Since last January 11, Ariadna Montiel Reyes is the new head of the Welfare Secretariat, whose first task will be to operate a bag of more than 290,000 million from four priority social programs in the midst of the 2022 electoral process and towards 2024. Montiel Reyes had served as undersecretary in the unit since the beginning of the administration, before succeeding María Luisa Albores and Javier May, as head of it. Hand in hand with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, he finalized the disappearance of the support program for children’s stays and took charge of the pension for the well-being of older adults.
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The new head of Welfare, Ariadna Montiel, thanked President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for his assignment and recalled that “the poor come first.”
At the end of 2021, Montiel Reyes presumed that 10.9 million people benefited from four priority programs (pension for the well-being of older adults, people with disabilities, support for the well-being of girls and boys, children of working mothers and Sembrando Vida), which will have increases this year. Already in the first days of the year, when she was named incumbent, she thanked the president and insisted on the repeated phrase “first the poor” of the president. “May we never forget who we fight for; for the poor and the forgotten; Let’s make our dream of transformation come true so that they are always #PrimeroLosPobres”. We will continue to do so. For specialists, the way in which social policy unfolds intersects with ‘client politics’, since a conditioning factor is generated between the program and the person who delivers it. ‘Money given directly is one of the main elements of clientelistic politics because a link is created between the person who receives the support and the ruler who generates that support,’ points out Gustavo López Montiel, a political scientist at the Tecnológico de Monterrey. The new head of Welfare is the one who has been in charge of delivering these supports by mandate of the president. Montiel Reyes joined the Welfare Secretariat team as undersecretary in 2018. Over the months, she was the main person in charge of one of the priority programs of the current government: the pension for the welfare of older adults. In 2012, she was general director of the Passenger Transport Network (RTP) of the Federal District, during the administration of Marcelo Ebrard, who sounds like one of Morena’s candidates for succession in 2024. She began her political career as a member of the Left current Democratic National Party (IDN) in the PRD, directed by René Bejarano, protagonist of one of the scandals that most affected the president – as he himself recognized – when in 2004 he was recorded receiving money from businessman Carlos Ahumada. “How could people not think that I was not involved, if he was my private secretary? Incredible, it was a very hard blow! That hurt me more because it had to do with my honesty,” he assured at a press conference last December, in which he clarified that Bejarano was no longer his private secretary as head of government of the Federal District, a period of momentum for his policy of support for older adults.
After his appointment, the delegate for social programs in Chihuahua and former candidate for governor, Juan Carlos Loera, celebrated the news. “Very successful, we are both radicals, and I say it with great pleasure,” he told the local newspaper El Herald of Chihuahua. However, for some the movement prior to the elections on June 5 caused suspicion, when governors will be renewed in six states (Aguascalientes, Durango, Hidalgo, Quintana Roo, Oaxaca and Tamaulipas) and towards the second part of the López Obrador government. towards the end of his six-year term. “Five months before the elections for governor in six states, the President removes Javier May from the Ministry of Welfare and puts a super unconditional, Ariadna Montiel, to be in charge of distributing all the money from the client programs of the #4T ”, published #Dices, an “information platform”, sponsored by the Employers’ Confederation of the Mexican Republic (Coparmex), on Twitter. The consulting firm Integralia identified as one of the political risks with a very high probability for next year, that the president intensifies his policy of mobilization and polarization around priority issues on his government agenda, including the use of government programs . “Including consultation on the revocation of the mandate, energy reform, electoral interventionism, budgetary and operational strangulation of autonomous bodies, intensification of social programs for patronage purposes, as well as a political-electoral reform”, he pointed out in an analysis. López Montiel recalled that in the current government the programs that generated intermediation, such as child care, disappeared, because that way the link between the support and the person who gave it was not generated. ‘Programs that generated intermediation disappeared, for example, daycare centers, and what is done is to generate direct support because people –regardless of what the support is for them– feel that they thank the president, there is always the message that if you don’t vote for us there will no longer be this support,’ he said.
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Criticism of social programs
López Obrador’s flagship programs have been criticized for flaws in their planning, poor measurement of their impact, overspending and even improper allocation of resources, as documented by audits and autonomous bodies, despite this, the federal government has insisted on maintaining and enlarging them. , as is the case of the Pension for the Welfare of Older Adults, which absorbs 30.5% of the subsidy programs, and which Montiel Reyes has been coordinating for several months. The organization México Evalúa points out that direct transfers for older adults have been López Obrador’s flagship policy, since he was head of government in the Federal District, and this year his national comparison will grow by 69% compared to 2021, which represents 97,000 additional mdp. The growth is due to the fact that last April it was announced that the pensions granted will increase 20% plus inflation each year, until reaching 6,000 pesos in 2024, and from this year support began to be given from the age of 65 to all in general, when before it was from this age for the indigenous. Regarding the program, the Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF) detected deficiencies in the control of payments to beneficiaries, which resulted in an amount to be clarified of almost 1,000 million pesos from the budget of the Ministry of Welfare in the Public Account 2019. In addition, the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval) has pointed out that the program fails to prove its impact on the target population, since it lacks updated statistical information.
Likewise, Animal Politico recently identified that Montiel Reyes and Rocío García, who was appointed in her place, canceled the childcare program without verifying the corruption that the current head of Welfare accused. “They promoted the cancellation of childcare centers for having found alleged corruption in their operation, but in reality they only had an evaluation that listed non-compliance and their respective recommendations such as ‘use a trash can with a lid’, ‘use short nails and no nail polish’, ‘use face masks when serving food’ or that ‘children’s toothbrushes have their name’”, says the text signed by Nayeli Roldán. The media also stated that Rocío García, “as director of the DIF, conditioned the delivery in cash of 2% and up to 4% of salary to employees of middle and upper management for a supposed program of which there is no official trace.” Montiel Reyes will have among its objectives the dispersion of the largest amount of money destined for López Obrador’s social programs, of whom he is close, in the second half of his government, in the midst of controversies and with the prelude to having already been sanctioned by the Electoral Court of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) last year for the undue promotion of support during electoral times. With information from Shelma Navarrete