MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president is in a rush to complete the big legislative and construction projects he promised before the end of his term in September, and experts say officials are getting a little sloppy in all the rush.
This week, lawmakers from the ruling Morena party mistakenly submitted the wrong pension reform bill to Congress for a vote, before sheepishly admitting the error and rescheduling the vote. They claimed on Thursday that advisors confused one set of documents with another, but the project was almost approved before the opposition realized the error.
“In the legislative process, as in life and in all activities, human errors are made that are not premeditated, that are not malicious,” said Senator Ignacio Mier, representative of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party in the Senate.
The rushed atmosphere extends to infrastructure, with the president’s beloved rail projects suffering egregious construction errors in recent months. Cranes fell from bridges and piles were driven into supposedly protected cave systems. With the presidential elections on June 2 approaching, the president wants to quickly finish his government’s projects.
“There is this rush, because López Obrador wants to implement as much as possible to guarantee his own policies, so that… whoever wins (the election), cannot go back, at least not easily,” said political analyst José Antonio Curly.
But pension reform especially has become a lightning rod for criticism because it would essentially confiscate unclaimed pension funds if a worker doesn’t start using them by age 70.
López Obrador says the seized funds – which he plans to put in a pot for employees whose pensions are too small – will always be available for return if a worker or their dependents show up later to claim them.
“Even if time has passed, they can request the funds be returned,” López Obrador said on Thursday.
But the bill mistakenly submitted for a vote Wednesday night would have actually removed some of those protections. For example, employees who did not receive their pensions until age 70 or 75 because they were still working could still have their pensions confiscated.
And because pension withdrawals are already so bureaucratic and restrictive – dependents in Mexico often have to go to court to access a deceased worker’s pension fund – the idea that a simple request will get the money returned has was received with derision.
“We are against this, because they are going to loot everyone’s accounts,” said opposition senator Rubén Moreira, a member of the former ruling PRI party. “Firstly, because the money in individual accounts is the personal property of many people, and secondly, because this will not solve the pensions problem.”
The tension surrounds López Obrador’s disdain for private or individual benefit programs. The president frequently criticizes “individualism” and “aspirationalism”, a term in Spanish roughly equivalent to “progress” or “raising oneself by one’s own efforts”. He prefers large, government-run programs.
Mexico’s woefully underfunded pension programs were converted in 1997 to individual accounts somewhat similar to the US 401K program, in which a worker and his or her employer both contribute to a personal retirement investment account.
López Obrador has long criticized this change, saying that the government itself should guarantee everyone a pension equivalent to 100% of their last salary. It is clear that the Mexican government does not have enough money to do this, hence the proposed raid on “unclaimed” individual accounts.
“The withdrawal of these individual, unclaimed accounts… could affect the rights of workers and their beneficiaries if they do not file a claim,” said Orlando Corona, a social security expert at the Mexican Institute of Financial Executives.
Corona said that a major publicity and advertising campaign would be needed to remind workers about the importance of claiming their money – something the president’s plan does not include.
López Obrador has a history of rushing laws through Congress without much time for lawmakers to actually read the bills, just as he has sought to move forward with his infrastructure construction projects by exempting them from the normal licensing and environmental review processes. .
On Wednesday, his party approved a law in the Senate that would prohibit judges from blocking government projects, even if citizens file appeals against them.
The main projects that López Obrador likes most are the railway lines. Mexico largely abandoned state passenger train service in the 1990s and the president is building rail lines to bring that back. The problem is that these projects are either environmentally questionable or too large to be completed during his tenure.
López Obrador promised to finish them before he leaves office on September 30, boasting that they are being built in “record time.” He spends most weekends flying to different construction sites to personally supervise the work.
But it appears that it is difficult to do careful work in a hurry, both in legislation and in construction. “It’s not advisable, but that’s how they’re doing it,” said Crespo.
On Tuesday, an 800-ton gantry crane – a huge piece of machinery used to position prefabricated concrete bridge spans – fell to the ground on an elevated railway line intended to connect Mexico City with neighboring Toluca. No one was injured, but the accident delayed construction and terrified neighbors.
In January, another crane dropped a huge gap of prefabricated concrete onto the road below, narrowly missing two men who were repairing a truck.
In March, a loose rail fitting caused the derailment of a car on the president’s pet project – a tourist rail route known as the Mayan Train, planned to carry visitors and local residents on a loop around the Yucatan peninsula.
No one was injured in the incident, but as it was a high-speed train, the carelessness was worrying.
The railway switch involved in the accident was designed to be operated automatically. Although the automated system is not yet operational, the president wanted this part of the programming up and running anyway.
Therefore, the switch – which diverts the train cars to another track – must be manually loosened, moved and returned to its original position by hand. Apparently someone didn’t tighten the fitting again.
In the same project, the government acknowledged that steel and cement piles intended to support an elevated section of track were driven directly through the roofs of sensitive limestone caves.
The network of underground caves, lakes and rivers along Mexico’s Caribbean coast are environmentally sensitive and have been found to house some of the oldest human remains in North America.
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