A new extraordinary session period will take place on the Chamber of Deputies during June 19th and 20th. None of the secondary legislation of the most important reforms will be discussed during this time. Rather, the sessions will deal with issues that are of little relevance, such as minor political and electoral matters. Meanwhile, the secondary legislation of the telecommunications and energy reforms remain stuck in a push and pull situation going on between the three main political parties. There should be no confusion. The apparent legislative paralysis is not explained with the use of the World Cup as a distractor but with an internal political game.
One of the affairs that legislators should be currently wondering has to do with the recent struggle between PRI and PAN, the parties that were supposedly allied to carry out the secondary legislation of the energy reform. PAN has threatened to leave the negotiations if the rules that deal with the distribution of percentages within party coalitions are to be modified. By using the aforementioned alliances, PRI intends to provide leftwing parties with the possibility of having greater chances to keep their registry for next year’s elections. According to the proposal that has yet to be debated, small political organizations as the Workers’ Party (PT) or Citizen Movement would have a greater possibility of reaching the sought 3 percent number required to survive, should they decide to ally themselves with PRD. While all of the aforementioned is going on, half of the energy reform is stuck in a complex ordeal. It has to be said that the reform’s process was divided into two: on one hand, the procedural part, which is being dealt at the Senate; and the other one, related with budgetary issues, is discussed at the Chamber of Deputies.
Even though the leaderships of the Commissions of United Energy (led by PRI member David Penchyna) and of Legislative Studies (led by PAN member, Raúl Gracia) agreed on setting the discussion process of the energy reform’s secondary legislation in a deadline that would supposedly end on June 26th, there have been conflicts in the Senate that might delay this even further. It is true that PRI does not have the necessary amount of seats to pass, on its own or with the help of its allies, any sort of bill in the country’s Higher Chamber. However, PRI legislators do not seem to contemplate the option of forcing a majority vote on a matter that is as delicate as the secondary legislation of the energy reform. Legitimacy has become an important component for the conclusion of the process of liberalizing the energy sector. However, the story is different at the Chamber of Deputies. The work made by the United Commissions of Public Finances and Energy within the Chamber have been materializing the drafts of those laws that are related with budget and income, for instance, the rules of the Mexican Oil Fund and the way its resources will be allocated.
Though it may seem that the World Cup has taken the spotlight out of the legislative issues, the truth is that Congress has been working thoroughly both in the design as well as the political negotiations of the secondary legislation. On the other hand, it is important to carefully analyze the complexity of these laws. Energy is not a minor issue. Public opinion, once it has decided to cover the current reform process whilst leaving football aside, usually makes very superficial reports and analysis about it. It is not a matter of correlating football with whether the secondary legislation goes through or not. Not that if there were no World Cup discussions in Congress would take another way. Political forces are acting as expected: they are representing interests, which are frequently their own, hiding particular motivations (such as lack of transparency) as well as creating a huge amount of suspicion around it. All of the aforementioned is normal and even desirable since that is the nature of a representational group: supposedly Congressmen are in their posts to fulfill that job. What is questionable is that all political distractors rather than the media are hindering the possibility of achieving reforms that have a useful content as well as a goal of implementing real changes for the country’s development and enable the exit from a mess in which the Mexican economy seems to be stuck at. But to do that it would require a clearer and more explicit vision of the development model needed for the development of the industry (which is energy, in this case) from the one that it currently exists in all of the government’s domains: Executive and Legislative powers.
CIDAC
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