President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday shrugged off a news report that suggested the government actively sought to weaken an independent body designed to improve official transparency.
(Bloomberg) — President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday shrugged off a news report that suggested the government actively sought to weaken an independent body designed to improve official transparency.
AMLO, as Lopez Obrador is known, said in his daily morning press conference that he “doesn’t want to get involved,” when asked if he was seeking to stop transparency watchdog, called INAI by its Spanish acronym, from operating.
The question came a day after outlet Latinus published a leaked audio of Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez telling members of congress that there was “no urgency” on the president’s part to fill posts key for the body’s operation.
Tensions have ramped up since Lopez Obrador vetoed two commissioners that the country’s senate had appointed to the INAI. The veto plus a subsequent vacancy leaves the panel three short of its full set of seven commissioners and one short of the five needed to operate.
On Friday, AMLO questioned the INAI’s costs of operation and said it would be better if it did not exist, amid criticism from political rivals of his government’s interference.
“If they’re named or not, what good do they do?” he said of the commissioners in a press conference. “Do you know what the institute is good for, or what it did? It was just a facade to cover up the corrupt acts of government officials.”
‘Create a Crisis’
AMLO’s recent comments on INAI are not the first time the Mexican president spoke out against the entity.
In 2021, he proposed eliminating the INAI and merging it with the comptroller’s office, drawing criticism from Human Rights Watch Americas, which said the move would be “the perfect recipe for secrecy and abuse.”
Earlier in April, he criticized the body for seeking his university thesis from National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Senate majority leader Ricardo Monreal said that the senators would have to vote on new commissioners before the close of the legislative session at the end of April, if they were to seek to avoid punting the issue to a later extraordinary vote.
Two-thirds of them would have to vote in favor of the new nominees before the president signed off on their naming. Opposition lawmakers had hung up a sign in Congress calling for a prompt resolution of the conflict.
“These signs, shouts, and insults, all they do is polarize the environment and isolate us. We’re not on the correct path to reach agreements but instead to confront more and create a crisis not only in the INAI, but also a crisis in the institution that is legislature,” Monreal said this week.
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