When talking about recent Mexican history, it is highly likely that terms such as “regulation”, “secondary legislation” and similar concepts haven’t been as repeated and discussed by the general population as they have been in this time of continuous Constitutional reforms. After being modified in approximately 30 of its articles during Peña’s tenure, the Constitution appears to be a minor detail when legislating and executing – although it is most definitely not. The key issue, as it is currently argued, is secondary legislation, or in other words, those lesser legal orders that specify – and establish the “rules of the game” within the general guidelines of the Mexican Constitution. In a later analysis, the true turning point is not to be found in what is written but in what is done. The implementation of changes, applied to any type of law, end up providing the tangible elements in order to assess its usefulness or lack of it. Following that idea, what are the signs that the current administration is showing with a second and third round of reforms?
Amongst the most significant reforms that have happened in the last few months, including those approved in the last moments of President Calderón’s tenure, there is only one Constitutional modification that is on the implementation stage – the educational reform – ; most of them are in the phase of creating its secondary legislation although they are already operating without the need of adapting them to new guidelines – telecommunications, competition, transparency, energy as well as the political-electoral one – ; others such as the labor, public accountancy and financial reforms have already been on track by not having changes within the Constitutional framework and thus, not requiring any secondary legislation. When taking the example of the “most advanced” work, the educational reform, one has to take into account the removal from the equation of Elba Esther Gordillo, the main opposition force against the modification of the 3rd and 73rd Constitutional articles as well as the attempt to strengthen the teachers’ evaluation methods. Afterwards, the unique scenario of issuing and approving of these secondary legislation, which was characterized by a Congress under siege and then forced by protesting teachers to seek for alternate venues in order to have its sessions. Lastly, the implementation of this reform has found obstacles like Oaxaca, where local authorities have decided to open forums that not only prevent its functioning but also threaten to impose a de facto state of emergency in the Constitution’s enforcement. In summary, the modus operandi has been, firstly, eliminating opposition; then, issuing legislation in the necessary rather than the optimal timing; additionally, secondary legislation provide a space where all particular interests – both within and outside of PRI – that didn’t have a large presence in the Constitution can converge. Finally, in the moment of truth, things are not solved using laws but with the pragmatism that is so entangled with PRI’s political ways.
On recent days, the Executive Power has presented initiatives with the aim of regulating several of the Constitutional reforms that have taken place during 2013 (it is worth highlighting that the energy reform is not yet included). The proposals of secondary legislation on competition and telecommunications have been controversial because they limit the powers of their respective regulating bodies, the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) and the Federal Competition Commission (COFECE); this has angered those that envision a meta-institutional approach for economic regulation. In the aforementioned case, regulation intends to put government and regulators in a proper dimension, which is the right thing to do: separating regulation from public policies that would correspond to their respective secretariat. How this legislation will operate with more efficient markets remains to be seen. This is the key issue. It is expected that the latter as well as pending laws will not have a similar end to the ones observed, for example, with the labor reform. More than a year after its issuing, the job dynamics in Mexico has remained stable and, in some months, has been worse than before (according to data taken from the Mexican Institute of Social Security, January of 2014 was the worst month in job creation in the last decade). When political pragmatism is merged with economic efficiency, the country would have taken a giant leap.
CIDAC
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