After the announcement of the presidential initiative that seeks, among other things, to eliminate the Executive Secretariat of the National Anticorruption System (SNA), experts considered that the door is opened for a possible dismantling of this system, in addition to endangering citizen participation in the combat this scourge.
Francisco Ciscomani Freaner, president of the Coordinating Committee of the National Anticorruption System, considered that said proposal could be more expensive in the long run, and affect the autonomy of the SNA.
“What I think the president intends is to save resources within the expenses of the public administration to allocate them to the programs that we know of, however, in the case of the Executive Secretary, it seems to me that the president has probably not been well advised, because this is an executing arm that promotes collaboration between various institutions and government orders
“In addition to being an institution that practically does not cost, since in 2017 it had planned 220 million and for today it works with 124 million and 20% less than its staff,” he said.
After explaining that among the tasks of the Executive Secretariat, which today is headed by Ricardo Salgado Perrilliat, are citizen coordination between the government bodies, working with local systems, evaluating the models for combating corruption and implementing The national digital platform of the national anti-corruption program is launched, the president of the CPC also highlighted the work carried out with international organizations to finance studies on the matter.
Thus, he considered, the instance must prevail, since it goes beyond the men and women who can make it up, since this secretariat is the body that represents society.
“If we send this work to a government agency or entity, we remove the social factor from the system, that is why we are concerned,” he stressed.
Likewise, he warned that if the president’s initiative is approved, the tasks of the secretariat could pass to the Citizen Participation Committee (CPC), which would have to be provided with additional resources and positions to carry out the task of coordination.
“In the end, it could be more expensive than maintaining the secretariat, which costs practically half of what it cost in 2017, since it has been subjected to the whole issue of austerity and savings,” he said, while stressing that this body does not have with their own offices or some other type of expenses such as car rental.
“Death Punch”
For her part, Mariclaire Acosta Urquidi, former president of the Coordinating Committee of the SNA, warns that eliminating the Executive Secretariat of this system would be dealing it “a death blow”, since it would begin with a dismantling of the system, mainly in citizen matters.
The expert recalled that this secretariat, in addition to being a technical area, is the conduit through which the CPC can present proposals for a national policy against corruption, which gives citizens a voice in the fight against this scourge.
Acosta Urquidi also warned that from the beginning, the promoters of the SNA emphasized that the coordination with the different entities should be by an autonomous one, since it started from the idea that no one assumed or assumed the system as their own, and had independence, especially for the government entities.
Likewise, he believed that this initiative may be part of the president’s intention to disappear the SNA, since these intentions were marked by all the time in which the CPC was headless and the lack of interest in appointing the missing members.
While the motivation for presenting this proposal also comes from the president’s rejection of autonomous bodies and their functions, it is clear that he prefers to centralize power.
In the past, Ricardo Salgado Perrilliat said he was satisfied with what has been done in the Executive Secretariat, “we have done what the law has ordered us to do, we have done a lot without having the resources. I started with a budget of more or less 220 million pesos, today I have more or less 120 million pesos, but it is because we wanted to have that budget, the budget we have is enough to work”, he argued.
maritza.perez@eleconomista.mx
