Back

LatinNews Daily - 15 November 2018

Click here for printer friendly version
Click here for full report

Mexico’s López Obrador unveils national security strategy

Development: On 14 November Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador presented a new comprehensive ‘national peace and security plan 2018-2024’ that his government will seek to implement once it assumes office on 1 December.

Significance: López Obrador’s proposed national security strategy has been eagerly awaited given that one of the president-elect’s main campaign pledges was that his administration would seek to completely reformulate the strategy pursued in the country in recent years, which is based on a frontal war against drug trafficking organisations (DTOs) and organised crime, in a bid to reduce the high levels of violence.

  • López Obrador presented the plan during a press conference in Mexico City. He said that the plan is based on eight pillars: the eradication of corruption and reactivation of justice; guaranteeing the education, health, and well-being of the population; promoting full respect for human rights; the ethical regeneration of society; the reformulation of the fight against drugs; embarking on the construction of peace; recovering and dignifying the country’s prison system; and the rethinking of the public security plan including redirecting the armed forces’ role in this.
  • Of the eight pillars, López Obrador focused on the final one during his presentation. He announced that as part of the redirection of the armed forces’ role in providing public security his government would create a new ‘national guard’ made up of officers from the federal police (PF), the military police, the army, and the navy, which will be tasked with preventing crime, preserving national security, and combating criminality across the country.
  • López Obrador said that the national guard will be under the control of the national executive and that the aim was that it would eventually number between 120,000 and 150,000 agents who will be stationed in jurisdictions around the country.
  • The problem is that this all looks very much like the continuation of the strategy pursued by recent administrations of relying on the armed forces to carry out national policing duties, leaving López Obrador open to criticism that his plan does not represent a radical new strategy but rather a continuation of the failed current strategy. In fact, the national guard proposal looks very similar to that of the national gendarmerie, a new federal public security force launched by the outgoing Enrique Peña Nieto administration in 2014 and which to date has failed to improve public security around the country.

Looking Ahead: The creation of the national guard may require a constitutional reform to allow the new force to have national jurisdiction. This may be a hard sell for López Obrador, who had previously said that that he wanted to end militarisation of public security. 

LatinNews
Intelligence Research Ltd.
167-169 Great Portland Street,
5th floor,
London, W1W 5PF - UK
Phone : +44 (0) 203 695 2790
Contact
You may contact us via our online contact form
Copyright © 2022 Intelligence Research Ltd. All rights reserved.