In El Salvador, a 57-year-old secret is about be revealed

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The Salvadoran Constitution states that public officials must disclose their assets at the end of their terms. In cases in which there is an unjustified difference between the personal wealth of public servants and their families and the salary or remuneration they received during their official terms, Article 240 of the Constitution makes clear reference to the likelihood of illicit or unjust gains. The obligation to disclose assets was established in the Salvadoran Legislature 57 years ago when, in 1959, during the military government of Col. José María Lemus, the “Law on Illicit Enrichment of Public Officials and Employees” was approved. This law had traditionally been applied in secrecy, since until now neither the content of the asset declarations of former officials nor even the reviews and auditsInstitutional and legal frameworks are necessary for providing assurance of the integrity of financial information and of compliance with budgetary rules and procedure. Technical specifications: These... conducted by the “Probity Section” of the Supreme Court had been open to the public. This was the case despite the tentative efforts by citizens and journalists in the past to learn the details of the declarations, especially in relation to the gains of former presidents during their five-year terms.

In the last several months, this situation has begun to change, as it has become possible to access the “public version” of the asset declarations of almost any public official in El Salvador through the use of the “Access to Public Information Law.” This law not only recognizes peoples’ “right to know” but also guarantees that this right can be exercised without the need for any justification or any condition that might limit its effectiveness. To access information, it is no longer necessary to identify oneself or to list the figures or reports required by state institutions—or “obliged entities” as they are called in the law.

However, despite this undeniable advance in possibilities for access to information, the reviews and audits of the asset declarations of former presidents have been treated differently. The request for documents that we made as citizens in July 2015 to the Office of Information of the Supreme Court of JusticeTo address barriers that prevent citizens from having their justice needs met, OGP participating governments are working to expand transparency, accountability, and inclusion into all systems of justi..., in relation to obtaining the reviews or audits of the accounts of former Presidents Francisco Flores (1999-2004), Antonio Saca (2004-2009) and Mauricio Funes (2009-2014) were rejected by judicial authorities. These authorities asserted that these audits represent restricted information, beyond public scrutiny, and in this way they disassociated the audits from the asset declarations made by the presidents, which had been revealed some weeks before.

What did this denial seek to conceal? One would have to look at recent history, to more than a decade ago, when the Supreme Court’s Probity Section had its authority to solicit information from banks about presidents’ and cabinet members’ deposits suspended, as a result of an agreement reached by the majority of the judges. In this way the Probity Section was reduced to a mere reception office for asset declarations, without the power to compare the original wealth of presidents with what they had acquired by the ends of their terms. It was not until February 2014 that the Probity Section regained its power to investigate, but it initially remained in the same lethargic state that had characterized it for more than a decade. This was only interrupted when it received our requests for information in July of last year, which exposed its failure to carry out reviews of presidential accounts. For this reason, the aforementioned office had to request twice, in October and December 2015, extensions from the Institute for Access to Public Information, an institution to which the petitioning citizens had themselves already appealed for the documents.

The last of these extensions ends on 23 February 2016. Four months have passed since the Institute recognized the right of Salvadoran society to have access to what the media has called “the presidential audits” and ordered their release. During this time, the relevant authorities have had to carry out said audits and exercise for the first time all of the legal authority which was entrusted to them in 1959—an authority which, having barely been really used, was taken from them by El Salvador’s highest court a decade ago. With this, a more than 50-year-old secret is becoming consolidated, and only through the exercise of citizens’ power will it start to be uncovered. We believe that Salvadoran Presidents and other public servants will become more conscious of their obligation to make good use of public funds and be more accountable about the utility and benefits of exercising power.