There are two problems here, to begin with. The first is that, as the author warns, book According to the report published by the Institute for Legal Research on the subject, “many of the powers of these bodies were never ‘originally’ in a State Secretariat, but were born with the bodies” in question (page 66, note 1). The second is that, as has become clear after the six-year term that is ending, paradoxically the austerity policy of Obradorism often ends up being another form of dismantling the statein the sense that it deprives the public administration of resources to the point of making it impossible to fulfill its responsibilities and/or forcing it to reduce the quality of the services it provides.
A third problem has to do with the technical functions that these bodies perform, whether in terms of access to rights (egto public information and the protection of personal data), regulation of markets (egcompetition, energy, hydrocarbons or telecommunications) or evaluation of public policies (egsocial development or education). The reform initiative proposes transferring its powers and obligations to the Ministries of Economy (COFECE); Infrastructure, Communications and Transport (IFT); the Ministry of Energy (CRE, CNH); the Ministry of Education (MEJOREDU), the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (CONEVAL), the Civil Service, the National Electoral Institute and the Federal Executive (INAI). But, beyond this transfer by way of constitutional reform, the initiative does not contemplate a legal, institutional, budgetary or any other type of reengineering, nor is it accompanied by changes to secondary legislation that guarantee that all these functions will be able to be performed effectively. It assumes, as if it were an obvious fact that does not merit being questioned even with the petal of a doubt, that the ministries that receive them will have full capacity to comply with these new powers…
There is no need to go into too much detail, the only obvious thing in this project is the intention to eliminate these bodies because their existence represents a cursed legacy of “neoliberalism” that takes power away from the Federal Executive. It is that simple, that absurd.
