Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Whose Fault?

Writing on Friday, Ana María Salazar asks who is responsible for the violence in Mexico over the past three years:
The Mexican army shouldn't be blamed for what could be the failure of the anti-drug strategy of the nation, because the success of this strategy depends not only on those in uniform, but also the capacity of the civilian agencies in the federal and state realms, as well as the effective coordination between all of these institutions that are responsible for the public security and national security of the country.

On this last point, that of the lack of adequate coordination between Sedena, Public Security, PGR, and the Secretary of the Interior, it continues being probably incomprehensible that the president allows this. We've got to recognize it, the power of Mexican presidents has continued diminishing over the years, but that doesn't men that they don't have the faculty or the capacity to control their secretaries.

If a president doesn't have sufficient power or political will to order his security cabinet to cooperate, we basically stand before a situation in which the president isn't going to be effective, and if furthermore there are no mechanisms for a real coordination between different levels of government on security matters, we can't talk about a war that has the possibility of being won.
I wonder what the examples of lack of coordination are beyond the famous friction between Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna and Eduardo Medina Mora, the former attorney general.

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