The municipality: an institution designed for failure?
October 14, 2020
Diego Martin Velázquez Caballero
The 4T has taken up some of the neoliberal criticisms of federalism and this has generated a healthy controversy that can lead to a historic break with the old regime. The democratic transition has not generated quality –to use one of the chrematistic terms of managerialism–, the past six-year period is a serious sign that political alternations are not shielded against corruption.
The administration of Enrique Peña Nieto and the political group that accompanied him as governors, mayors and other public officials, committed one of the greatest looting of the country, only comparable with the government of José López Portillo or the dictatorship of Gral. Antonio López de Santa Anna.
Federalism is the hinge of corruption. The study carried out by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness - and from which, with a small variation, the idea to head this column is taken - indicates that corruption is more a matter of political will than of control in the public function.
The municipalities were liberalized during the administration of Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado and received unique support from Carlos Salinas de Gortari; However, to this day, they continue to be an example of poverty, corruption, nepotism and chiefdoms. The IMCO study that is mentioned, leads to a severe approach to federalism as well as the powers contained in articles 115 and 124 of the Constitution. The cases of satrap governors and the consequent municipalities flourish everywhere.
The defense of federalism - as it is now - made by the opposition to AMLO, also indicates that there is a profound misunderstanding of the electoral results in 2018. Rather than demanding the participation of a citizenry that defends pure and transparent local government, which It should be clear is that political corruption is impossible to stop.
To defend federalism is to defend corruption, nobody is saved. The event ends up agreeing with the president of the republic and leaves things in the field of political will. The re-election, the revocation of the mandate and the evaluation of public policies; they are better instruments for controlling corruption than anything else.
The municipality and popular participation, as defended by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, does not work either. Years go by and stories of mayors who harm their communities with total cynicism also happen. Nobody does anything. Only the reports of audits and state agencies remain that few know and fewer understand. The state governments are in worse shape, completely hijacked by the local oligarchies, the powers that be and operate in the most patrimonial way possible.
What to do if the municipalities and states do not work? There is the quality of government in the studies of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Transparency International that have been carried out in the last twenty years, to mention certain institutions of prestige and academic honor. The technologies of the public function have not been created to control the government, the citizens do not have time to participate and the political class only wants to reach the positions by whatever means to continue stealing.
Paradoxically, as in the case of many diseases, the solution is to dose an innocuous measure of the same disease. That is, it is possible to
He asked if corruption could be limited by creating more municipalities and local entities. States and municipalities have to consider federalism internally rather than demand it. The municipalities have to be divided and the states also. France and the United States are study models for decentralized public administration. It is inconceivable that governors dispute the federal budget when they only work in slightly less than 30% of the municipalities that make up their entities. We are talking about successful cities more than worker states, beyond the capitals and main urban centers of any state, the municipalities are in the economic, political, social, legal, security and institutional orphanhood. The neoliberals thought that Mexico is poor because it is dispersed, in addition to not wanting to develop, that is why they sought to disappear the municipalities and privatize them under the failed model of Spanish gentrification, and for people to concentrate on the large cities. Mexico is not poor because it is dispersed, it is poor because its political class steals unceasingly and without scruples.
Mexico requires more municipalities that do the task of governing themselves and self-managing their resources. What good has democratic federalism been if the country is poorer and more inequitable than it was forty years ago. The states and municipalities ended up accentuating the fiefdoms of the Mexican political system. Then, you have to take on the task of looking for rigorous models of public administration and taking the corresponding measures. Decentralization in public higher education has allowed individuals to consider alternative options to state universities, the results are interesting and worth considering.
The other option, and there is a singular risk for the incipient Mexican democracy, is the excess of authoritarian centralization. Ernesto Zedillo advocated governance based on the Chinese model. This situation is serious because it speaks of rebuilding the statecentrism that Mexico irrationally put into practice during the seventies and eighties of the last century. It is true that the Mexican State needs to strengthen itself, regain its capacity for control and commitment to society. However, Mexican nationalization is an impossible dream against the Yankee Empire so sensitive to the strengthening of other countries.
Re-election and revocation of the mandate are the only means to balance our federalism, design new municipal and state entities, generalize the government term to four years and raise social awareness that each town has the government it deserves, they can be elements of political will that they do more for our democratic federalism than anything else