The PRI offered a political pact; Let’s go for more reforms: SG

Georgina Saldierna and Enrique Mendez

Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, October 13, 2022, p. 5

The head of the Ministry of the Interior (SG), Adán Augusto López Hernández, stated before deputies from Morena, PT and PVEM that with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) a political agreement, beyond a constitutional reform, which will allow President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to consolidate governance, in the last stretch of his six-year term.

In an extensive speech, he expressed that, despite the ideological differences, just as someone said that Paris is well worth a mass, the country is well worth a good deal. He even suggested that, based on the relationship with the PRI, the government will try to resume the electrical reform –which did not reach a qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies precisely because of the opposition of the PRI–, as well as build a real electoral reform.

The official went to the Chamber of Deputies to a meeting with legislators from those three benches, to whom he informed that he was bringing a message from the President to thank them for their commitment to the country, for approving on September 14 the continuity of soldiers and marines in public security tasks. Immediately he asked them to return to support the president and ratify said change, in yesterday’s session.

He added: “Because that’s what (the President) told me, ‘I know that this reform, well, it hurts many, it hurts many of us’; but, nevertheless, they put the general interest first, and that, well, it is worth recognizing and thanking them”.

The head of the Interior will begin a national tour on Friday to promote the approval of the reform in the state congresses.

In the meeting, he revealed that the pact with the PRI came about two days before the fourth presidential report and made it possible to approve the changes in the decree that created the National Guard, promoted by the tricolor.

In his 18-minute speech, López Hernández explained that the constitutional amendment is being presented at a crucial moment due to failed security strategies.

To support the rapprochement with the Institutional Revolutionary, he explained that the presidential instruction has been to seek agreements and build consensus. I tell you, because I prefer to be honest with my friends and fellow travelers, he explained and then recounted how two days before the Report, the coordinator of the Morena deputies, Ignacio Mier, asked him for a meeting. Laughing, he stated that in the dialogue I felt that he wanted to tell me something, but I didn’t know what.

Near the end of the conversation, he quoted, Mier asked him if they hadn’t looked for him our friends.

-Did they look for you? those?

-Oh, Nacho, what friends are you talking about? he asked the legislator.

-Of those Mier slipped.

-Of which thoseNacho?

–Those with whom we talked about the electrical reform.

-No, well, if I don’t even want to see one of them, let’s see if he doesn’t record me or burn me.

–Look, they looked for me and invited us to build a consensus.

– Consensus of what, Nacho?

– Well, with the National Guard.

– What does this consensus consist of?

– Well, it’s so simple: a constitutional reform, and let’s go from five to nine years the duration.

Let’s go to other things

–Well, it sounds interesting, Nacho, but, well, tell them that if they’re going to cheer up, let’s go to other things, there with the Guard and other topics.

-Well, give me a chance.

López Hernández said that he presented the proposal to the President, who asked him to explain the scope of the PRI initiative to extend the period of military and marine intervention.

“I explained it to him and he told me: ‘well, whatever you decide is fine, look at it, look for Nacho. And so it was and what we have today began to be built, a political agreement, which goes beyond a constitutional reform, which will allow the government of President López Obrador to move in another way and consolidate the governability that the country requires.” .

He assured that the President commissioned him to tell the anecdote, which he had already told him, of a girl and her mother who, leaving a restaurant, told him they were in favor of military participation in security. When López Hernández asked the minor why, she replied: Because I want it that way.

For the official, that phrase “contains everything. The President asked me to talk about it, because he says: ‘it is a phrase that sounds harsh, authoritative, it is better that you talk about it in the context of what happened. Because after a while they will put in your mouth or in my mouth those who do not love us, that we are authoritarian and that, because of our pants, the military have to continue helping with public security tasks’”.