Defender of What? spacer Holidays in Florida

Political patronage and its clients

by Teresita Yániz de Arias

If, in addition to making demagogic speeches, we actually want to end political patronage, we'll have to improve everybody's political culture.

During the debate about circuit funds all kinds of opinions have been heard, including some that belie an absolute lack of knowledge about their operation and administration.

A well known businessman asked me in which bank I kept my fund, as if those funds assigned to each legislator were at his or her personal disposal, to be joyfully parceled out from a checking account. Other people with this same idea approach me daily, soliciting donations of every type, and I have to explain to them that each legislator is assigned a sum which the Ministry of Economy and Finance will be spending for concrete projects that are carried out by governmental institutions with the prior endorsement of the nation's Comptroller General.

However, few have come close to understanding one of the problems that has arisen from the existence of the funds, and that's the relationship between these and political patronage. The use of $38 million per year by way of circuit funds is the product of years of confusion about the legislators' role. People who paid attention to the candidates' discourses in the various circuits during the last election campaign can attest that for the most part they were dedicated to offering community works much like a presidential campaign at the circuit level, or the works of a super-representante with a legislative commitment.

This misunderstanding is the logical consequence of the lack of political culture from which we suffer as a nation, which is the result of 21 years of military hegemony over national life. If this shortcoming points to the hard reality in which the majority of the population lives, burdened by an accumulation of concrete and urgent problems, we can understand that to offer solutions eases a candidate's discourse and simplifies a voter's choice, even though it reduces it to a precarious hope of personal assistance.

The candidate who dares to come into a community that needs a bridge to talk about public policies regarding roads, or to a neighborhood where the youngsters have nothing to do in the dry season to propose a change in the educational system to permit the use of the schools for academic help or extracurricular activities, has to be more worthy. In both circumstances, the temptation to offer the construction of a bridge or the funding of sports leagues is, for the candidate as well as the voter, the easier and more understandable road. This temptation turns into the fundamental misunderstanding that discredits the political class and frustrates the citizenry. It's no different from the experience of couples who marry based upon promises made in romantic euphoria and belief in eternal love and endless happiness. When the promises can't be kept because expectations were greater than the real possibilities, the politician becomes a liar and the spouse a cheater.

The eagerness to solve problems and to lend assistance, which is never enough to confront the magnitude of social problems in whatever circuit, is a genuine concern that many legislators have, because they live in close contact with their constituents who have been abandoned by the executive branch, who demand attention in the form of health, education, transportation and jobs. That's what the circuit funds are for, to attend to people's needs. Political patronage exists and prospers because there are clients in urgent need of attention.

Many have mentioned the role that the funds play in guaranteeing the legislators' re-election, but so far nobody has expounded upon the serious problem that re-election and patronage will create in short order within the political parties when the renewal of their leadership is bogged down by entrenched local machines. By way of the circuit funds these machines promote a determined electoral clientele, who trust that by keeping ties with those who now help out with some of their specific problems, assistance will continue for five more years.

So, if in addition to making demagogic speeches we want to do away with the legislators' patronage, we will have to begin by improving the entire population's political culture, emphasizing the importance of legislative work in its proper sense, and demanding of the executive the formulation and execution of public policies aimed at meeting the needs of the clients, who are none other than the majority of the population.