Supreme Court ruling could reduce pillage by small-time crooks

For the first time in a long time, we see a sentence from the Supreme Court of Justice that gives us hope of a moral recovery in matters of public administration. In a unanimous ruling, the Court declared it unconstitutional that corregimiento representatives, their alternates, mayors, and deputy mayors enjoy paid leave while they hold another position in the state.

According to the Comptroller’s Office, 30 mayors and 172 representatives enjoyed this privilege, which cost us about $4 million a year –or $20 million in the current five-year period– without the State receiving any compensation.

To this, we must add that the Comptroller’s Office eliminated the bizarre mobilization expenses, which in some cases, the sum of both items managed to exceed $10,000 a month, a salary that in the private company they would never get because I am sure that many of them are not even good enough to serve food in an inn. If common sense did not give them to see the grotesqueness of their salary compared to their services, there was simply nothing to do.

Some of those affected by this ruling threaten to resign. The threat is not against his voters – who in many cases wonder: when will he resign? –, but for the politicians who take advantage of them to promote patronage and achieve – by buying votes – repeat in their positions and keep squeezing the state.

But they will not give up. First, because that word does not exist in their vocabulary and, second, because I have no doubt that they will plot something with the deputies so that, through the law, they can compensate for what was lost. They need each other, so they won’t sit idly by; on the contrary, only two years before the elections, it will not stay that way.

We’ll see or, rather, we’re already seeing it with that bill that creates a special procedure – outside the Public Procurement Law – to contract goods and services up to $50,000. All the deputies do is procure money and now spend it with a minimum of control, without being accountable or complying with State policies regarding purchases.

I don’t want to call it something else, because for me it has no other name than pillage. They rob us and the deputies are in charge of legalizing the robbery. They are a mafia, a criminal organization whose sole purpose is misdeed. The entire Executive is a stone witness –without voice or vote–, while the authorities of the ruling party look pleased how their quality of life improves, how there is money in their pockets and how they can get more from the State.

But, for those who feel cheated and are going to resign, my regards. I am sure that no one will notice their absence, except their fellow deputies of. Remember a maxim of private enterprise: no one is irreplacable  least of all you small-time crooks. – RONALDO RODRIGUEZ, La Prensa.