Mexico: Privatizers attack national energetics
October 17, 2009
The areas that are serviced by the national electrical company “Luz y Fuerza del Centro” (LyFC) suffer. Or rather we may say “used to service”, as early morning of the previous Sunday the decree on closing down that company was published. The night before, late Saturday evening, the police units took over the control of the buildings of “LyFC” in Mexico City and a number of other cities in the centre of the country. On Sunday evening, president of the country Felipe Calderon addressed the nation and explained that the company was closed down due to its “commercial impractibility”, “inefficiency”, “bad financial state” and “inability to improve service to the population”. The president naturally assured that it was done to the benefit of the Mexican people.
However, hardly anybody in Mexico has any doubts that such course of events has been caused by the preparation for privatization of the power sector, which, similar to the oil company “Pemex”, is a tasty morsel for transnational privatizers. The situations in the both companies are very much alike. Both here and there, bureaucracy, for a number of last years, deliberately reduced investments in modernization, raised all kinds of difficulties to normal operation. And all this was done to convince the society that the state is not able to be an efficient owner. Despite the actual sabotage, “Pemex” continued not only to remain active, but also be very attractively profitable. The same can be said about the electrical company. They planned to pocket it for a long time, but were afraid to. They were afraid of a powerful Trade union of electricians, which has always been staunch in upholding the rights of factory and office workers. It might have the reason that LyFC was “closed down” on weekend! Sugaring the pill and cajoling the company workers, Calderon in advance promised the moon to those, who would lose job, that they would receive stipulated by the law compensations and “even more”. But not a word was said about how 44 thousand workers would be employed in future.
As a matter of course, closing down of the company aroused massive protests. Thousands of people went out to the streets of Mexico city. In Internet one can find impressive pictures of those manifestations. As Mexican specialists note, “the federal government and radical left forces measure swords”. According to analysts, the government decision polarized the society and “set people against” electricians. Hence are the lengthy “interruptions” in power supply. The government blames the workers that “are unable” to quickly take care of breakdown, whereas trade union leaders say that now the responsibility for all acts of sabotage lies on the Federal committee on electricity to whose authority the company was handed over.
Martin Esparza – leader of the trade union of electricians – at a meeting near the Monument to Revolution declared that the government decision contradicted the constitution, that “closing down” - was just a “mere simulation” and that the trade unions would discuss the tactics of further resistance.
And really, the situation in Mexico, as political scientists write, is rather delicate. Somebody block the streets, thus protesting against “ill-intentioned cutoffs”. Others support the electricians, being aware from the previous experience that privatization not always leads to improvement of quality of work and almost always to increase of tariffs.
The decision of the government to close down the company at the height of crisis testified to despair of the authorities. Mexico, “bound” to the USA with agreement on free market (NAFTA), suffers most of all in Latin America from crisis. Trying to save the situation, Calderon resorts to unpopular measures – he cuts down financing of education, health care, culture, in other words, he sacrifices those things that the country has been proud of most of all!
In Mexico they more often say that the neo-liberal economic model, imposed on by the United States, “does not yield fruit” either in economics or in social field, that the time has come for all-nation discussion of national priorities and strategy of their implementation. The most sagacious analysts think that Mexico has already matured for reforms of socialist nature and coming to power of “populist leader”.