Mexican President Felipe Calderon has shuffled his cabinet early in 2011 as election maneuvering leading up to the 2012 presidential election begins.
Juan Molinar resigned from his post as Secretary of Communications and Transportation to take up the job of Secretary of Elections for Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN). This year sees key elections for governors in six states, making it an important year for consolidation before 2012.
In Molinar’s place comes Harvard-educated economist Dionisio Perez Jacome, who is not a member of the PAN but was Calderon’s close advisor during the 2006 presidential campaign and knew the current president from their days at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). Perez Jacome will be tasked with overseeing a more competitive environment in the communications and transport sectors so that more people have access to the internet, telephone and other services on better terms.
Calderon’s former professor Georgina Kessel moves from Secretary of Energy to the head up the National Bank of Public Works and Services (Banobras). In her place comes Yale-educated Jose Antonio Meade.
Calderon has given Meade the huge challenge of “driving a roots up transformation” of Mexican oil monopoly Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), to “eliminate privileges and guaranteeing transparency.”
The job as the president’s personal secretary, traditionally an important position in Mexican politics, has been handed to Gil Zuarth, born in 1977. Zuarth will be responsible for managing Calderon’s agenda.
Calderon said the new faces “will permit us to move forward this 2011 with renewed impetus.”
Many commentators are suggesting Calderon has used the shuffle to bring in his close confidents. Now in the last third of his presidency, he will be hoping to salvage a legacy from his term in office. At present the most prominent feature has been his decision to confront drug cartels head on. The result has been an upsurge in violent deaths.
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