There is no shortage of challenges in Mexico, but governing the country isn’t such a difficult job, President López Obrador said Tuesday.
Speaking in Culiacán, Sinaloa, at the opening of a new branch of the state-owned Bank of Well-Being, López Obrador said that his government applies “a very simple formula” to ensure that it administers Mexico well.
“Look, governing is not as complicated as some people think,” he said.
“We apply a very simple formula to make a good government,” López Obrador said, explaining that his administration’s first aim is to eradicate corruption to ensure that no one siphons off money that belongs to the people of Mexico.
“The [public] budget isn’t the government’s money, it’s the people’s money,” he said.
AMLO, who is just two weeks short of completing his fifth year as president, said that the second aspect of the government’s “simple formula” is “not allowing luxuries in government.”
Previous governments used public money to pay extravagant pensions to former presidents and provide “luxuries” to the “golden bureaucracy,” López Obrador said.
“Now, with this simple formula [for good governance] we’ve freed up a lot of public money for the benefit of the people,” he said.
“The majority of households in Mexico receive part of the public budget [via welfare programs], even if it’s just a little bit. Of 35 million families in our country, 30 million receive direct support,” AMLO said.
López Obrador has made combating corruption, eliminating government excesses and delivering welfare to citizens central aims of his administration. However, his government – like previous ones – has faced accusations of corruption, including in cases involving food security agency Segalmex and the Youths Building the Future apprenticeship scheme.
Some of the challenges López Obrador and his government face, and which will be passed on to the new president next October, are ones related to public security, energy, water supply and the management of migration flows.
With reports from El Universal
I think I missed the formula.
What AMLO does is to take from Peter to pay Paul. He finances the payments to the elderly, the economically disadvantaged, students, the Tren Maya, the AIFA and Tulum airports and other pet projects by liquidating functioning entities which he has declared to be “corrupt”. There are numerous examples of this including the dissolution of the Seguro Popular, Fonden, the entity that purchased medicines and various other functioning trusts including the one that funds the federal judiciary.
A recent case in point is the Acapulco disaster. The federal government has contributed much less than the private sector and private citizens to provide aid to the residents and having liquidated Fonden, the federal government effectively did away with the expertise in disaster management that Fonden had and the funds it provided for disaster relief.
The correct course in all of these instances should have been to correct the corruption problem, not do away with the functioning entity. The appropriate cliche is throwing out the baby with the bath water.
As a point of information, the new budget makes no provisions for disaster relief for Acapulco and has plunged the country deeply into debt in spite of AMLO’s insistence that his policy of austerity in order to benefit the poor (“Primero los pobres”) is the correct one.
However, when corruption extends to his own family, that’s another story and it gets swept under the rug. Some cases in point are the illegal cash donations made to his brothers; his oldest son’s unclear connections to an oil company in Texas and the awarding of Pemex contracts to his first cousin (She cancelled them when it became public knowledge.).
There is also the corruption involved in the militarization of Mexico and the resulting whitewashing of illegal acts the military has allegedly committed. The Cienfuegos case stands out as does the military’s involvement in Ayotzinapa. Having the military in charge of customs, airports, construction of public projects, tourism and especially public security is not a good idea and is no guarantee against corruption when the monetary stakes are so high and so tempting.
I could go on but I’ll save it for another opportunity.
It seems so easy for you to point out these issues with absolutely nothing as a solution. Every one can complain…. that’s easy. What are your ideas for please….
Government does not work to protect the people, it works to protect itself.
There’s a great deal of that same problem in most governments – today and in history.
The bureaucrats of the USA are legendary in this regard.