Fox Aides Vow New Rule of Law in Mexico

Declaring war on crime, impunity and national insecurity, President-elect Vicente Fox’s top aides Monday unveiled a blueprint to radically transform the nation’s corrupted police and judiciary and demilitarize its anti-narcotics efforts.

The bold proposal includes a new public security system that would unify and professionalize Mexico’s many police forces and a new federal prosecutor general’s office that would replace the police and judicial functions of the long-troubled attorney general’s office.

The prosecutor general also would oversee a new FBI-style Federal Agency of Investigation, which would replace the attorney general’s ineffective and discredited Federal Judicial Police.

Former federal prosecutor Jose Luis Reyes and Sen. Francisco Molina, the two aides who presented the sweeping plan at a news conference here, are expected to be given top law enforcement posts in the next government after Fox becomes Mexico’s first opposition president in 71 years on Dec. 1.

Both men cautioned that the proposals will be honed and refined in the coming months, and that most ultimately will need the approval of Mexico’s next Congress. Fox’s National Action Party significantly increased the number of seats it holds in both houses of Congress in the July 2 election, but it lacks a majority.

Analysts said the proposals clearly form the framework of how Fox plans to make good on postelection pledges to create a new rule of law in a nation where insecurity and injustice have reigned for years.

“Mexican society demands of Vicente Fox a true rule of law, not just in words . . . a true rule of law in which public security authorities are genuine protectors of society and not the source of fear for its citizens,” Reyes said.

“Mexicans also demanded of Vicente Fox as Mexico’s next president that he once and for all take the hands [of the presidency] out of the prosecution and application of justice.”

Molina, a ranking member of Fox’s National Action Party who served for eight months as Mexico’s anti-drug czar in 1996, stressed that Fox’s image of being untainted by the allegations of drug corruption that have haunted the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party gives the next government the ability to transform Mexican law enforcement.

“While in the past we could have thought of a suspicious plot between politicians and drug dealers, today that will not be the case,” said Molina, who was dismissed as head of Mexico’s now-disbanded National Institute for Combating Drugs when his boss, the country’s first opposition attorney general, was fired for failing to solve two major political assassinations.

The anti-drug institute was itself decommissioned when Molina’s replacement, Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was charged with--and later convicted of--having criminal links to Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel.

Among the more controversial proposals advanced Monday were plans to gradually diminish the role of the army in the war against the wealthy and powerful Mexican mafias that smuggle about 60% of the Colombian cocaine sold in the United States. After four years, the multibillion-dollar industry has begun to corrupt even the army--one of the nation’s few professional institutions.

Molina said relations between Mexico and the U.S. in the war against drugs “will continue to strengthen” under Fox.

In Washington, the Justice Department said Atty. Gen. Janet Reno was informed in advance of the proposals and looked forward to working with Fox’s aides to improve bilateral law enforcement efforts. Justice Department officials declined to discuss specific details of Fox’s proposals.

Molina suggested that the Mexican army had assumed too much of a police role in the drug fight.

“There are certain areas that definitely have resulted in successes, and one must recognize it,” Molina said, praising the military’s role in eradicating marijuana and opium fields and intercepting cocaine shipments on land and sea.

But unlike in Colombia, where, he said, drug trafficking is linked to guerrilla movements trying to destroy the state and, thus, is a national security issue, “in Mexico, it is fundamentally a problem of violence linked to criminal organizations.” And that, he said, is best dealt with by civilian police.

“In Mexico, undoubtedly what we have to strengthen is precisely the credibility of our police forces, fiercely eliminating the corruption that is there and professionalizing the forces that we have.”

Molina conceded that the plan follows a long history of failed efforts to overhaul Mexican law enforcement under the reform-minded government of President Ernesto Zedillo.

“Since 1994, public security strategies have been changing, given that the most heartfelt demand of President Zedillo as a candidate was public security,” Molina said. “In 1998, the strategy changed again. . . . The [public security] budget increased 300% from 1997 to 1999. Despite all these strategies, after six years, crime has gone down 4%.

“This new proposal, this new strategy, is . . . meant to address what were the strengths and weaknesses of the earlier strategies and to position ourselves to project into the future.”

The proposals Reyes and Molina put forward Monday go far beyond any of the reform measures tried in the past.

While quashing rumors that Fox planned to “disband” the entire attorney general’s office after years of scandals brought down one top Mexican law enforcement official after another, the advisors said their plan will fundamentally transform it.

In effect, Reyes said, the attorney general’s office will be replaced by the office of the Federal Prosecutor General, which will prosecute federal crimes uncovered by the Federal Agency of Investigation. Reyes said the agency will “have some characteristics similar but not identical to the FBI.”

He stressed that the new federal prosecutor “will enjoy clear autonomy” from the president, who will merely propose a candidate for the job. The Senate will be given the power to confirm or deny the choice. And the upper house also will have the final say on dismissing a prosecutor general.

The aides also proposed creating a new secretariat of security and judicial services, which would consolidate and professionalize the police and take over some of the internal security functions now in the hands of the powerful Interior Ministry.

For Fox, Reyes said, security and justice will rank among employment, health and education as top priorities. And he vowed that the transition team will consult in the coming months with academics, researchers, human rights workers and federal prosecutors themselves to improve their reorganization plan.

“These proposals we have made are . . . not decisions adopted from today,” Reyes said. “And once they have become reform initiatives, they will be widely discussed, enriched and perfected by the Congress of the Union.”

Times staff writer Esther Schrader in Washington contributed to this report.

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