Changes

Leo Zuckermann had a thoughtful column earlier this week on a couple of changes Calderón could make to the operation of the executive branch in the wake of Juan Camilo Mouriño's death. The first is to run any major legislative initiative not out of Gobernación, but out of Los Pinos. As evidence of this method's superiority, he points to Calderón's record of legislative successes (the basically smooth passage of IMSS/ISSSTE reform, electoral reform, fiscal reform, and judicial reform) while Mouriño, his point man and closest collaborator, was working as the president's chief of staff. Then, after Mouriño went to Gobernación ahead of the oil reform, the process was plagued by missteps and faulty communication between the president and his erstwhile chief. Zuckermann even quotes Mouriño, after having moved to his new post, talking up the benefits of pushing legislation straight from Los Pinos. The suggestion Zuckermann offers (and Calderón seems likely to implement) is to give Mouriño's replacement Fernando Francisco Gómez Mont a more narrow portfolio, and take more direct control of his own agenda. This makes obvious sense to me, much like the advantage of controlling the executive branch through the White House rather than relying on an illusory cabinet government.

Zuckermann also recommends removing the federal police from the purview of the Secretariat of Public Security in favor of Secretariat of the Interior/Gobernación, which I find a lot less convincing. The argument in favor follows:

"A threatened State needs centralized agencies with a great capacity to operate. The present scheme of 'coordination' of various dependencies to combat organized crime doesn't work. It's time to centralize the command with a Secretary of the Interior that can count on an effective federal police and a civil intelligence agency equal or better than the one the military has."

The problem is that it's unclear how the second idea will bring the solution desired --effective, honest police-- any closer to reality. In contrast, the first suggestion directly addresses the problem of an uncoordinated, confused approach to the president's legislative agenda. Zuckermann's a big believer in police centralization, but as I wrote in August, centralization is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself:

The essential issue is control, not centralization; the local police in Mexico too often answer to criminals, not political bosses. It may seem easier to oversee one giant police agency from the federal government, but there's no reason that a governor or mayor or city council can't do it on a smaller scale. And there's also no reason to think of centralizing the police as some sort of corruption cure-all. After all, federal officers, though by and large more reliable than locals, are involved in plenty of illegal shenanigans, too.