Pardon my ignorance but I went to the Spanish language dictionaries to find the meaning of the word “catafixia” and could not find it.
I worried because politicians are using the word “catafixia” leisurely meaning that it has to do with politics. I heard it from Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) leader Manlio Fabio Beltrones, and then on Thursday I read it in an article by Javier Solórzano, a radio and television commentator who has also been an announcer at the Chamber of Deputies and TV Channel 11.
Then I asked my wife and bingo, she knew the meaning because she spent our son’s childhood watching children’s program “Chabelo”, now off the air, and as a comedian Chabelo invented the verb “catafixiar” to describe the barter of one program gift for another. Now the word finally made sense to me.
In fact, and to get into the subject of this article, which is the current legislation of the National Anti-Corruption System (SNA) bill, Javier Solórzano wrote in La Razón daily the following:
“The Senate is in the middle of a process that is not new to them, and that is arm wrestling. It is in the process of trading some projects for others without perceiving, perhaps not even noticing, that each theme possesses its own dynamics and it makes no sense, nor is it logical, to do it through catafixia.”
The problem the Senate is facing, besides an April 30 deadline, is a four party confrontation in which bartering one law for another seems to be the path to coming up with a final draft of the SNA.
All discussions on the SNA bill have centered not so much in the what is described by the three by three proposal made by civilian organizations of having officials file a financial report, a description of their vested interests and a tax payment return.
The problem under discussion as I write this Thursday at noon continues to be interdiction procedures and sanctioning offenders of the law. From what I gather five of seven procedures have been agreed upon but the ones on which there is no consensus are the ones as to who will run the pursuit of crimes and who will define the charges in a court of law.
A problem at hand is that the legislation is being carried out mainly by four political parties divided in two groups.
On the one hand is the Institutional Revolutionary and Green parties’ coalition (PRI-PVEM) and on the other the National Action and Democratic Revolution parties (PAN-PRD) pairing which is indeed making each other’s lives impossible on the Senate floor.
The PAN-PRD group seems to have no problem with establishing the SNA and seems to be more interested in defining the Central Police Command known as Unified Command in which each of the 32 states will have a central police department. They claim that this is impossible because each state and municipality have their own dynamics and have to be treated separately, but agree that the Unified Command is a necessity.
But for Mexican society at large what is of utmost importance on the Senate floor right now is the SNA bill which will bring transparency to transactions and will put an end to kickbacks and criminal cronyism when allotting public funds for public works.
But the debate seems to carry on between the deaf and the dumb.
Yucatan state PRI deputy Carlos Ramirez says the PAN-PRD coalition “is conditioning our support for the Central Police Command in exchange for the PRI and the [Peña Nieto] Administration to accept their proposals for the anti-corruption laws. What has one got to do with the other?”
That’s just it, but in the end, it seems that by Saturday Mexicans will have laws by “catafixia.”
