Politics: Next stop on AMLO’s September reform agenda—the permanent militarization of security, with no limits on presidential power
With the Chamber of Deputies having passed last week the constitutional reform proposal that definitively transfers the National Guard (NG) to the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) and the Senate expected to follow suit this week, the stage is set for another codification of President López Obrador’s plan to transform the entire governing system. In this case, it is likely to come at the expense of public security.
The administration essentially argues that the reform, which also authorizes the military to fully absorb public security tasks indefinitely, is required based on the claim that all civilian police forces are hopelessly corrupt. We can’t rule out that such an approach may eventually succeed, but it will take much longer, involve more human rights violations, entail very steep social and political costs and leave state and municipal civilian security institutions to further atrophy. Potentially more troubling is the extent to which the reform further expands the military’s already mushrooming economic and political power while also centralizing power in the Federal Executive and expanding the powers of the President.
In this week’s Outlook, we analyze the implications of the reform for the country’s public security challenges and the threats the reform poses to democracy.
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