Cupular agreements have guided the appointments since the creation of the transparency institute

Arturo Sanchez Jimenez

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday March 5, 2023, p. 8

Accusations such as those made this week that the two new commissioners of the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) were appointed in the Senate based on agreements between the leadership and the distribution of quotas are not new and date back to the own constitution of the organism.

In 2014, when the Federal Institute for Access to Information (IFAI) was replaced by INAI (which obtained the latter name the following year), organizations and specialists pointed out that the appointment of its seven commissioners responded to partisan divisions, and at least one of those selected, Rosendoevgueni Monterrey, was not among the best qualified, something similar to the appointment this week of Rafael Luna Alviso as commissioner, who is identified as close to the coordinator of Morena, Ricardo Monreal, and who was pointed out as the worst rated in the evaluations carried out as part of the election process.

Of the 147 candidates interviewed in 2014, a committee of experts delivered a list of 25 with the most suitable profiles to become commissioners.

The members of the Senate responsible for those appointments repeatedly expressed that their decision would not be influenced by political negotiations, but after the vote, PAN and PRD legislators expressed their dissatisfaction with the appointment of Monterrey, who was included in the shortlist of candidates for last moment by the PRI, although it was not on the list of finalists.

At the time, the alleged closeness of Monterrey to then-president Enrique Peña Nieto was pointed out, since he was commissioner and president of the Institute of Transparency and Access to Information of the State of Mexico when the former president governed that entity.

The owner calls for a reform

In that same process, Ximena Puente de la Mora was appointed as commissioner, who resigned from the position in 2018 to seek a multi-member deputation for the PRI, which led to multiple criticisms.

The case led the then president of the INAI, Francisco Javier Acuña Llamas, to ask the Senate for a constitutional reform to prohibit the immediate application of members of the institute to positions of popular election.

A more recent case of appointments that provoked questioning occurred last year, when the INAI plenary appointed former commissioners Óscar Guerra Ford and Monterrey as directors of the institute.

Members of the INAI advisory council, former members of the National Anti-Corruption System (SNA) and former commissioners of the institute expressed their concern over the possibility that positions were being distributed in a non-transparent way.