The milliondollar woman
What would you, dear reader, do with a million dollars? Let’s say that, in a lucky break, you win the lottery and get a hefty (for many of us) amount of resources. I highly doubt most of us would make good use of that money. Surely, we would squander it on goods we don’t need. And once that money is about to run out, we would try every possible way to maintain our expensive and false standard of living.
Wealth, when it is not the fruit of effort, becomes evil.
This seems to be the case with the Governor of Baja California and former Mayor of Mexicali.
Official documents found in Mexico’s National Transparency Platform indicate that, the governor has spent at least half a million dollars in the rehabilitation of the Governor’s Mansion, located in the Colonia Nueva area of the state capital, where wealthy, high-income families reside.
According to the governor, this property has suffered severe damage due to the carelessness of her predecessors. The last three, who summed 14 years in office, were originally from Tijuana. These officials mainly lived in their own cities and left the mansion basically on its own, forgotten.
In fact, the Senator-turned- Governor-turned-senator, Jaime Bonilla, sought to donate the Governor’s Mansion to the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC).
The documents, signed by Secretary of Infrastructure Arturo Espinoza Jaramillo, indicate the property was remodeled in practically all its corners. Bedrooms, the governor’s office, the pool, and even the kitchen area were remodeled at a multi-million cost. What the government has spent on the renovation is equivalent to the purchase of several luxury homes in high-income subdivisions in this city. And if compared with the small houses workers can acquire the result amounts to dozens of such homes.
Two other contracts, related to the second stage of remodeling government offices, totaled another half a million dollars.
The three agreements that appear on the national transparency platform show companies were hired without public bidding. Meanwhile, the Baja California Department of Finance released the funds for said reconstruction the same day those contracts were authorized and signed.
In addition, in the documents, the secretary assures that the works will promote Baja California’s economic development. Honestly, I don’t know how.
Likewise, the secretary affirms the works also seek to become projects of benefit to the population. Again, I doubt it.
The problem with this rehabilitation is represented by the fact that Marina del Pilar Avila Olmeda comes from a falsely leftist movement whose goal is to ‘ improve the conditions of the poorest.’ The political leader of this movement, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has launched the so-called Republican Austerity initiative, which calls on all officials from this party to make good use of public resources and live as humbly as possible.
Thus, the narrative of what is also known as the Fourth Transformation has become a hollow, false, and substanceless discourse that – despite the evidence of corruption, ineptitude, and mismanagement, without leaving aside the failure in the fight against insecurity – remains strong among the majority of the population. Even polls show that whoever Morena’s candidate for president is, the candidate will almost certainly win in the 2024 elections.
However, with decisions such as those to rehabilitate the Governor’s Mansion in the near future, which represents a slap in the face of the many poor people of Mexicali, Baja California, and Mexico as a whole, López Obrador’s party is headed for defeat due to the same evil that affected the PRI and PAN governments – pride.