Auxiliary Boards and Municipal Federalism in Puebla

 Auxiliary Boards and Municipal Federalism in Puebla

Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero

The PAN bench in the state Legislature has promoted one of the important issues, although not very significant for the interests of the local political system. Within the principles that founded the Blue and White opposition, federalism was essential, which is logical in a context of a centralist Hegemonic Party where local governments with different political preferences were systematically blocked. For decades, the few PAN councils where it was inevitable to recognize the transparency of the electoral results were ignored and their administrations tried to be efficient to generate a favorable political trend, especially in the cities where the PAN sought the vote of the conservative middle class. PAN federalism has been changing as state governments and national power reached, the ideas of opposition were accommodating the PRI turncoat, chiefdom and federalist centralism.

 The theory of rational choice and liberal democracy, indicate that the ideal is to create new municipalities and allow subordinate communities to emancipate the heads. The Auxiliary Boards in the municipality of Puebla must be constituted as municipalities, because that is what they were, because they more than meet the requirements of the Municipal Organic Law, because the vassalage to which they are subjected is immoral. The history of chiefdom, authoritarianism, racism and discrimination; it goes through the despotism exercised by the municipal heads to the subordinate communities. However, PRI legislators from different political parties have always preferred to develop the socioeconomic structure that feeds the hegemony of the Pueblan oligarchy instead of promoting art. 115 constitutional with all its forces.

In Puebla and Mexico, creating new municipalities would be synonymous with ending chiefdom, clientelism, and the politics of poverty. Maria Amparo Cassar, Mauricio Merino, Enrique Cabrero and many more, in Puebla the role of Doctor César Musalem Jop should be highlighted, they have developed technologies and arguments to justify the creation of more municipalities or federal tax laws that oblige mayors to share proportionally the shares, resources and obligations with subordinate authorities. Puebla and Tlaxcala have legal recognition for the subordinate communities of the municipalities - What a relief! - In other states the issue may be more serious: the citizens of the auxiliary boards do not exist.

The federalist debate proposed by the PAN is significant, I hope that the legislators of his faction take the issue seriously and can finally do something more than a trivial montage. Of the Local Congress, as a whole, it can only be said that it is a perfidious entity against the municipalities and federalism in Puebla. Municipalizing, instead of privatizing, can be realistic to build an authentic opposition discourse. Politics and business are different things, at the local level is where the perverse confusion of both identities causes terrible damage: water, cleaning, security, lighting..., not everything can be solved through outsourcing. The managerial mentality in public affairs only means black market.

The number of municipalities that Mexico and Puebla have, as extensive as it may seem, is negligible compared to the size of local governments that consolidated democracies have. The United States and France are simple samples, but even the same Spain that Hispanic Creoles like so much can be taken as an example. Is the administrative malfunction of the Resurrection or Canoa really more serious for the municipality of Puebla than the white and corrupt elephant called IMPLAN? Doesn't the capital of Puebla deserve a local government based on Mayors or Delegations instead of a municipal administration that can less every day because the growth of the City is more than expansive? That the auxiliary authorities are human traffickers or drug traffickers, only shows that the legislators of Puebla do not know the cacicazgos of the interior of the state nor the corruption and incompetence that the municipal public accounts mean year after year; there is the design of planned failure. Or perhaps they know him to the extent that they lobby him and know how to take advantage of it. Some PAN mayors of Puebla capital and the metropolitan area, in the past, have made courageous and admirable federalist decisions that the oligarchic Congress has been throwing down. The current PAN members should learn from them, who every day identify more with the Barbosista and/or Morenovallista government instead of the nostalgic Gomezmorinian ideal. The pragmatic PAN may be right in the behavior of survival, but we already know how Faustian soap operas of submission end with the governor in office.

Democratic consolidation needs a deep reflection on the municipalities, the discussion in Puebla cannot wait any longer. Beyond progressive issues, the legislative agenda must not ignore the (glocal) municipal debate, municipalities must also become postmodern in the face of a runaway post-Covid world.

The municipality: an institution designed for failure?

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