Light on detail, self-congratulatory and lacking information that hadn’t previously been disclosed were the criticisms levelled by political pundits at President López Obrador’s first annual report.
The lack of focus on security was a shortcoming identified by Catalina Pérez Corre, one of several people consulted by the newspaper El Universal.
The law professor and researcher at the Mexico City university CIDE said she was surprised that the president only allocated a small fraction of his address to the issue.
“It’s surprising because it’s one of the issues that matters most to citizens and he didn’t provide details,” she said.
“The only thing he gave details about was the number of National Guard elements . . . He didn’t report about homicides, how many organized crime groups there are, how many [anti-crime] operations have been carried out, what they [the government] have concentrated their efforts on . . .” Pérez added.
Francisco Rivas, director of the National Citizens’ Observatory, a crime watch group, said the report was “more of the same” and accused López Obrador, and federal authorities more widely, of failing to be accountable to the Mexican people.
He was also critical of the brevity with which the president addressed the violence that is currently plaguing the country.
Rivas said that López Obrador didn’t reveal how public money has been spent to reduce insecurity and what results have been achieved in the area. The president also failed to detail the anti-crime measures it implemented but which didn’t have the “desired impact,” he said.
“. . . In the more than 90 minutes he devoted to his presentation, less than 10 were dedicated to the issue of security,” Rivas said.
Anthropologist and writer Alberto Aziz Nassif described the report as merely a summary of what has already been said at López Obrador’s daily press conferences. He also criticized the president for failing to cast a more critical eye over his government’s performance during its nine months in office.
“I expected a more detailed, thorough and critical analysis and perspective of the reality of the country,” Aziz said.
“The only critical thing that the president said is that in terms of security, there are no positive results. He didn’t say anything about [other] complicated problems such as economic stagnation . . .”
The former head of the now-defunct Federal Electoral Institute, Luis Carlos Ugalde, said there was nothing new in López Obrador’s report.
“. . . He reiterated his moralistic construction of politics, his idea that the ultimate aim of a government is [to create] happiness and that material indicators don’t matter,” he said.
Ugalde also said that it was unnecessary for the president to speak out against his political adversaries.
Meanwhile, columnist Luis Cardenas said the annual report was aimed specifically at the president’s supporters rather than the general public as it should have been.
Source: El Universal (sp)
