He third block of Secretaries of State in the next Claudia Sheinbaum’s government showed the strength of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. I wanted to Rosa Icela Rodriguez in the Secretariat of Governmentand Sheinbaum it confirmed. He asked for the Education secretary for Mario Delgadoand the fulfilled. I wished that Ariadna Montiel repeat in the Ministry of Welfareand satisfied him. Sheinbaum was able to hold on to Omar Garcia Harfuch for the Department of Public Securityalthough its original plan was to occupy the General Prosecutor of the Republic. The truth is that does not have much room for maneuver.
The Lopez Obrador’s demand of a gender-balanced cabinet and at least 10 trans-sexennial portfoliosis walking as desiredalthough these variables do not show the weight of each of the secretariats, nor where the vectors of power are located. Welfarein the way the secretariats are currently organized, is the most powerful, not only because of the budget assigned to it – 234 billion pesos this year, 198% higher than 2023 – but because Through it, the electoral operation was institutionalized which was previously done temporarily, which was one of the driving forces of the Morena’s steamroller in the recent elections.
Montiel, who has been linked to López Obrador for about 20 years, was the executor of the strategy that the president designed with his close associates and Latin American specialists who helped in the electoral design and will continue to lead the successful political machinery. Her strategic importance in maintaining the intensity of the social-electoral programs in the next government is greater than the differences she had with Sheinbaum last year, when the then head of the Government of Mexico City complained to the president in March that he was interfering in the capital’s succession, affecting control over political groups. López Obrador did not stop her and Montiel continued openly campaigning for the candidacy.
In the end, he gave in to Sheinbaum’s interest in having García Harfuch replace her, and on the president’s instructions, he diverted six billion pesos last year to support what would be her presidential campaign. Montiel was institutional, as was Mario Delgado, appointed as Secretary of Education against the wishes of Sheinbaum, who had no room to maneuver. His candidate for that portfolio was Rosaura Ruiz, but the president demanded that she give it to Delgado, so he adjusted for the creation of a new Secretariat of Science, which will absorb higher education from the SEP.
Delgado was not included in Sheinbaum’s cabinet plans because he is considered a high-risk figure among her collaborators. Delgado has open investigations in Mexico and the United States for alleged crimes related to fuel theft and money laundering, as well as the diversion of Morena resources. But the president’s demand was unwavering, so he had to open up the requested cabinet space for him, although in the redesign he is doing of the department he is going to leave it as what it is, a political secretariat that invests much of its time in negotiating with unions, with basic education as the field of litigation.
Another unchallengeable portfolio was that of the Interior Ministry for Rosa Icela Rodríguez, whose participation in Sheinbaum’s cabinet was considered a fact a year before the elections were even held. Rodríguez is López Obrador’s closest and most beloved collaborator in the cabinet, and has worked alongside him for more than a quarter of a century. When she governed Mexico City, Rodríguez participated in the design and operation of an alternative intelligence system to provide a unique service to López Obrador, and the only one that transcended that work.
Rodríguez was in the cabinets of Marcelo Ebrard and Miguel Ángel Mancera – when Morena had not yet separated from the PRD – at the express request of López Obrador, and always responded to the president with loyalty. In the federal government, he used her as a wild card in areas where he needed someone he fully trusted, where he assigned her tasks outside her competence, such as tasks related to social policy while she was Secretary of Public Security.
López Obrador also used her as a spokesperson in sensitive matters, such as when he had to explain the release of Nemesio Oseguera’s brother, El Mencho, head of the main faction of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, and the kidnapping of the emeritus bishop of Chilpancingo, Salvador Rangel. Although she was one of the protagonists in the morning press conferences when security issues were discussed, Rodríguez did little in the matter because the operational part, the National Guard, was out of her control and run by the military. This will not change with the arrival of García Harfuch to the post, one of the few appointments in the future cabinet where she does have extensive experience in that field and deep knowledge of the problems she will face.
García Harfuch has never been liked by López Obrador, but he has tolerated him because of his closeness to Sheinbaum. He let him promote him for the government of Mexico City, and was on the verge of accepting his candidacy, but on the eve of announcing the results of the survey for the candidacy, his toughest collaborators gave him a confidential document of alleged links with organized crime. The day after receiving the report, he called García Harfuch and told him that he would not be a candidate.
Sheinbaum did not abandon him and has been a fundamental piece in the machinery of her team. But to sustain it, she accepted without complaint that the National Guard legally pass to the Secretariat of National Defense, and leave Public Security as a skeleton that would only manage the penitentiary system. Sheinbaum and García Harfuch knew that this would happen, and they will transform the secretariat into a powerful intelligence area for the Mexican State. There was not much to do. Sheinbaum had trusted her team that she would not fight with the president on this issue. Or on others, one might add.
X: @rivapa
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