Ten Mexican state governors announce their departure from CONAGO

Ten Mexican state governors announce their departure from the Conago, the body that brings together all the States, due to their confrontation with the federal Executive.

After 19 years of existence, the body that seats all the states of the country at a single table to coordinate territorial policies and achieve fiscal adjustments with the central government, will cease to function as it was known until now.

Ten opposition governors have announced their departure from the National Conference of Governors (Conago) on Monday, September 7th, considering that they no longer fulfill their role.

The governors, who make up the so-called Federalist Alliance, have consummated their break on Monday during a meeting attended by nine of the ten dissidents. Among them are Javier Corral, governor of Chihuahua; José Rosas Aispuro, from Durango; Enrique Alfaro, from Jalisco; Silvano Aureoles, from Michoacán; Javier García, from Tamaulipas; José Ignacio Peralta, from Colima; Miguel Ángel Riquelme, from Coahuila; Jaime Rodríguez, from Nuevo León; Diego Sinhue Rodríguez, from Guanajuato; and Martín Orozco, from Aguascalientes.

Javier Corral has called on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador not to consider them enemies: “We have the primary right to defend our people and our entities, we were also elected.” “The mechanism no longer fulfills the function with which it was created, it lost strength and all the potential it had as a body for dialogue between governors. Today it does not even function as a mechanism for dialogue, ”he said on behalf of the dissidents, who mostly belong to the opposition National Action (PAN). At the moment, the Executive has not responded to the position of the governors.

Among his arguments, Corral has vindicated the legitimacy of the votes obtained. The president of Chihuahua has accused López Obrador of promoting the message “you are with me or against me.” “The country wants to tear apart. The way in which the national division is stirred up and Mexicans are classified according to whether or not they coincide with what the central government says is very difficult for Mexico, ”Corral said at the beginning of the meeting.

Created in 2001 during the six-year term of Vicente Fox, the Conago is a permanent forum that periodically seats the 32 governors of the country for the analysis of regional problems and the search for solutions with one voice in front of the central government. In these two decades, 59 meetings have been held and four generations of local leaders have passed with the aim of strengthening federalism and the rule of law, as indicated by its founding principles.

The importance of Conago lies in the fact that it had managed to become a space for dialogue with the federal government respected by both parties, through which fiscal changes have been achieved that have benefited the States. Within the framework of Conago, the First National Tax Convention of 2004 was held and some of the future structural reforms in education or security were designed.

However, in recent years, the organization has become one more space for political confrontation between the different currents that run the country.

Finally, this Monday one of the few existing communication channels between López Obrador and the opposition has been destroyed.

The ten governors who are leaving the CONAGO insist that it has ceased to be an instrument of dialogue and no longer serves as a counterweight to central power.

At the end of August, the governor of Tamaulipas, Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, also a PAN member, indicated by the Lozoya case, reported that he was going to leave the group. Three days before, on August 28, the Governor of Nuevo León, Jaime Rodríguez “El Bronco”, regretted that in the meetings of the Conago nothing was achieved, for which he announced his departure from the body. The association is made of governors, not of states.

Source: El País