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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>Labor,
Environmental, Women’s, Religious and Community Groups Announce Alliance
to Fight Water Privatization<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>CISPES Update<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Sept. 8, 2006<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Yesterday Salvadoran activists representing 37 different organizations
came together to form the <i><span style='font-style:italic'>Foro Nacional por la
Defensa de la Sustentabilidad y el Derecho al Agua</span></i> (National Forum
for the Defense of the Sustainability and Right to Water). The Forum is
people’s organized response to the government’s intention to
privatize the public service, which would exacerbate the already precarious and
deficient access to water and the lack of an integral and sustainable approach
to water administration. This purpose of the forum is to reclaim water as a
public and social resource and therefore oppose to the government’s neoliberal
economic policies.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>The newly-formed Forum agreed on a plan of action, which includes a
major mobilization against the government’s soon-to-be-presented General
Water Law. This law, which the government has prepared in secret, would
provide the regulatory framework to pass the administration of the water
resource from public to private hands through concessions for up to 50 years.
A community leader addressing the group was emphatic about the dire
implications of privatization, saying that “with the ratification of
CAFTA, we know that US companies are eyeing our water and we can’t allow
them to take over our resource for profit.” The Forum is the latest
expression of resistance to water privatization, as SETA (the water workers’
union) continues to organize in the rural municipalities against water
decentralization, an effort sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank
(IDB) to gradually reduce state responsibility for providing the service.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>Government Negligence in Responding
to Violence Draws Sharp Criticism<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>This past Wednesday, the FMLN introduced a legislative resolution
calling on Rodrigo Avila, director of the National Civilian Police (PNC), and
Felix Garrid Safie, Attorney General, to testify about why these institutions
have done nothing to investigate reports of extermination groups. The
existence of these “social cleansing” bands has been denounced by
several Human Rights organizations based on the increasing number of
assassinations carried out in classic death-squad style. The extrajudicial
executions have targeted not only youth from the marginal and excluded sectors
of society, but also recognized FMLN activists like the elderly Manzanares, and
– more recently –Alex Flores Montoya and Mercedes Peņate de
Montoya.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Last month, the Human Right’s Office (PDDH) presented an
investigation which points to the existence of these groups in the department
of Sonsonate, with links to the PNC itself. And in the last couple of weeks,
two social cleansing groups in San Miguel – the <i><span
style='font-style:italic'>Sombra Negra</span></i> and <i><span
style='font-style:italic'>Comando Central Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez</span></i>
– have re-emerged. The FMLN legislative fraction has pointed out that
the government’s lack of investigation is negligent at best and favors
impunity. There are growing fears on the left that the crisis of violence,
fear, and crime is sanctioned by the government in order to ram through harsher
laws, criminalize protest, promote extermination groups and cover-up political
assassinations within the generalized climate of impunity.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>ARENA Uses Midnight Legislative
Session to Approve More Debt and Sideline Democracy<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>At around midnight last night, ARENA pushed through a major financial
reform to the country’s retirement system that it had presented to the
legislative assembly a little more than a week ago. The reform, which was
opposed by unions, the social movement, and the FMLN privatizes the remaining
public pensions by forcing the government to emit long-term certificates (like
bonds) that will be bought by the private pension administration companies in
order to pay retirees. This political move bails the government out in the
very short term by delaying payment of debt, as the country is experiencing a
large public deficit which has been financed each year by international loans.
At the same time, the new law guarantees profit for the wealthy financial
sector that has made $285 million dollars in worker-paid commissions alone
since the system was privatized in 1998. Politically, ARENA seeks to avoid
having to negotiate with the FMLN in the legislative assembly around the
national budget, since a qualified, or two-thirds, majority is needed to
approve international debt. The FMLN criticized the legislation as
irresponsible and unconstitutional.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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