The appointment of Lazaro Cardenas Batel as head of the Office of the Presidency in the next cabinet has given rise to different interpretations: at one extreme, there are those who place him as a kind of executive vice president, right hand of Claudia Sheinbaum and an interlocutor with different sectors, including businessmen, the opposition and social organizations (an attribution that corresponds to the Ministry of the Interior). Suddenly, some analysts discover in Cárdenas Batel qualities that have remained hidden throughout his career; Carmen Morán Breña, from El País, defines him as “an exceptional man.”
The Office of the President It was created during the government of Salinas de Gortari with the purpose of providing the head of the Executive with elements for decision-making, for which it was organized into specialized cabinets: economic, agricultural, social welfare, national security and foreign policy; each cabinet had a technical secretary responsible for recording the most relevant aspects of the meetings and, above all, following up on the agreements.
The president’s decisions in specialized cabinet meetings took precedence and its head, José María Córdova Montoya, became one of the most powerful officials in a powerful government. Will this be the role of the general’s grandson?
A president who is more about assignments than positions, López Obrador appointed Alfonso Romo as head of that Office, but with only one task: the relationship with big businessmen. The results of his administration were frustrating; perhaps the episode that marked his administration was the denial made by the president-elect himself of his word that the new Texcoco airport would not be cancelled; after his resignation in December 2002, what was once a strategic institution became vacant.
The appointment of Lázaro Cárdenas Batel is part of a logic that is different and distant from the nature of that Office and rather seems to respond to the rationality of the symbolic and the political agreement, after all, the Cárdenas surname continues to weigh on the public life of the country.
As coordinator of advisors to the president Lopez Obrador, Cárdenas Batel played such a discreet role that he was almost irrelevant and in the last stretch of his government – a real discourtesy – he was moved from his physical location in the National Palace to the offices of the Presidency on Constituyentes Avenue.
Last February and after the president Lopez Obrador placed engineer Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas on the side of his adversaries, the general’s grandson resigned from the coordination of advisors.
In a government as complex as the Mexican one, it is essential to have an institution with the resources and powers to support the decisions of the President of the Republic. Unfortunately, this was not understood in the one-man country; it will be interesting to observe the role that Dr. Sheinbaum will assign to it.
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