law.

The current legislature is leaving a lot of unfinished business for the next term, as well as a big debt to Salvadorans whose health and wellbeing hang in the balance. Water, food and nutrition, mining, toxic agro-chemicals, and risk management are all issues that the Legislature has to address. The next legislative body cannot be irresponsible as their predecessors were – they have a moral and ethical obligation to the people that elected them to office.

Legislative Assembly Reaches Agreement on New Attorney General

It appears the Salvadoran Government will avoid another institutional crisis by selecting a new Attorney General for the three-year term that is to begin on September 19, 2012.

A conflict arose on April 25, 2012 when the outgoing Legislative Assembly chose Astor Escalante to be the next Attorney General of El Salvador. At 1:00 in the morning, Sigfredo Reyes, President of the Legislative Assembly, swore him in, even though his term would not start for another 5 months.

Members of the ARENA party objected to his appointment and filed a complaint in the Constitutional Court. In July, the Court ruled in their favor declaring Escalante’s appointment unconstitutional. The based their decision on the principal that each Legislative Assembly (which serves a three year term) has the responsibility to appoint a specific number of judges, as well as the nation’s Attorney General. In April, the outgoing Legislative Assembly, which appointed Romeo Barahona when they took office in 2009, appointed Escalante to serve for the next three years. This was their second appointment and if it stood would have essentially denied the current Assembly an appointment.

The Court handed down its decision while it was embroiled in its own crisis; many, including Escalante, said that the Court’s decision was invalid. With the summer’s crisis resolved, some feared another institutional battle over Escalante’s appointment.

According to La Prensa Grafica, the Legislative Assembly has reached a decision that will avert a new battle between the legislative and judicial branches. Yesterday stakeholders met to discuss a resolution and it appears they will void Escalante’s April appointment and start the process again so the new Attorney General can take office on September 19, 2012. They will choose from the same list of 47 candidates that were considered in April, and it is possible that Escalante may be chosen again – the fight was over the process not the person. Sigfrido Reyes clarified yesterday that the decision reached by the working group was a political compromise, and not an indication that they agreed with the Constitutional Court’s decision.

Prior to the meeting, the Catholic Church, the President and others asked that the Legislative Assembly resolve the issue before Barahona’s last day on September 18. President Funes even offered to mediate between the parties, but it appears that won’t be necessary.

The online news journal La Página had interesting political analysis back in July when they reported on the Constitutional Court’s decision. It was the ARENA block of the Legislative Assembly that objected to Escalante’s appointment, even though the ARENA supported his appointment during the Saca administration. In the months after leaving office, former President Saca was ousted from the ARENA party. The split was ugly and when Saca joined the GANA party, ARENA labeled him a traitor. Members of the ARENA objected to Escalante now because he supported Saca during the split. It will be interesting to see if Escalante will have the support of this new Legislative Assembly, which has a few more ARENA representatives than it did in April.

Beach Soccer Team from Jiquilisco Bay takes on the World Cup

Wilber Alvarado

Fishermen from two small mangrove islands took fourth place in the World Cup for beach soccer. The Azul Playera hails from La Pirraya and Rancho Vieja, where they started training in professional beach soccer seven years ago.  Sunday, after a close game against Portugal, they ended their incredible tour in Ravenna, Italy.

It began in 2004, when Israel Cruz began organizing a soccer league with poor fishing families in San Dionisio, Usulután. While the mud and thorns of the mangrove forest made it hard to practice in the community, he quickly realized the kids played very well in the sand at the beach. So Mr. Cruz organized the community and the players to haul sand up from the bay to cover the field and started holding tournaments.

He soon met some of the team’s stars; Roberto Membreño and Wilber Zavala in Rancho Viejo, and Augustín ‘Tín’ Ruiz, Tomás Hernandez, and Medardo Lobo in La Pirraya. Israel Cruz remembers the first tournaments that the team travelled to. In one incident, ‘Tín’ got carsickness on the way to the nearby beaches of La Libertad.  The anxiety of that experience led him to cut up his passport so that he wouldn’t have to travel to the 2007 elimination rounds in Acapulco, Mexico.

Today their passports are filled with stamps from Spain, Dubai, and Italy. After defeating Oman and Argentina, they classified for the final round with their victory over Italy. Only losses against Russia and then Portugal left them in fourth place – a historic achievement for Salvadoran soccer.

Now the team returns to La Pirraya and Rancho Vieja, where the majority of families survive off of fishing, digging clams from banks of mud in the bay, or transporting neighbors to and from the mainland. Sigfrido Reyes, the President of the Legislative Assembly, has already fielded questions about what, if any, economic aid will be given to these new ‘National Heroes.’

According to an article in El Mundo, the National Sports Institute promised the communities new boats and motors. But a month has gone by and the boats and motors have not materialized. Today, ARENA and FMLN have asked the Legislative Assembly to guarantee these incentives.