By EFE
Jun 25, 2024, 01:20 AM EDT
The elected president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, denied the “militarization” of the country after promising that the National Guard will come under the control of the Army and assured that both she and the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, “build” peace.
“All those who say this is militarization, it is not. Militarization would be if the one who dictated the entire security policy were an institution only of the Army and that is not the case,” he expressed in a press conference in which he closed the ‘Dialogue for Transformation’, a set of forums to make his government plan.
“We build peace”
Thus, he recalled that it is the Presidency of the Republic that “dictates” the strategy in this area and marked distance with López Obrador’s predecessors, especially with former president Felipe Calderón, who, he said, declared ‘the war against drugs’.
“We build peace, we do not make war. This is the big difference. Calderón decided to wage war in our country with enormous irresponsibility,” he condemned.
Its security roadmap will have four axes: “Attention to the causes, continue serving young people; more and better National Guard, its consolidation; more intelligence and investigation, and coordination with all institutions.”
These statements come hours after the current president defended the reform that will cede control of the National Guard, a body created by him in 2019 with the promise of keeping it civilian, to the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena).
The president argued in his daily conference that “if that institution is left, as happened with the Federal Police,” to the Ministry of the Interior (Segob) or the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC), as is happening now, “it will be “It’s going to spoil.”
They will promote a constitutional reform
To effect this change, the ruling party will promote a constitutional reform starting on September 1, when it will have a qualified majority of two-thirds in the Congress of the Union after the elections on June 2.
Afterwards, the implementation would be in charge of Sheinbaum, who will take office on October 1. The future president shared López Obrador’s point of view when cataloging the National Guard as “a new institution of transformation.”
“Now moving forward, the National Guard has to consolidate in several areas,” he added, such as highway surveillance or being “first responders.”
Thus, it will be in the hands of the SSPC to “coordinate” the public security policy of the federal government and “collaborate” with the Sedena, the Secretary of the Navy (Semar) and the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic (FGR).
“A very special transition”
On the other hand, Sheinbaum defended that the government transition is “very special.”
“When have you seen in history that the president takes the next president, because there has never been a president, to the works and projects?” he reflected.
He also outlined the qualities that, in his opinion, the people who will make up his Government should have, some of which he already announced last week.
“They are part of the transformation, they know their areas and, at the same time, they agree on the project that we will lead,” he listed.
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