Mexico shuts watchdog agencies, intensifying fears for its democracy

MEXICO CITY – Mexican lawmakers voted to abolish the freedom-of-information institute and six other watchdog agencies, deepening fears that President Claudia Sheinbaum is using her landslide electoral victory to eliminate checks and balances essential in a democracy.

The seven agencies were created in the wake of Mexico’s transition to democracy in 2000 and enshrined in the constitution. The country had previously been ruled for 71 years by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The vote Thursday night to eradicate the agencies marks the latest in a series of constitutional changes that are radically reshaping Mexico’s government. They include the adoption of a measure dismantling Mexico’s judiciary and allowing citizens to choose nearly all judges – even those on the Supreme Court. That has raised concerns that Morena, the dominant party, will promote its own candidates and pack the courts.

The seven agencies targeted this month are part of the government but operate independently. They were designed to check state power by giving citizens access to official documents, providing nonpartisan evaluation of government programs, regulating the telecommunications and energy sectors, and blocking monopolies.

Sheinbaum, a leftist who became Mexico’s first female president in October, has said that the agencies have not produced sufficient results and that the money would be better spent on social programs. The agencies’ functions will be folded into the existing bureaucracy.

“You don’t need big agencies or big bureaucracies to make transparency a reality,” Sheinbaum told reporters. “These big agencies were created to fight corruption, but nonetheless corruption continued.”

Academics, opposition politicians, democracy activists and the country’s most prominent business association have accused Sheinbaum and her party of upsetting the division of powers and essentially making a power grab. Since pummeling the opposition in June elections, Morena has had a free hand to implement its policies. It controls the presidency, both houses of Congress and three-quarters of state governorships.

“We are undergoing regime change,” María Marván, the former head of the freedom-of-information institute, said on Aristegui Noticias, a popular radio program. “We are leaving behind a democracy that’s weak and has defects, and moving toward an expanding autocracy.”

Elimination of the agencies was a priority of the previous president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist whose populist style earned him comparisons to Donald Trump. It was only in the June elections, however, that his party and two small coalition partners secured the votes needed to change the constitution. Sheinbaum succeeded López Obrador, her mentor, who wasn’t eligible to run for re-election.

The measure to eradicate the autonomous agencies passed the Chamber of Deputies last week and was approved by the Senate 86-42 on Thursday night. It needs to be ratified by at least 17 of the 32 state legislatures to take effect. It had sailed through five legislatures by Friday morning and was expected to easily win the majority of them.

The freedom-of-information institute, created in 2002, is the best-known of the seven agencies. It helped revolutionize a government system that used to be so opaque that officials didn’t release homicide statistics or casualty figures from earthquakes.

The agency – formally known as the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection, or INAI – became one of the best-ranked of its kind in the world. Journalists used its transparency mechanisms to expose corruption and conflicts of interest. In one bombshell, TV reporter Carmen Aristegui uncovered evidence in 2014 that President Enrique Peña Nieto and his wife used a marble-floored, $7 million mansion built by a contractor close to the government. His popularity tanked.

The institute’s functions will be absorbed by the newly christened Anti-Corruption and Good Government Ministry. But that ministry has a narrower scope of authority and cannot press the judicial and legislative branches to make information public, as the INAI did, legal experts say. Most worrisome, critics say, the government will now be policing itself.

“When you are judge and jury, it’s very hard to convince people that you’re acting impartially,” the head of the freedom-of-information institute, Adrián Alcalá, said in an interview with Radio Fórmula.

Critics have warned that moving institutions such as the antitrust Federal Economic Competition Commission and the telecommunications oversight agency could violate requirements in the North American free-trade agreement on maintaining independent regulators. In response, the government is setting up new agencies within existing ministries that would be able to make independent technical decisions.

Democracy activists warned that eliminating the agencies would undo years of progress in demanding government accountability.

“It will take a while for the majority of citizens to realize that it’s always an error to give all the power to one person or one party or coalition,” wrote Ricardo Elias, a columnist for the daily Reforma newspaper. “By the time this happens, the effort required of citizens to reverse the situation will be monumental.”