Mexican President Replaces Top Security Official

[Richard]

And so it goes...

Richard

Mexican President Replaces Top Security Official
USAToday, 14 July 2010

Mexico's president accepted the resignation Wednesday of his top domestic security official, Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont, and named a former congressman with experience in fighting drug cartels to replace him.

President Felipe Calderon praised the hands-on experience the new federal interior secretary, Francisco Blake, gained serving in the same post at the state level in Baja California, a border state plagued by drug violence.

"In that position, he has played a fundamental role in confronting in a decisive way the problems of violence in that state," Calderon said of Blake, who will oversee the multi-agency national security council.

"The knowledge he has of crime, and the good relations he managed to build between the police and army in the fight against crime in Baja California, will without doubt be of great value in strengthening the fight for public safety," Calderon said.

Calderon also praised Gomez Mont, but more for his efforts at political and economic reforms enacted since assuming the post in November 2008, than for any hands-on involvement in the war against drug cartels.

Gomez Mont's most famous moment in the drug war was an undignified moment in the border city of Ciudad Juarez when a heckler in the drug-plagued city slapped him in the back of the head.

The announcement came after a highly publicized dispute between Gomez Mont and Calderon over the advisability of forming electoral alliances with leftist parties to prevent a predicted wave of victories by the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Gomez Mont heatedly opposed such alliances, and resigned from Calderon's conservative National Action Party in February to protest the pacts, which some party members said placed in doubt the party's ideological underpinnings.

However, the alliances helped coalition candidates wrest two important governorships from the PRI in the country's July 4th elections.

The new interior secretary, Blake, stressed his commitment to human rights and press freedoms, and promised "a democratic security policy, supported not only by the forces of law and order, but also by the three branches of government, and society as a whole."

"We will have to specially direct our efforts in meeting the challenges to public safety and the fight against organized crime," Blake said in accepting the post.

Calderon also announced the appointment of Bruno Ferrari, the former head of the country's investment promotion agency, as economy secretary, to replace Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, who will move on to become Calderon's chief-of-staff.

Gomez Mont's brother, Miguel — the former head of the country's tourism investment fund — was involved in an embarrassing scuffle at the soccer World Cup in June, and later resigned.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...hooModule_News