Mexico’s Senate on Thursday night passed a sweeping proposal to dissolve several government-financed yet independent watchdog organizations, a move the president and her supporters said would help reduce corruption and waste. Critics have called it a step backward for transparency and regulation.
The duties of most of the seven agencies, which provided oversight on a host of issues, such as public information requests and price fixing in the telecommunications, pharmaceutical and energy sectors, would be absorbed by other parts of the federal government, overseen by the president.
Perhaps the most noteworthy of the agencies — the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data, known as INAI — would have its responsibilities divided among a handful of existing federal agencies.
“The disappearance of these autonomous bodies represents a democratic setback,” the Mexican Association for the Right to Information, a nongovernmental group, said in a statement. The move, the group added, “weakens the mechanisms of control, transparency and protection of rights that have been built with great effort in our country.”
The constitutional amendment dissolving the agencies is part of a series of far-reaching proposals pushed by the former Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, that are supported by his successor and mentee, Claudia Sheinbaum, and by their political party, Morena.
In September, Mexico passed an amendment overhauling the country’s judiciary, which supporters of the proposal said was riddled with graft, influence-peddling and nepotism. Critics warned that the move, which will see nearly all Mexican judges elected rather than appointed, undermines judicial independence and politicizes the courts.
Morena has also targeted the independent agencies because of what it has called excessive spending and corruption.
The latest amendment would also dissolve the independent watchdogs at the state level that oversee public information requests and the protection of personal data.
The bill already passed in the lower house of Congress last week. If it is approved by a majority of Mexico’s 32 state legislatures — most of which are controlled by Morena — then it will become law after publication in the government’s official gazette.
What will happen?
The amendment would eliminate seven agencies:
• INAI
• National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL)
• Federal Economic Competition Commission (COFECE)
• Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT)
• National Commission for the Continuous Improvement of Education (MEJOREDU)
• Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE)
• National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH)
Most of the seven agencies were created in the 2000s or 2010s as a way to shift some power away from the federal government and strengthen Mexico’s budding democracy.
Each body’s duties would be absorbed by other federal agencies, though Morena lawmakers have said that their employees will not lose their jobs. Savings from the dissolution of the agencies are expected to be directed to a new government pension fund aimed at lifting payouts to the lowest recipients.
Ms. Sheinbaum has also said that Congress should consider using the money for cultural and education programs and for raising the salaries of soldiers.
She has also said that the work done by the information agency will continue because every federal body, under law, needs to be transparent.
“The disappearance of INAI does not mean that transparency in government is going to disappear,” she told reporters recently. “On the contrary, we are going to be much stricter in transparency.”
Why did the government want this?
The governing party has claimed that the cost of maintaining all seven watchdog agencies is too steep. In July, Mr. López Obrador estimated that up to roughly $5 billion would be saved by dissolving them, though it is unclear how that number was calculated.
He has criticized top INAI officials for having large salaries (he said the agency’s commissioners make over $12,000 a month; the minimum wage in the country is roughly $360 a month) and for abusing government-issued credit cards (Internal audits found that officials had logged unusually high spending, including charging trips to Europe.)
Mr. López Obrador also attacked the economic competition commission, accusing it of being vulnerable to the whims of large companies.
Claudia Rivera, a Morena lawmaker in the lower house of Congress, said that amendment to abolish the agencies was part of the government’s “financial discipline” strategy.
“It’s about making the spending more efficient,” she said, adding that the agencies’ work “is not lost, not neglected” but transferred to existing ministries or institutes.
Critics have argued that dissolving some agencies might violate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. That trade accord calls for an independent regulatory telecommunications agency in each country.
But Ms. Sheinbaum said the “original spirit of guaranteeing economic competition and antimonopoly” under the trade agreement would be maintained, but in a way “more appropriate for our national context.”
She said she planned to restructure the economic competition and telecommunications agencies into a decentralized and independent organization within the existing economy ministry.
Why are critics against the changes?
Opponents have acknowledged that graft and misspending are chronic problems in Mexico. But Jorge Cano, an economist and public finances analyst at Mexico Evaluates, a public policy research group, said that Morena’s estimates of $5 billion savings are “beyond the realm of reality.”
Mr. Cano’s group said that the seven agencies received $238 million this year from the government, representing only about 0.06 percent of Mexico’s annual federal budget.
Natalia Campos, a public policy researcher at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a research group, said that the disappearance of the agencies was likely to hurt Mexico’s investment climate by getting rid of agencies that oversee markets and the government itself.
Diego Marroquín Bitar, a researcher at the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan study institute in Washington, said, “One of the reasons that a lot of foreign investors invest in Mexico and decide to bet on Mexico is because they know there are clear and stable rules.”
The telecommunications commission has said that, since it was made an independent agency in 2013, Mexicans have paid significantly less for services, including phone and internet, despite rising inflation during that time. Changing its structure, it said, “would lead to a serious setback.”
Zorayda Gallegos, an independent investigative journalist, said INAI was “very important” because it forced other government offices to be more open, including providing copies of contracts from federal agencies, such as the traditionally opaque Mexican military.
The plan to move part of INAI’s duties to the civil service ministry, Ms. Gallegos said, would mean “the loss of a guarantee to the citizen” to be able to obtain information.
Recently, she said, she asked the civil service ministry for a copy of a yearslong investigation into a public official who ended up avoiding disciplinary action. She said she received an 18-page document that had been almost entirely redacted.
Of particular concern to some critics is the future of the National Platform of Transparency, a website where anyone can request information from any government agency. Once the request is answered, the records are accessible for anyone to view.
The amendment does not specify what will happen to the agency’s huge database or how the government plans to maintain it, said Julieta del Río Venegas, an INAI commissioner.
“The management of transparency and data should be done by an autonomous institution,” she said. Leaving that responsibility to the government, she added, would make it “judge and jury.”
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