Profile : Police Coordinator to Walk a Tightrope : * A mild-mannered, moderate lawyer is charged with setting up a civilian force to patrol troubled El Salvador after the truce.

Ernesto Arbizu Mata, the man whom the Salvadoran government and guerrillas agreed upon to run a new Civilian National Police force, is widely considered to be an honest lawyer with integrity.

But Arbizu may have been selected to fill the highly sensitive post as much for what he is not: He is not a political extremist, not identified with any political party and has no experience in police work.

“Probably the best thing he has going for him,” said a former associate, “is that, despite the fact he’s been in government, in a bank, close to the private sector and in activities of social service, this man is untarnished. In El Salvador, which is so politicized, that is not a bad record.”

The job is not necessarily an enviable one. As coordinator, Arbizu is to establish a new police training academy and the first civilian police force in a country that has been overly militarized by decades of dictatorships and a 12-year civil war.

To be composed of a mixture of former guerrillas and ex-police officers, the force is viewed by the rebels as a potential counterbalance to the army should it rise up or try to block political reforms.

Arbizu has very little time to set up shop. He hasn’t formally been named to the job yet, but he is expected to select the first 330 police trainees to enroll in his academy by April.

“It is very clear to me that I will be in the eye of the hurricane,” Arbizu said during an interview. “I have no doubt there are risks . . . (but) I felt that to turn this down would be to avoid a moral obligation. In a way, all Salvadorans are obliged to participate in bringing about a true peace.”

The peace accords signed by President Alfredo Cristiani and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in Mexico last week call for disbanding El Salvador’s three militarized police forces, all of which have histories of violent human rights abuses. The National Guard, National Police and Treasury Police--with a total of about 12,000 members--have operated under the defense minister as counterinsurgency forces fighting the so-called enemy within.

In their place, the accords create a Civilian National Police force of about 10,000 members that is “a professional body independent of the armed forces and separate from all (political) party activities.” The police force is to answer to the president and a new civilian Cabinet minister; the president is to name its civilian general director, who may be fired by the National Assembly in the event of serious human rights violations.

Cristiani and the rebels have asked Arbizu to become coordinator--a precursor to the director general’s job--and he has agreed. Under the accords, he must be named by Feb. 1, when a cease-fire begins.

Those who know the 51-year-old Arbizu describe him as politically moderate and a person who brings people together rather than polarizing them. He has spent most of his adult life as a business lawyer, serving in a few government positions.

In 1979, reform-minded military officers ousted Gen. Carlos Humberto Romero and a civilian-military junta named Arbizu as treasury secretary. He resigned the position three months later after hard-line officers took over--a move he now says was apolitical and due simply to the fact that “there was a new government.”

In fact, Arbizu served the new junta as comptroller general from 1980 to 1982. During the provisional government of conservative President Alvaro Magana, Arbizu sat for six months on a commission to grant amnesty to rebels who wanted to return to civilian life.

He headed the nationalized Banco Capitalizadora for two years under Christian Democratic President Jose Napoleon Duarte and again for nine months under President Cristiani, until the bank was liquidated.

For most of the 1980s, Arbizu was president of a nonprofit agency called Fundasal that built low-cost housing for the poor. During his tenure, Fundasal undertook a controversial experiment to repopulate the abandoned town of Tenancingo in Cuscatlan province.

Residents had fled Tenancingo in 1983 after the air force bombed the town to rout rebels. They returned three years later with an unprecedented agreement from the army and rebels that both sides could pass through the town but neither would stay.

“This wasn’t his idea, but he had to put his face on it and vouch for the project with the military, the government and the (Catholic) church,” said a former associate at Fundasal.

Throughout these years, Arbizu has maintained a private law practice, but has never even dallied in criminal law. He said he was surprised when Cristiani asked him to accept the police post, but that he never hesitated to accept.

A U.N. commission has given Arbizu a blueprint for the organization and training of the force. Among their many recommendations is that police bear pistols and billy clubs rather than the automatic military weapons they currently carry.

Arbizu also has ideas about what he is setting out to do.

“This is going to be an apolitical police department. It is going to be an institution that serves the people . . . and protects. . . . The people who work there have to view it as a job like any other job, not subject to a barracks or recruitment. After eight hours, they return to civilian life,” he said.

The accords state that a majority of the new police officers will be civilians, but allows for a minority of former rebels and police to join. All of the officers, Arbizu says, will be treated alike.

“These are unarmed civilians who will be joining. They will no longer be FMLN (rebels) or police. They are all Civilian National Police. We cannot have three classes of Civilian National Police,” he said.

There will be other pressures on Arbizu as well. Police in El Salvador often have used extreme violence to put down leftist political demonstrations and strikes, and against acts of civil disobedience such as the occupation of public buildings.

Now, as the left returns to legal politics and, presumably, to some of these tactics, Arbizu will have to decide if and when to use police against protesters. His police will also be expected to investigate any future political violence in a country that has seen very few political crimes probed--whether they be the murders of thousands of civilians by right-wing death squads or the assassinations of rightist politicians by rebels.

Arbizu is aware he will be walking a political tightrope. When asked about such probable situations, an otherwise chatty Arbizu becomes the cautious lawyer. He refuses to discuss “hypothetical situations.”

“My position is so delicate,” he says. “I am going to have to be most prudent. . . .”

Those who criticize the selection of Arbizu point to his nervousness. He’s not a leader who will formulate new ideas, they say, or stand up to the military. He isn’t strong enough.

Others say he is acceptable to both sides and, therefore, may be the only man for the job.

“If the tide goes in favor of human rights, he will go, too,” said a leftist politician who asked not to be identified. “But he’s not going to go against the tide and say, ‘Here, I am. Kill me first.’ He won’t be heroic, but he has integrity and honesty and maybe that’s what’s needed right now.”

Biography

Name: Ernesto Arbizu Mata

Title: Designated coordinator of Civilian National Police.

Age: 51

Career: Salvadoran treasury secretary, 1979. Comptroller general 1980-82. Headed Banco Capitalizadora. President of nonprofit Fundasal that built housing for poor, 1980s. Business lawyer in private practice.

Personal: Honest, cautious. Has wife, four daughters.

Quote: “It is very clear to me that I will be in the eye of the hurricane.”