Reform after reform and Mexico without energy
Two-faced. That is what most of the cuatroteros who are currently in charge of the Federal Public Administration are like. And, among other things, that is why the institution is now totally failed, unproductive, but authoritarian and demanding of the resources of medium and small taxpayers.
In public, these AMLO followers have been tearing their hair out over the aforementioned neoliberalism, which is supposedly for opposing “great reforms that the people voted for” and blah, blah, blah.
But it is they themselves who have spoiled and sabotaged any other legislative or reformist initiative that does not come from their own desks.
It is not necessary to go back very far in time to confirm that this has been the prevailing trend in recent tragic years.
There is, for example, the very advanced energy reform that the PRI proposed in the final throes of Ernesto Zedillo ‘s mandate , and that the PAN rejected, only to later propose another that was regressive — it placed natural resources and strategic installations in private and foreign hands — and that they sold to us as “the treasure”, although they never said that it was not such for Mexicans.
It didn’t take much science to say that the country’s administration was then partisan. Or more than that: it was covered in Felipe Calderón ‘s personal hatreds . Nothing that the PRI had touched. Nothing that smelled of the PRI. Nothing that the PRI produced.
All this, despite the fact that the tricolor party was the one that opened the back door of Congress for him on December 1, 2006, and the one that helped him climb into a position that was given to him by a Court, not by the majority vote of Mexicans.
And the energy reform of the PAN, like the one proposed by the tricolor before it, went into the trash can.
Meanwhile, the country that required more and more electricity — still insufficient today –, more resources from the extraction and refining of its black gold, as well as more fuels, was left in the lurch.
In foreign hands, anyway
However, in terms of electric energy, for example, from the Zedillo administration to EPN, the so-called independent producers — mostly foreigners — were the ones who had all the advantages.
The Federal Commission was obliged to purchase its surpluses, so it stopped producing electricity in the large dams in the southeast, the main cause of the floods that devastate a large part of the territory of Tabasco and part of Chiapas almost every year.
In the oil sector, for a long time, American companies such as Halliburton and Schlumberger, among many others, enjoyed so-called “incentive contracts” with which they not only mocked the Constitution, but also the state-owned company itself, given that they only devoured millions and millions of dollars without delivering results, as was happening in Chicontepec.
Another silent privatization of Pemex took place via the Pidiriegas, which financed countless so-called “turnkey” contracts and which were, of course , managed by private companies.
Bankers, financiers, businessmen and a sector of the so-called political class, however, were pressing for the Constitution to be reformed to allow Pemex to open its doors wide to businessmen.
With EPN, disguised privatization
Unfortunately for Mexico, Enrique Peña came to power . And with him his “Pact for Mexico” which, among other things, included another energy reform.
The prevailing official discourse did not speak of privatization, but of modernization, even transformation, of the company.
The President of the Republic himself said this on more than one occasion, during his own election campaign, and he has repeated it over the last two days.
In the words of the atracomulca , the objective was to help the family economy; democratize productivity by reducing rates for micro, small and medium-sized businesses; increase the competitiveness of the national industry and allow the creation of greater infrastructure and investment to take advantage of the country’s oil resources.
He explained that the then parastatal companies, later converted into productive state enterprises, should be more efficient, transparent, have greater accountability, and corporate ethics.
Another failure that, from the beginning, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas described as an attempt at privatization.
AMLO vs. the Constitution
After the Court openly declared the reform to the Electricity Law unconstitutional in 2021, López Obrador presented his own “transformation” in energy matters almost a year ago, on February 5, 2024.
It was not so easy to draft the initiative, as there were only two or three possible hypotheses: directing the constitutional reform to take the judges’ hands off of them to prevent them from expressing an opinion on any business in the energy sector…
…to straighten out the batteries to limit foreign investment in all energy issues or non-renewable resources…
…or seal the country’s borders to limit the scope of any trade agreement that would allow the participation of private companies in the generation or distribution of any type of energy, or of mining or natural resources.
In none of the three hypotheses was there any legal or constitutional reason, unless they wanted to produce another legal mess that would be once again rejected by the judges, who are more arrogant than ever today.
Among other reasons, that is why, in that same commemoration of the Constitution, AMLO also presented his controversial, ridiculous and ineffective Judicial Reform.
Both, among 16 others, were passed to a Congress controlled by Morena, which approved them without even reviewing them!
Sheinbaum, mixed participation
A couple of days ago, President Claudia Sheinbaum signed the initiatives for secondary laws to her predecessor’s energy reform, with which Pemex and CFE have now ceased to be parastatal, productive companies, and have returned to being state-owned.
There are six more new laws! Among them, the Law of the State Public Enterprise for Pemex and CFE, the Law of Planning and Energy Transition, and the Law of the Electricity and Hydrocarbons Sector, which will be approved without a murmur by the legislative herds of Morena and its satellites.
That there will be participation of private initiative in a proportion of 54% for state-owned companies and 46% for those who dare to come and invest in them, which are currently over-indebted, practically without viability and, due among other things, to the physical and legal insecurity in which the country already lives.
Ten years ago, the European publication Business France , through its director Muriel Penicaud , sent us the following message: no French company in the mid- to high-market range will invest in Mexican hydrocarbons as long as this level of violence exists. This is the voice of the European Parliament.
We still need to hear what Donald Trump has to say on the matter .
Reforms come and go, and in the meantime, the country, which requires more and more electricity — still insufficient today –, more resources from the extraction and refining of its black gold, and more fuel, is in Babia.
Clues
“It is a reversal of the 2013 reform,” said Sheinbaum about the constitutional changes that opened the sector to private companies more than a decade ago. “The public sense of CFE and Pemex is restored as guarantors of energy production for the people of Mexico and national sovereignty.” Let’s see if it is true. * * * That is all for today. Please accept my appreciation for having read this text and, as always, my wishes for you to have a good time and many, many days!
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