If the reform is approved, as is foreseeable, the National Transparency Institute (INAI), the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval) and the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece), among others, will be extinguished.
For the government, the existence of these autonomous bodies represents duplication of tasks, unnecessary expenses and even “golden bureaucracy”, while for specialists they are achievements and rights achieved by Mexicans over decades.
Reversal of rights and access to information
Adrián Alcalá, president commissioner of the INAI, warns that the absorption of the self-employed implies setbacks in terms of rights, which is why he calls on the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum and the majority in the Legislature to explore another model that guarantees the right to information and protection of personal data.
“I also have hope that President Sheinbaum and also the majority group say that the INAI disappears, but we can find another model with characteristics of autonomy and independence. Where do I sign to sit down and design that agency with autonomy and independence? What matters to us are the rights of Mexican men and women,” he says in an interview with Political Expansion.
(Photo: Rogelio Morales Ponce/ Cuartoscuro)
Javier Rosiles, professor at the University of La Ciénega of the State of Michoacán (UCEMICH), warns that the accession of the tasks of the self-employed in government agencies will imply a setback for the exercise of citizen rights.
“Being now part of a State Secretariat does not mean that these rights stop being exercised, but they would be exercised more fully when we have autonomous organizations. So there is a setback when these functions are recentralized in the presidential figure,” he indicates.
Jacqueline Peschard, former president of the Federal Institute of Access to Public Information (IFAI), agrees that the disappearance of bodies such as Transparency implies a setback for Mexico.
“We call on you to see what we lose, not only those of us who make use of access to information lose, but all people, because all people need to know, we are losing the possibility for citizens to exercise a right”, he explains in an interview.
Human rights cannot be subject to political or party interests,”
Adrián Alcalá, president commissioner of the INAI.
Francisco Ciscomani Freaner, president of the INAI Advisory Council for the period 2023-2026, emphasizes that rights, such as access to information, must be progressive and have no setbacks.
“The human rights of transparency, access to information and privacy are progressive human rights, that is, being in the Constitution and having an institute that guarantees them, we could not go backwards. There should be an institute that manages them, that protects them,” he maintains.
Rosiles recalls that other autonomous bodies such as the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and the INE were not included in the list of bodies to be eliminated in the 4T reform because, the political scientist warns, they aligned themselves with the so-called Fourth Transformation.
“Those organizations that in some way have been captured by the 4T government or that, at least, seem aligned, these are not touched like the CNDH and the INE, which, despite their internal conflicts, clearly seem to me that they are already based on or aligned with the 4T government,” he adds.
In the case of the National Commission for Continuous Improvement (Mejoredu) it was a bet by the López Obrador government, since it was born in 2019 to replace the National Institute for the Evaluation of Education (INEE) and will now disappear.
With the extinction of the self-employed, their functions will be absorbed by secretariats such as Economy, Transport and a newly created one: the Anti-Corruption and Good Government Secretariat, which will replace the SFP, which according to experts also represents a risk.
“Secretary (Raquel) Buenrostro may say that they are going to try not to be judge and party, but they have to be judge and party because that is how an agency of the federal government is structured, the appointment of its head depends on the president. In the case of the IFAI and INAI, the appointments of the commissioners never depended on the presidency, so what is at risk here is that we are going to depend on good faith, on the disposition of an organization, an organ that is the government. federal to provide the information,” highlights Peschard.
“Although in theory the tasks are maintained, it is necessary that the new administrative structure guarantee the autonomy of decisions that, by their nature, must be technical and independent of the agenda and interests of the Executive Branch,” states the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO).
“If we do not have someone to guarantee us how to compete, we are going to have an oligarchy with large companies, both in telecommunications and in the normal market. If we do not have someone to guarantee us access to information and privacy, we are going to be in the hands of rulers or large companies that are going to use our information. If we do not have an autonomous human rights institution, we will be in the hands of a government that has a central vision of power,” adds Francisco Ciscomani.
