Centralized authoritarianism?
Is the proposal by Mexico's new president a reform to reduce corruption, a reform to help win the war with drug cartels, a reform to centralize power in his office, or a reform to give his party's people opportunities for illicit income.Mexico moves to demote federal police force
Through most of the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the federal police agency has held a starring role, built to seven times its previous size and favored by American advisors and dollars despite persistent troubles and scandals.
But President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto… has already demonstrated that one of his immediate actions will be to demote the police force…
[The] Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is pushing through the legislature a restructuring of the government that would eliminate the Public Security Ministry, home to the federal police. Control over the police would be transferred to the Interior Ministry…
In presenting the plan to the Mexican Congress, Peña Nieto portrayed it as a way to streamline security operations, make them more efficient and improve the coordination among agencies… Some also worry about an overly powerful Interior Ministry, which past PRI governments used for political repression as well as law enforcement…
Vetted units of the federal police have been a hallmark of U.S. efforts in working with Mexico to fight powerful drug-trafficking organizations. The federal police received a good chunk of the $1.9 billion that the U.S. government has given Mexico for the drug war since 2006…
Despite all that, the force remains hobbled by corruption and poor policing skills and has been implicated in several cases of bad shootings, human rights abuse and collusion with criminals…
In many ways, the creation of an uber-powerful Interior Ministry represents a throwback to the old PRI penchant for centralizing power. And subsuming the police is clearly a slap at Calderon, who has frequently cited the federal police as one of his — and his National Action Party's —most important legacies…
"That the Public Security Ministry as such disappear, doesn't have to be a tragedy. That the corruption continue, would be," Jorge Chabat, an expert on Mexican security issues, wrote in El Universal newspaper. "We will see if the Peña Nieto government manages to tame the tiger."
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posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:39 AM
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