Mexico President Announces Plan to Shut Down Autonomous Regulators

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador repeated on Thursday (Jan. 18) his intention to include a proposal in an upcoming February 5 reform package to eliminate “all” autonomous governmental organisms in the country. The President proposed a thorough scrutiny of these organizations and urged their removal, claiming they were initially created to protect individual interests.

López Obrador’s statement comes one day after the president of the country’s antitrust authority Cofece, Andrea Marván, discussed the commission’s comprehensive review of the sale of 13 power plants from Spanish company Iberdrola to Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) in June.

Among the organizations targeted by AMLO’s statements are Cofece, the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT), the National Institute for Transparency and Access to Information (Inai), and the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE). The president argued that all autonomous regulators were established during what he calls the “neoliberal period” with the aim of undermining the public interest, and said that assets belonging to “the people” and the nation had been privatized during that time.

López Obrador’s reform package seeks to modify the reforms implemented over the past 36 years, which he believes disproportionately favored private interests. He emphasized that the creation of so-called autonomous organizations was a part of this trend.

Source: Forbes México