For David Saucedo, security consultant and expert, the reform is viable given that Mexico needs “a security czar” to coordinate work in this area. In the country, he explains, there is a cabinet that is like “a collegiate group of high-level figures” made up of the heads of the Secretary of National Defense, the Navy, the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), among others. They work more like “a round table where there are too many heads”, which is not so optimal.
Saucedo recalls that with the reform “at least the same rank is given” to the SSyPC, which is why it is significantly strengthened, remembering that the previous heads of the agency such as Rosa Icela Rodríguez and Alfonso Durazothey only played a spokesperson role, as they did not have decision-making or combat design of the security combat strategy under their command.
“It seems to me that a ‘tsar’ is required in terms of security, who can coordinate the efforts of many agencies that operate more or less in the same direction, but that have their own command and what is required is a unified command,” says the expert, although he points out that the challenge will be for the agencies to accept the role of being satellites of the Ministry of Security.
“It is a targeted modification, it is not something to strengthen the Secretariat as such, but to strengthen the leadership of Omar García Harfuch; That is, it is a legal, constitutional modification with a dedication.”
David Saucedo, public policy and security consultant.
Meanwhile, María Teresa Martínez, a security expert, considers that with this reform the agency becomes “a super Secretariat,” recalling that in the last administration it was left “in a shell” because its functions were transferred to the Interior and the National defense.
“It would not be the first time that a Public Security Secretariat has important components, a certain strength in terms of public security policy. I think it becomes a super Secretariat ‘face to face’ to the previous Secretariat that was practically left in a shell, because most of the duties and prerogatives of that secretariat were passed on to other agencies,” he indicates.
The executive director of Noria Research MXCA, an organization that analyzes security crises in different regions of the world, mentions that after the changes to article 21 of the Constitution, secondary reforms will come, where details will be given on how the agency will operate. .
The expert and professor at Tec de Monterrey recalls that this is not the first time that the Secretariat of Security has “important components, as she recalled that it also happened during the period of Genaro García Luna, as head of this department.
“The secretary in charge of García Luna was a department that had several capacities: it did not belong to the Interior—as with Enrique Peña Nieto—, it had the capacity to form a civilian police body and what it did not have was investigative capacity. It was sought at different times to make certain intelligence efforts, but instead it was a Secretariat that had intelligence projects and the capacity to generate agreements with international peers,” he highlights.
For his part, Francisco Rivas, general director of the National Citizen Observatory of Security, Justice and Legality, indicates that the important thing is to know how the new functions that the Ministry of Security will have will be implemented, since the reform seeks to give this agency control capabilities. investigation.
“The Secretariat itself does not have a police force, it does not have an executing body, but rather it would have to rely on the National Guard that is attached to the Secretariat of National Defense. So any operation—even putting the Secretariat as the head of the sector—implies that the Secretary of Security gives instructions to the Secretary of Defense and that he in turn instructs the head of the National Guard seems not very functional,” he mentions.
