Other Random Notes on the Cabinet Change

Interesting to see Jorge Fernández Menéndez, typically a supporter of administration policy on security, ding Calderón for his odd cabinet decisions.

There should be clear responsibilities for each one of the officials in each are, but, above all, those who are just floating along, those who don't want to expose themselves, make policy, and assume the risks should be moved or changed.

And for those who do indeed do so, who are just a handful of officials, among them Gómez Mont, Lozano, Cordero, García Luna, Galván, Saynez, and a few more, you really owe it to them to put things in order and establish clear responsibilities, which it seems today that they don't have. And of course there must be changes in the government, but four years in the same dynamic of trial and error can't continue, rewarding, albeit by omission, those who remain in the comfort zone.

If [the changes] are to strengthen that stability and institutionalization that this administration desperately needs, any change is welcome. If it's about accommodating names or lowering the political profile of positions central to the administration so as to accommodate figures close to the president, we would be making a grave mistake.

Martín Moreno says it's not a coincidence that Gómez Mont's ouster came a day after a meeting between Calderón and Manlio Fabio Beltrones. In a nutshell, the latter said he wanted Gómez Mont out, and Calderón's needs Beltrones to get anything out of these last two years. He also says that Calderón, by meeting with Beltrones but excluding other PRI heavyweights, is intentionally sidelining the Paredes-Peña Nieto wing of the PRI, which is nothing new.

Also, I'd forgotten this, but Patricia Flores had a reputation of being a really hard person to work with, a reputation that drove a largely critical profile in Poder earlier this year. That impression of her was also evident in this piece from El Universal. The first article came across as a bunch of people with sour grapes trying to settle a score with her, and it's not really clear from the piece that she was such an evil person or if she was just a demanding boss in a demanding post with a demanding boss of her own. In any event, fair or not, if she did generate a great deal of ill will, perhaps that factored into the decision to move her out of Los Pinos.