Tuesday 18 December 2012

President presents security plan for Mexico

President Enrique Peña Nieto presented on 17 December a plan to restore "peace" to crime-ridden Mexico, urging a systematic crime policy devoid of "improvisations," based on shared responsibilities and eschewing party political interests, Agence France-Presse reported. Peña Nieto was speaking in the capital to members of the Public Security National Council (CNSP), and state governors, representatives of government branches and rights activists. Peña Nieto cited homicides, kidnappings and extortions as priority targets of reduction. A 10,000-member gendarmerie was to be formed and the national territory divided into five operational zones. The agency cited the plan's six broad outlines as planning a policy with clear objectives, crime prevention through social security programmes to be financed with funds in 2013, respect for human rights, coordination between and reform of security institutions and evaluation of objectives. The armed forces would continue fighting cartels for now he said, while new police were being trained. State governors and officials at the session signed 12 agreements on implementing the plan, El Universal reported. These included measures such as a national training programme for police, drafting police action protocols and including rights activists in the CNSP. On 18 December, Mexico's Prosecutor-General Jesús Murillo Karam spoke in an interview of some of the problems the state has faced in recent years in fighting organized crime, including he said an ill-prepared judiciary and institutions. He said it was "not a problem of government, the judiciary was made for a country at peace," El Universal reported. The judiciary he said had to face the "juncture" of rising cartel violence "as it emerged." He was particularly critical of almost 4,000 preventive or provisional arrests he described as unfair and inefficient; very few of those he said had led to the imprisonment of criminals. Murillo estimated 70,000 people died in drug-related violence under Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-12), the president who began to wage war on the cartels. Murillo said these had broken up with the capture or killing of cartel bosses and prompted the rise of 60 to 80 new gangs or smaller cartels.