Politics: Dismantling autonomy one cut at a time
Since taking office, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s daily morning press conferences have become his bully pulpit. The week before last he narrowed his sights on several autonomous government bodies, with the most intense barrages reserved for the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) and its current Chairman Guillermo García Alcocer, who apparently had raised his ire by criticizing AMLO’s nominees to become CRE commissioners for lacking any expertise in electricity matters. AMLO not only accused García Alcocer of conflicts of interest, but also, in a breach of protocol, the Finance Ministry’s Financial Intelligence Unit released employment details and financial histories of his relatives, and although that data did not reveal any improprieties, the civil service ministry reported it had opened a conflict-of-interest investigation against the CRE head.
As troubling as such official overreach may be, it is illustrative of the president’s governing style of projecting the image of a noble self-sacrificing knight battling an array of neoliberal villains responsible for all the country’s ills. Most likely it is also a major salvo in a prolonged campaign of attrition to neutralize the country’s autonomous regulatory bodies and any other institutional obstacles to AMLO’s personal power.
AMLO has made clear he does not intend for now to try legally dismantling such institutions as it could prove too politically costly at this point, although the recent defection of several PRD members of the Chamber of Deputies to the Morena camp provides him with the two-thirds majority needed to pass constitutional reform proposals in the lower house. However, he still lacks that power in the Senate.
Instead, his intent appears for now to mount a multi-pronged war of attrition. This includes starving these institutions funds through endless budget cuts and stacking their governing offices as the terms of current officers conclude, accelerating that natural turnover by intimidating and demoralizing current agency heads into resigning.
Considering the priority given to the new energy policy, in which the market opening that began just three years ago has been cancelled, it appears the energy regulatory bodies will be the first to be brought under López Obrador’s control. The bodies that emerged as part of the educational reform are also being targeted.
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