La Jornada: By Irma Eréndira Sandoval. "The ominous proposal of the Green Party to privatize jails
and prisons has become part of the rentier and predatory logic of public
services that has left the national economy in ruin over the last 30 years. The
horrible daily reality that is lived in penitentiaries, which was cruelly
manifested in the recent prison break and massacre in Apodaca, Nuevo León, isn’t
a result of bad public stewardship. Rather, it is the fault of the federal and
local governments that have abdicated the administration of these facilities
and left them to the control of private actors and powerful factions. It
demonstrates that private prisons tend to be more violent and corrupt than public
ones and that they are operated with poorly trained personnel with low salaries
and a high turnover rate. These factors lead to more abuses of the prisoners’
most basic human rights.
This type of “initiative” has found its utmost expression in
the Law of Public-Private Associations (LAPP is its Spanish acronym), signed by
Felipe Calderon on January 16th. This law is part of the neoliberal agenda that
has governed the country through corrupt and inefficient privatizations— a type
of governance that Carlos Salinas used in the 1990s to give power to his friends,
monopolize markets, and destroy the competency and competitiveness of the
economy. Today the LAPP demonstrates that, beyond any temporary election season
disputes, the PRI and PAN have shared an agenda of national mismanagement.
The LAPP constitutes the absolute subordination of the
public interest to the directives of financial intermediaries and means the
institutionalization of debt, illegality and corruption. The reform establishes
long-term contracts (up to 50 years or more) with private national and
international companies that would directly control the infrastructure and provision
of areas strategic for the country’s development. These services include healthcare,
public security, communication, infrastructure, education, etc.
The precedent was a series of laws called the Project for
the Provision of Services (PPS in its Spanish initials) through which the
Secretary of Housing, taking advantage of legal loopholes, began to illegally privatize
wide sectors of government services. Since 2003 the government has privatized highways,
hydroelectric infrastructure, bridges, hospitals, education centers, and even
penitentiaries throughout the country. But this system still wasn’t enough for the
monopolies, which felt compelled to push for control of granting licenses,
permits, and other kinds of authorizations.
The LAPP isn’t about more “concessions” but rather more “joint-ventures”
which will mean even less obligations and commitments to the public interest. The
new law asserts that public projects are no longer subject to the Law of
Acquisitions, the Public Sector Leasing Act, the Public Works Act, nor related
laws that were designed to provide for a level of transparency and to avoid
conflicts of interest. All of that will be gone and buried.
Before, the public sector was responsible for determining
the necessity of carrying out investment projects. Starting today it will be
the private sector that will detect the “necessities” and present motu proprio its proposals. In this way,
projects with financial-mercantilist motivations, which are financed by
public resources, will be placed above public priorities defined in legislation
like the Plan for National Development.
The new “joint-venture” contracts can also be “transferred (in
whole or in part) or guaranteed in favor of third parties.” In other words,
crucial areas of national development will literally be gambled on the financial and speculative adventures of private investors.
LAPP will not foment more private investment in public
services; in fact, it will lead to the contrary. Under the new scheme, the
state could finance up to 100% of the new investments and then issue
expropriation decrees to domestic and international private companies. All of
these entails regressive reforms to the Expropriation Law, the General Law of
National Goods, the Federal Civil Code, and others. At the same time, the payment
of debt occurred by way of these new projects will be prioritized and
obligatory every year, violating the power of the House of Representatives to
direct funds to areas of more pressing need and to the public interest.
Another worrisome procedural “innovation” is related to the process
of valuation. In the past, the Institute of the Valuation and Administration of
National Goods was the only entity that could give authorized appraisals. With
the passage of the LAPP, private banks which are almost completely controlled
by foreign firms, will now be able to give estimates. Without a doubt, these
estimates will favor private interests at the expense of bleeding the public
budget even more.
Calderon is delighted because, with the speech of looking at
how to balance risks between the state and private agents, he has succeeded in strengthening the ever-present neoliberal project by privatizing gains and socializing losses. I urge that Mexicans stop the embezzlement caused by this law that
puts the power of the state and national development in risk." Spanish original
Translation: Mikael Rojas, Americas Program
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