President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador said yesterday that President Enrique Peña Nieto agreed to initiate his proposals to create a federal public security secretariat and to have an attorney general and anti-corruption and electoral prosecutors in place when he takes office on December 1.
Speaking to the media following a two-hour meeting with Peña Nieto at the National Palace, López Obrador said the president would send the initiatives to the new federal Congress, which will first sit on September 1.
“From the beginning of the government we want to have the Secretariat of Public Security and the federal Attorney General’s office with the two complementary prosecutors’ offices [in place] . . . We reached an agreement that we’re going to work together so that in these two cases we can have results soon, so that we don’t waste time,” he said.
López Obrador added that Peña Nieto hadn’t asked for anything in exchange, declaring “he is behaving very well and we acknowledge his goodwill.”
The political veteran also said he told Peña Nieto that he plans to incorporate the institution charged with protecting the president of Mexico — the Estado Mayor Presidencial — into the Secretariat of Defense.
That proposal will also be sent to Congress for consideration.
The president-elect reiterated that he will forgo secret service-style protection and instead have a security detail made up of 10 women and 10 men who will accompany him unarmed on a national tour scheduled to start on September 16.
“They are 20 professionals; lawyers, doctors, engineers, men and women. They are surely going to take a course, some training, but not for the handling of weapons but so that there is minimal protection . . . There is this concern [about my security] but the police, soldiers, marines and citizens are going to look after me,” he said.
Questioned about the release from house arrest of former teachers’ union boss Elba Esther Gordillo earlier this week, López Obrador rejected any suggestion that it was related to his official designation as president-elect.
“It was a decision of the judicial power . . . I no longer want to speak about those things,” he said.
The two leaders also agreed that members of the current cabinet would meet with the nominees for cabinet positions in the incoming government on August 20, while López Obrador put to bed speculation that his former presidential rival. José Antonio Meade. could be offered a position in his government.
“He [Meade] is not planning to work in the government, that is not his intention,” he said.
López Obrador, who won the July presidential 1 election in a landslide, also explained that his decentralization plan to move several federal secretariats from Mexico City to regional cities wouldn’t be carried out in the space of a year nor would it be enforced by decree.
For his part, Peña Nieto wrote on Twitter after the meeting that he had reiterated the federal government’s “willingness to support and collaborate [with López Obrador] for an efficient and effective transition for the benefit of Mexico.”
Source: El Universal (sp)
