Alonso Urrutia and Arturo Sánchez
The newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, September 21, 2024, p. 3
The constitutional reform that will allow the National Guard to be administratively dependent on the Secretariat of National Defense will guarantee that All the effort we have made to create it, which has meant forming in five years an institution that already has the support of the majority of the people, should not be thrown overboard with the passage of time; may this not be destroyed.
said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
He also spoke of the objections that have been raised to this decision from the left flank and the conservative bloc, suggesting that there will be repression and militarization. There have been no disappearances, repression, torture or massacres under this government; the mortality rate is among the lowest because there are fewer deaths than those arrested and wounded. Under Felipe Calderón, there were more deaths than those wounded and arrested.
he stressed.
During yesterday’s morning press conference, the president pointed out that in any case, ultimately the National Guard will depend on the civil authority, the president or supreme commander of the armed forces, Claudia Sheinbaum.
He recalled that at the time, the defunct Federal Police was in the hands of Genaro García Luna, And the worst thing is that they were linked to crime. Now, in the trial in the United States, they are not only judging him for the six years he was Secretary of Public Security under Calderón, but also for before that, when he was involved with the Federal Preventive Police; they are judging him for a decade.
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López Obrador mentioned that in a quick reading of the document in which life imprisonment is requested for the former official, accusations can be seen very serious
. He explained that with the National Guard, the growth of the crime rate was contained, but they faced All these bad practices of collusion and criminal association between authorities and criminals, which we are now seeing with the García Luna case, and most of the media is saying nothing.
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–Do you agree with the life sentence?
–I don’t like to talk about it. Look, one of the things I’m grateful for in life is that, because of my convictions, I was given this position to help my people and my beloved Mexico, but I don’t like anyone to suffer, I don’t wish anyone any harm.
In justifying the decision to transfer the National Guard to the Sedena, he stressed that its formation involved the construction of barracks and other buildings to support its presence. Currently, in almost half of the states, the members of this corporation outnumber the members of the state and municipal police forces.
He said that under the command of Sedena officers we have not had problems with abuse of authority, violation of human rights or massacres committed by the National Guard. The people approve of the performance of that corporation, he said.
In contrast, he said, state and municipal police officers are at greater risk because they are more exposed. It is very difficult not to submit to crime, because there are threats and temptations; they are very common there.
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