Treasury is more of the same of the 4T

The financial management of a country deserves, to say the least, respect. And that includes assertive communication.

The populists of the 70s of the last century presumed that the economy was managed from the presidential office. There is no doubt that this six-year term, too. But already getting the announcements from the Ministry of Finance to be written from the propaganda office of the so-called Fourth Transformation, is already an excess.

“We regret that in the IDB elections the policy of more of the same continues. The proposal of the Brazilian government, supported by the United States, was chosen”.

These lines from Sunday’s statement from the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit are typical of the López Obrador regime, but not worthy of the agency headed by Rogelio Ramírez de la O, who came to the position with professional prestige.

When López Obrador, or his candidates, lose an election immediately comes the disqualification, he does not know how to lose. But taking that to the extremes that it shows in the Treasury is already excessive.

Indeed, Gerardo Esquivel came in third place in the vote to elect the new president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), where the Brazilian Ilan Goldfajn obtained 80% of the votes. There’s no more.

Previously, Alicia Bárcena, candidate for the IDB presidency of the López Obrador regime, learned of the disadvantage she had and withdrew for “personal reasons.”

Esquivel, whom López Obrador clearly no longer wants to support for one more term as deputy governor of the Bank of Mexico, took over from a previously lost race.

In the financial world, the next president of the IDB does not deserve a major introduction; he is a good profile for an institution that, although López Obrador does not understand it, needs the full support of the United States.

But that Secretary Ramírez de la O does not understand it, and that he allows a statement like the one on Sunday to be issued in his name is something that should worry the expert who had earned a name in that closed financial world.

López Obrador uses the presidential rostrum to carry out partisan politics and for this reason his communication has already lost all seriousness.

But using the name and prestige of the Treasury and its owner to make this cheap propaganda undermines the credibility of a basic institution for the stability of the entire country.

The Ministry of Finance and its head, Rogelio Ramírez de la O, should not allow their voice to be annulled in this way as a serious, professional and credible institution, for the simple reason that the country’s financial management is involved.

The secretariat that signs that we regret the “more of the same” and that reproaches the support of the United States for a good candidate for the IDB, who turned out not to be López Obrador’s candidate, is the same agency that has to take care that this regime do not exceed public spending and indebtedness of the country.

It is assumed that there, in the Ministry of Finance, are the experts who have a broad and sensible vision, who manage the country’s finances in a professional and institutional manner, without falling into the outbursts of political power. All of that is in doubt today.

ecampos@eleconomista.mx