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LatinNews Daily - 04 December 2018

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López Obrador launches Mexico security plan

Development: On 3 December the government led by Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador set in motion its 2018-2024 ‘peace and security plan’.

Significance: Despite the many social elements to the security plan emphasised by López Obrador the most eye-catching aspect is the prominent role for the armed forces within the newly conceived national guard. It will eventually be deployed in 266 new territorial areas, which is proving to be a major bone of contention with state governors who argue that it undercuts their authority.

  • López Obrador held his first cabinet security meeting, which he has pledged to make a daily event, with Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero, as well as the defence, navy, and public security ministers, Luis Crescencio Sandoval, José Rafael Ojeda, and Alfonso Durazo respectively.
  • A total of 35,745 members of the federal police (PF), navy, and military police have been deployed in 150 areas in Mexico. López Obrador said they were being supported by state and municipal police forces “voluntarily”. But this is a source of significant tension with governors who do not belong to the ruling left-wing Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) party.
  • Twelve governors from the right-wing opposition Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) as well as the governor-elect of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, of the leftist opposition Movimiento Ciudadano (MC) party, have criticised the security plan, which would assign some 500 members of the national guard to each territorial area. They insist that responsibility for local security matters is conferred on state governments by constitutional mandate and that they stand to lose this authority under the security plan to state committees created by the federal government in each of the 32 states which will coordinate directly with the López Obrador administration, cutting them out.

Looking Ahead: López Obrador claimed that in the first two days of his term the homicide rate had fallen from an average of 66 to 50 per day. It is far too early to attribute this decline to any change in security policy but, after controversially altering his views on the militarisation of public security during the transition period, López Obrador will be under pressure to deliver on his promise to cut the number of violent homicides in Mexico dramatically.

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