The new science law prevents the waste of the treasury: Álvarez-Buylla

Laura Poy Solano

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, August 14, 2022, p. 5

The new general law of humanities, sciences, technologies and innovation seeks to recognize science as a right and not as a privilege, and to guarantee the rigorous and transparent use of public resources allocated to the sector to achieve scientific sovereignty in the country, he stated. María Elena Álvarez-Buylla, general director of the National Council for Science and Technology (Conacyt).

In an interview, he anticipates the day that the preliminary draft of this regulatory framework is almost ready, Only one last opinion is missing so that the legal department of the Executive Power gives its approval and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador defines to which chamber of the Congress of the Union he will send the initiative.

It does not rule out the possibility that the project be discussed in the next ordinary period of sessions, starting in September, so that we can achieve one of the great achievements of the country’s transformation process.

The expert in molecular genes and in charge of guiding public policy in scientific matters emphasizes that science, as a social activity, must be at the service of humanity with two fundamental guides: social welfare and environmental care.

He also criticizes that in previous six-year terms science was used to waste public resources, instead of investing them in a true national scientific agenda. He specifies that for almost two decades, he converted to Conacyt in a kind of facade of science and technological development, because in reality it was a dark box, quite large, where billions of pesos were distributed without transparency.

Álvarez-Buylla assures that the waste of public resources exceeds 45 billion pesos, only in what was granted to the private sector, between 2001 and 2018. And that money was not even to do technoscience, but to favor created interests, probably political allies and to legitimize governments. Although it was done with their rules made to way, it is immoral and unacceptable. We couldn’t keep doing the same.

Since his arrival at Conacyt in 2019, he adds, among other multiple irregularities, he found with white elephants, constructions, under the pretext of scientific developments, which were never carried out and involved billions of pesos thrown away in states, moreover, where there were scientific and technological emergencies and a lack of scholarships.

Add that They left us more than 10,000 scientific projects without follow-up or closure or cancellation in a timely manner, much less the return of resources. We have recovered almost 8 billion pesos without a legal claim, because the arguments are compelling. Only last week, with that revision work, we recovered 400 million pesos. We are talking about huge amounts!

In 2019, with the reform of the third constitutional article, Mexico became the first country in the world to promulgate from its Magna Carta the universal right to science and its benefits.

Thus, the approval of the first general law on the matter will not only guarantee that right, but will also lay the foundations for a scientific policy for the benefit of the population and the transparent use of resources, as well as allowing state regulations to be consistent with these objectives, establishes the general director of Conacyt.

Also it will avoid the practices of the neoliberal period that affected thousands of students, since master’s and doctoral scholarships were used as decoys, even within public universities, to make postgraduate programs businesses and control preserves where coordinators or intermediaries decided how to distribute the scholarships of the Conacyt, without any clarity.

The draft of the new legal framework, the result of a long process of analysis, debate and discussion that began in 2021, including with organizations and groups opposed to the transformation of the sector, contemplates changing the name of Conacyt to the National Council for Humanities, Sciences, Technologies and Innovation.

With the new regulatory framework we seek social welfare, which is the fundamental pillar in this government, and that no one wants to take advantage of the resources allocated to this sector for their own businesses, whether or not they are based on science and technology.