Politics: Good news and bad on the National Guard
In the last two weeks the debate over the administration’s National Guard proposal took a totally unexpected turn as members of Congress unanimously voted for a consensus proposal that resolved many points that had drawn strenuous objections.
Key changes to the original proposal by the administration of President López Obrador included putting it under a civilian body rather than the armed forces. The government had already proposed resolving the longstanding constitutional problem of the military engaging in police activities with a transitory article authorizing such engagement over the next five years, but restrictions defended by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights were added. So the consensus halted plans to empower the armed forces to the detriment of civilian authorities, as well as including many of the proposals made by experts and a unified opposition, and demonstrated a willingness by the governing Morena party to negotiate. All of that is very good news politically, but what Congress passed will not necessarily solve the security problems plaguing the country.
It leaves intact the administration’s absurd idea to start from scratch to construct a national policing system rather than build on the Federal Police, the admittedly incomplete product of work by the past four administrations. The Sisyphean tasks of cobbling such an institution out of elements from the armed forces and police along with tens of thousands of new recruits could take many years and never produce anything in the way of a cohesive force capable of tackling the country’s domestic security crisis. And time is no minor issue when faced with a crisis of security and criminal violence that continues to grow alarmingly and spread throughout much of the country. Moreover, the final bill includes a cryptic reference to an “inter-institutional body” that might serve as an alternative route through which to re-establish military control over the Guard, as well as perverse incentives for the Army and Navy to drag their feet in contributing to the Guard.
Even if the government somehow manages to build the 130,000 member national police force it envisions, it would be inadequate to meet the country’s police personnel requirements, which many specialists calculate at up to four times that number.
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