Informe Nº: 04/02/2014
The delayed arrival of the Gendarmerie to appease the civil unrest in Cordoba led to chaos causing a deep social disruption. This is another piece of evidence showing that enlarging the public sector without strategic sight and poor management does not lead to better public services, but rather in many cases it makes them worse. For the public sector to operate promoting quality of life it has to stop being the scope where different stakeholders struggle for the appropriation of public funds.
The Cordoba’s police mutiny led to a chaotic situation. Large economic losses are the direct results of this failure in the security system. However what is more severe and will be more lasting is the deep social resentment that has been installed among the population by the violence and the state of anarchy.
The mutiny is the result of an old practice inside the public sector of struggling in search of appropriation of public funds based on violent methods and in disregard of the public interest (taxpayers’ interests). Proof of it is the immediate spread of the police mutiny to other provinces and other areas of the provincial government.
The origin of the events in Córdoba was a demand for better labor conditions for police personnel. Therefore, it is pertinent to analyze the evolution of wages and employment in the security sector in recent years. According to official data released by the province’s government it is possible to see that between 2003 and 2013:
· The number of policemen rose from 14,000 to 23,000.
· This means that the ratio between citizens and policeman plunged from 255 to 144 in the last decade.
· The average real salary of a policeman in 2003 was AR$4,300 while in 2013 it was AR$9,900, this means that the average real salary soared 130%.
This data shows that the growth of financial resources devoted to security has been very significant. The increased allocation of public funds was used to promote a massive recruitment of new police officers and a strong increase in police real wages. The wages of the police rose well above inflation (not the official estimate, but the one measured by provinces which is more realistic) and even exceeded those paid to private sector workers. While in the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2002 police officers salary and private sector employees had similar salaries, currently police officers have salaries 33% higher than private sector employees.
The evidence is sufficient to rule out the argument that the origin of the conflict is the lack of resources resulting in the deterioration of the working conditions. While assessing the level of remunerations is always controversial, even more when it is a risky and sacrificing profession, the evidence shows that, at least in the last decade, remuneration to the police in Córdoba has never been better than today. Therefore if the claims, which lead to the mutiny, had their origin only in labor conditions the problem would have shown up earlier.
The main problem is not the lack of resources but the weakness in public sector management. Failures do not arise from a lack of resources but a lack of professionalism, performance evaluation, incentives, transparency and proper coordination between different security officers. Sending the Gendarmerie a few hours earlier to Cordoba would have meant avoiding most of the chaos, which shows that it’s not a problem of lack of resources but of a lack of proper management of the crisis.
The police conflict stands out for its institutional degradation and the social resentment generated among the population. In essence it is very similar to what happens in other areas such as education, health and other public services. State functioning is distorted by rules that induce the struggle for the appropriation of public funds with total disregard for the quality of life of the citizens. This explains the paradox that taxes never have been so high and yet the state was never so weak and in some cases non-existent, as with security in the province of Córdoba.
