Breathe
By Sonia Serrano Íñiguez
At the end of Enrique Alfaro Ramírez's administration in Jalisco, the state Congress approved a controversial reform with a personal dedication to provide security, at public expense, to Hugo Luna Vázquez, the former chief of staff, currently a federal deputy for Movimiento Ciudadano (MC).
The reform also added that the travel expenses of the bodyguards will be covered with public resources, a change in the law that seems to directly benefit the governor, as he has stated on several occasions that once he finishes his term of office, at the beginning of December, he will leave the country to continue with his project of becoming a soccer coach. For several days, his partner and his youngest daughter have been living in Madrid, Spain.
The so-called #LeyHugoLuna was an initiative presented by the MC faction in the Congress of the state of Jalisco to modify the Law of the Protection Service for the state of Jalisco and its Municipalities, which was made public by journalist Ilse Martínez. The main points are to provide personal security charged to the treasury for the chief of staff, despite the fact that he/she has no security-related attributions, as well as special prosecutors, such as the anti-corruption prosecutor.
The level of questioning of this reform was raised after the murder of Jaime Navarro Hernandez , director of Prosecution Follow-up of the State Prosecutor's Office, strictly speaking the third in charge of this agency and who arrived at a pharmacy without any protection, completely vulnerable to his assassins.
In addition, the urgency of providing security for one of Governor Enrique Alfaro's best friends, since they both attended high school, contrasts with the governor's constant declarations that Jalisco is safer than ever. This, despite the fact that he will hand over the government with the state in first place nationally in the number of missing persons, in bodies rescued from clandestine graves and in the first places in number of clandestine graves, added to an unprecedented forensic crisis, with more than 9 thousand bodies and segments accumulated in the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences.
A few days ago, journalist Lauro Rodríguez published in El Diario NTR Guadalajara that the perception of insecurity among Jalisco residents increased significantly during the government of Enrique Alfaro, according to data from the National Survey of Victimization and Perception of Public Safety (Envipe) of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography. The worst year was 2020, where 83.1 percent of citizens said they felt unsafe.
This government has been characterized by excessive concern for the security of officials close to Governor Enrique Alfaro. Proof of this is the payment of 138.7 million pesos in the leasing of armored vehicles, paid to the company Casanova Vallejo SA de CV, for top-level state government officials.
This is in addition to the purchase of 27 more armored vehicles in 2022.
The law regulating the assignment of bodyguards to officials and former public officials was approved by the State Congress at the request of the current governor, in December 2018, with the intention of reducing the number of state police dedicated to that task. The then local deputy and now state leader of Movimiento Ciudadano, Mirza Flores, stated that "some state secretaries, who have nothing to do with security issues make use of security personnel, not only for themselves, but for their wife and for their children. And in many cases they make use of these qualified people to develop a security job almost as servants, gardeners or errand boys".
The reform had the effect of reducing the number of security personnel assigned to outgoing officials, but not to those who formed part of the first MC government, which increased 55 percent with respect to the previous administration, from 198 to 307. This issue was questioned when former governor Jorge Aristoteles Sandoval was assassinated in December 2020, because at that time he only had two people accompanying him, precisely because of the reduction in the number of bodyguards ordered by Enrique Alfaro.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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