Budgetary frivolity and arbitrary allocation of financial resources—a political civil war?

ALFREDO AZCARATE VARELA
THE BAJA POST/EDITOR
SOURCE: pixabay.com/eugene_brennan

The frivolity with which the budget is allocated under the «4T» (Fourth Transformation) is astonishing. Defenders and sycophants of the MORENA party have gone to great lengths to downplay the corruption within the National Electoral Institute (INE)—corruption that began with the arrival of Guadalupe Taddei at an institution that had functioned effectively until she took charge. Corruption allegations against Taddei prompted a defensive response from Claudia Sheinbaum, who claimed that “it all started with Lorenzo Córdova.”

However, the budget allocations received and the major business deals orchestrated by Taddei involve vast sums of money—much like the millions of pesos poured into «megaprojects» such as the Tren Maya, the Interoceanic Corridor, the Dos Bocas refinery, and the Felipe Ángeles International Airport

Because of the insistence on maintaining these unprofitable projects—which require constant injections of millions of pesos—other areas have been neglected. The agricultural sector, for instance, has been abandoned; all support for the commercialization of agricultural products has been withdrawn, leaving, among others, the wheat farmers of the Mexicali Valley on the verge of bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, deficiencies in the healthcare sector have led to a shortage of medicines—a reality that Claudia Sheinbaum and her associates deny, choosing instead to attack those who point it out.

As with most of Mexico’s problems, the narrative is reduced and simplified: the claim is that an «ultraconservative» past is responsible for various instances of corruption—cases that remain unresolved and unexplained even after eight years of the «Fourth Transformation» (or Morenismo)—with the argument being that these issues simply stem from the past.