Crime and public safety Mexico president’s top priority

‘There were no shoving matches at the door, no showdowns at the dais. Not a catcall was uttered,’ writes the L.A. Times’ Ken Ellingwood. ‘Instead, Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday delivered the annual state of the union report to Congress only in written form, skirting the sort of pandemonium that had broken out the previous two years.’ ‘Mexican presidents traditionally address Congress on Sept. 1 to open its session. But a change in the law allows them, for the first time since the Mexican Revolution nearly a century ago, to present the annual informe in writing to avoid the circus-like drama that was becoming a yearly ritual.’ ‘Calderon’s interior minister, Juan Camilo Mouriño, delivered the document to Congress. A copy in Spanish is also available on the Internet at www.informe.gob.mx.’

‘So what can Mr. Calderón say that will make any immediate difference,’ writes Adam Thompson. ‘Unfortunately, the answer is nothing. In spite of last month’s (August) National Security Agreement, a pact to form a common front against violence and signed by government, opposition groups, business and the church, the ugly truth is that there are no short term solutions. ‘The violence that Mexico suffers today is the result of the growing power of the drugs cartels on one hand and, on the other, years of underinvestment in the country’s poorly organized 640-odd police forces. ‘Mexico’s only hope of reducing the violence and beating the cartels in the longer term is to invest sufficient resources in establishing sound police and military intelligence -- something that is glaringly absent today -- as well as better paid and better trained officers. Until that happens, there is almost no chance that things will change.’