The news from El Salvador

The folks at Voices on the Border have posted a summary of the news from El Salvador during 2007. Here's a short excerpt:
Several scandals have been rocking El Salvador for months now, as Salvadoran society has seen at least half a dozen complex organized crime and corruption dramas unfold. Besides large drug busts, there have been a number of high-profile arrests from past administrations. The current Minister of Health and Public Assistance has taken a lot of heat over a lavish 90,000 dollar office makeover while the hospitals run out of lifesaving drugs. Former Public Works Minister David Gutierrez stepped down from internal ARENA party function amidst another scandal. And while Dr. Paul Wolfowitz looks like he will have to step down from the helm of the World Bank, so may one of the architects of dollarization and the economic disaster of the last ARENA administration, Juan José Daboub. From there it only gets crazier...

Read the whole summary here.

Comments

El-Visitador said…
High profile arrests from past administrations, exposés of current ministers, party officers stepping down.

It is only «crazy» if you don't realize we live in a free and open society, with a free press, and with democratic institutions that, at least sometimes, work as they should.

If one believes all the tripe about the "oligarchy" and "repression", etc., then sure, it is crazy to see people being held accountable.
9:58 PM
Anonymous said…
I agree with el visitador. Not many scandals coming to light involving the ruling party in Cuba or Venezuela these days. Corruption in this hemisphere is endemic, so what is crazy is that people are being publicly denounced for it and at least in some cases paying a price.

Although lumping Wolfowitz in with all of that is rather odd, being that he pointed out to an ethics committee that his girl friend working there may be a conflict of interest, then following their recomendations found her another job, and those actions were ok'ed by still another ethics comittee at the World Bank. Move along, not much scandal here.

Also reading her post confirms to me that for some people being a liberal means that you find a cloud in every silver lining. The rain is good, but no it´s not good, we´ll have hurricanes. By the way the guys in Colorado missed it big time last year with their predictions.
9:57 AM
Anonymous said…
Such scandal estarted when Wolfowitz claimed in a institution such as BM, that he was going to fight corruption, however he's being held accountable for thath very reason, the same aplied for Daboud. El Visitador, tried to place and justifice their actions with this very poor argument:

If the others are corrupted...
Why can not Wolfowitz and Daboud be corrupted?

If Hittler was a mass murdered....
Why can not D'abuison?

if Al Capone was corrupted...
Why can not Wolfowitz and Daboud?

If Libby was corrupted...
Why can not Wolfowitz and Daboud be corrupted?

The all have the rigth to be murder or corrupted, since we live in a "democratic" society. They had actually used and instrumentalized the BM for their own party and ideological reason, destruying the credibility of the rest and their work.

etc, etc, etc...
7:52 PM
Rusty said…
The issue with Wolfowitz and his girlfriend isn't the transfer to the state department. It's the fact that the transfer ended up being a promotion to a salary inordinately large, larger in fact than the salary of Condi Rice, who's in charge of the State Department. In order to avoid conflict of interest she should have either

1. taken a job at or below her previous pay scale, or
2. gotten a job herself without the aid of her boyfriend.

I agree with El Visitador that the corruption cases in El Salvador are actually good news. They are signs that initial steps are being made to clean up the dirty, corrupt politics that exist on ALL sides of the political spectrum in Latin America.
10:33 AM
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