INAI calls for halting reform to eliminate autonomous organizations

Mexico City. The National Institute for Transparency and Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) on Tuesday asked Congress and the new federal authorities headed by President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum to halt the reform process that seeks to eliminate the institute.

In a plenary session, the president of the organization, Adrián Alcalá, read a statement in which he pointed out that for the good of the Republic, dialogue must be opened and proposed that instead of the extinction of the institute, its modernization should be sought.

“For the good of Mexico: human rights first. For the good of Mexicans: freedoms first, and for the good of the Republic: dialogue first,” said Alcalá, accompanied by the rest of the INAI plenary, made up of commissioners Blanca Lilia Ibarra Cadena, Josefina Román Vergara and Julieta del Río Venegas.

After the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Deputies approved on Friday the ruling that supports a series of reforms to the Constitution, the same reforms that seek to eliminate seven constitutionally autonomous bodies, including INAI, Alcalá said that “disappearing INAI would represent a de facto setback for democracy and human rights in Mexico.”

“Human rights are progressive and their ongoing protection and respect is not an isolated process or the responsibility of a single actor, as it requires a comprehensive commitment on the part of the Mexican State, as well as the creation of legal obligations for public bodies, so that they can be protected, demanded, amplified and put into practice in a full manner by any person,” he added.

In this context, he said that instead of proposing the elimination of the INAI, the institute’s plenary session proposes working on its modernization.

“Therefore, I would like to once again make a firm but respectful call to the next legislators of the Congress of the Union, to the new federal authorities, headed by Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, and to society in general to pause along the way, sit down at the dialogue table, recognize the achievements but also the mistakes, and chart a new horizon for transparency, access to information and privacy in Mexico,” she said.