The inconsequential resignations of secretaries of state

On WhatsApp I received this message yesterday:

“TRANSCENDED. That on returning from vacation, in January President López will send Miguel Torruco to Moscow as ambassador and will promote Humberto Hernández-Haddad as Secretary of Tourism ”.

To whom he sent it I replied: “Who cares? Few know who Torruco is and even less who Hernández-Haddad is ”.

The sender of the message replied: “To you … I imagine !!!!”

To which I wrote: “What interests me is the transcendent news. This is not.

And it is that in the case of resignations of members of a presidential cabinet, be it that of Andrés Manuel López Obrador or any of his predecessors since 1929, only some have had important consequences.

During this six-year term alone, seven secretaries of state have resigned and six have been resigned.

Those who resigned are the former Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection Alfonso Durazo to go to govern Sonora, the former Secretary of Finance Carlos Urzúa for not agreeing with AMLO’s economic policy, María Luisa Albores to become Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources , the former Secretary of Economy Graciela Márquez Colín to leave as Vice President of Inegi, the former Secretary of Communications and Transportation Javier Jiménez Espriú for not agreeing with AMLO transferring the administration of the maritime ports to the Secretary of the Navy, the former Secretary of Public Education Esteban Moctezuma to leave as ambassador in Washington, and the former head of the Office of the Presidency Alfonso Romo for not agreeing with AMLO’s economic policy.

Those resigned are the former Secretary of the Interior Olga Sánchez Cordero, the former Secretary of the Treasury Arturo Herrera, the former Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources Josefa González-Blanco and Víctor Manuel Toledo Manzur, the former Secretary of Public Administration Irma Eréndira Sandoval and the former Legal Counsel from the Presidency Julio Scherer Ibarra,

13 you quit and nothing happened. The most important of all was that of Urzúa because it occurred when the government of the 4T was not even eight months old and because it showed that the resignation did not agree with the programs, plans and economic strategies of his boss.

A change in the presidential cabinet hardly becomes relevant because in Mexico all power is in the hands of the president and he grants it or not to his subordinates according to his own interests and objectives. The job and responsibility of a Secretary of State is, after all, to advise his boss on the affairs of the agency under his charge and to carry out the orders that he gives him.

Going back to the case of any change in the Ministry of Tourism, yesterday I conducted a survey through Twitter, asking my followers if they were interested in the fate of Torruco or Hernández-Haddad. Until the moment of writing this column, 67.8% of the participants had answered no, 3.5% yes, 3.2% that they did not know and 25.6% that they were indifferent.

In short, a resignation of a secretary of state is only interesting for him, his collaborators, who deal with important matters of the corresponding agency and political columnists. For the rest of the population it is an irrelevant matter

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