Naomi Carmona
Morelia, Michoacán.- The opinion authorizing the municipalities of Michoacán, to access the 25 per cent funding contract of the Social Infrastructure Contributions Fund (FAIS), was scrapped because of the document’s ignorance, which ended in a legislative bloc on the side of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) and the Labour Party (PT) parties, and the absenteeism of several deputies on the other side – PAN, PRD, MC, PRI-.
The document that was made by the Commissions of Finance and Public Debt, and that of Programming, Budget and Public Account indicated that municipalities could take out credits as an advance of the shares of up to 25% of the FAIS, provided that the loan is repaid before the administration’s departure to the administration that requests it and as long as the chair of each presidency approves it.
The opinion required a qualified majority of the Michoacan Congress, i.e. two-thirds of the vote in favour, which was not achieved, as the PT and Morena formed a bloc and refused to listen to reasons.
The first to make use of the grandstand and who showed a total ignorance of the opinion, although it is part of one of the above-mentioned Commissions was Baltazar Gaona García, who devoted himself to listing historical debts of federal and state administrations, which had nothing to do with the topic to be discussed, such as the Bank Savings Protection Fund (Fobaproa), or the account called “Charges to Trade”, or better known as the “Liquor”.
On top of his misplaced speech, the petitioner violated the Organic and Procedural Law of Congress, spending a lot in the time the Act gave him to reason his vote, even the congressman tried to take a few more minutes for a positioning that had retired, falling at the end into ridicule and ending up screaming in the middle of the House when the Grandstand microphone went out.
Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla of Morena pulled the “caste” from the left and directly questioned the chairman of the Finance Commission some articles of the document, which in his saying were misleading and could be the window of paperwork to authorize a million-dollar debt State.
For his part, the expert on the subject when presiding over the Commission on Finance and Public Debt, Arturo Hernández Vázquez, repeated to the point of exhaustion that the possibility of loans from municipalities is not to acquire a debt, but to make an investment in infrastructure, before the budget cut by the federal government, since it showed Gaona García that it had missed the meeting where it would be ruled.
“Even more seriously, a colleague of the Commission than was delivered on the day it was ruled was not present, I am concerned. I come with this proposal for an opinion for wanting to support municipalities that are in concern and total abandonment because of the lack of municipal public infrastructure. Since the Fourth Transformation, everything has been dressed in corruption, where in the end the affected is the citizen.”
While the perredist, Octavio Ocampo Córdova, was clear in pointing out that in Morena, none of the deputies except Sergio Báez Torres, has been municipal president, reason for his insensitivity and empathy with local administrations, while criticizing those of the icing party, of wanting to fight corruption, leaving the smaller governments as municipal ones help.
The cherry on Baltazar Gaona’s ignorance cake was when he tried to disprove the perredist by saying that no municipality had approached the State Congress to express the lack of infrastructure and its claim to access a loan, however, it was He learned from Arturo Hernández himself last September that at least 14 municipal administrations intended to take out credits, including Aporo, Copándaro, Hidalgo, Uruapan, Erongarícuaro, Tzintzuntzan, Villa Jiménez, Villa Madero, Marcos Castellanos, Santa Clara del Cobre and others.
In the end, the opinion was discarded when it did not get a majority qualified with 15 votes against and 16 in favour, closing the possibility of municipalities of recourse as a loan, without debt for public works.
