Zelaya says he is managing a loan with the CABEI to transfer funds to the mayors, but the petition will be presented to the new Assembly, which takes over on May 1, and tells opposition mayors to wait.
The Minister of Finance, Alejandro Zelaya, stated yesterday that they cannot “force” him to pay the Fodes that he owes to the mayors for more than nine months, most of them in the hands of the opposition until the next 30 April.
According to Zelaya, the ruling of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice did not order him to pay the mayors immediately, but sent him to make “arrangements” to cancel the debt.
You can read: Minister of Finance on Fuck: “I can not be forced to pay”
“The resolution of the Chamber is clear enough, he says: it is ordered that the Minister must make the arrangements within his powers to make the payment of the Fucks, because they know that they cannot force me to pay it from directly. It is not an order of the Constitutional Chamber, “the official said during a television interview.
However, the Chamber did order the Minister of Finance on February 4 to carry out “immediately” administrative and financial procedures to pay the funds to the mayors.
He also sent him to make a transfer schedule so that the delay in the payment of mandatory compliance is not “repeated” because it is law of the Republic.
Mayors have put warnings on the prosecution to investigate the minister for breaching the Chamber’s resolution, but Zelaya challenges them. “That they go to the Prosecutor’s Office I don’t care about the truth,” he said yesterday.
Treasury has stopped transferring the money to the 262 mayors since June 2020. Until January of this year the debt amounted to $ 360 million, as reported last month by the president of the Salvadoran Institute of Municipal Development (ISDEM ), the mayor of San Salvador, Ernesto Muyshondt.
To this debt is added the February payment which has not been transferred to them either and there are no aspects to be paid to them soon.
Some municipalities have had to suspend the garbage collection service because they do not have funds to pay for the service. Photo: EDH / Archive
The president of the Corporation of Municipalities of El Salvador (COMURES), Miracle Navas, had expressed her hope that once the elections were over, they would start paying off their debt, but the Minister of Finance has another plan. “(The mayors) have to wait for the Fucks until we have approval in the Assembly; I can’t pay them and run the risk of not paying the external debt,” he said.
While the government makes them wait, in many municipalities they are making adventures with resources and some mayors have announced that they will not be able to provide services such as garbage collection because they do not have money to pay.
This is the case of municipalities like Quezaltepeque, where the outgoing mayor Salvador Saget considers that the position of minister is political, after the majority obtained in the elections of the 28 of February.
“They believe that when the new mayor comes, he will be given 12 months of fucks and they believe that they will come to solve everything and no, the mayors have gone into debt; it is a pity that a direct order from the Supreme Court is disobeyed,” he said. .
In Sant Antoni de la Creu, Chalatenango, residents will not receive garbage collection service for lack of Fodes.
He will attend the new Assembly
The official added that he is looking for a loan with the CABEI (Central American Bank for Economic Integration) to pay the Fucks and that he will present the proposal to the next Assembly, which will take over on May 1, when the mayors who won Noves also take office. Ideas.
“I have asked the BCIE to help us with the funding so that we can move it and they have said yes and in due course we will take it to the Assembly,” he indicated.
In the new Assembly the pro-government New Ideas party will have the majority of seats and will be in favor of the government of Nayib Bukele.
The management of a loan with the CABEI that the Minister of Finance assures contrasts with what the Court of Auditors has pointed out that they have had money for the Fucks.
Read also: Residents of Sant Antoni de la Creu will not receive garbage collection service due to lack of fodder
“According to the data, in the preliminary financial analysis of the audit team we have corroborated that if there were funds to make the transfers,” said Roberto Anzora, President of the Court of Auditors, in November past.
On what Zelaya has said he will apply for a new loan to pay the Fodes, the former Minister of Finance, Manuel Enrique Hinds, believes that the Government must first present the full accounts of each of the items. “It can’t be that they go out and say, today I have for the Fucks and tomorrow they say they don’t have for anything else. They really should say what the state of the nation’s finances is.”