By Juan S. Larrosa-Fuentes, January 2, 2025
The assessment of Enrique Alfaro’s government is only beginning to take shape. Its strengths and weaknesses must be evaluated. In the realm of communication, the outcomes are not encouraging. On the one hand, it was a government keenly interested in communication, investing significant resources in this area. This enabled it to maintain a strong public presence and avoid political voids. However, it also left negative marks. Communication services were outsourced, favoring three companies that received multimillion-peso contracts; the use of these resources was opaque; the administration confronted, fought, and, in many cases, harassed journalists and media outlets; and it lacked a social policy that understood communication as a public good, treating it instead as a tool for retaining power and winning elections.
Now, beyond assessing these outcomes, it is time to look ahead. With the beginning of Pablo Lemus’s administration, there is an opportunity to transform and reorganize. What challenges does this new government face? The first and most important thing is to act calmly and with respect. The government has the daunting task of rebuilding a governance pact with a pluralistic and fragmented political landscape and other key actors in public life, such as media outlets and diverse civil organizations. The government must leave the hostility and poor treatment behind, fostering dialogue, criticism, and dissent. This challenge is closely tied to safeguarding freedom of expression.
The second challenge is to develop an authentic public communication policy. Local governments have traditionally viewed communication as an instrumental means of political control. While communication is indeed strategic, it is also a public good, much like public lighting systems or public universities. Jalisco needs a project to enhance public communication services. This includes, for example, completing a universal internet access project that ensures connectivity and provides the necessary technology (phones, tablets) and digital literacy training so people can use the internet to its fullest potential. Additionally, a public broadcasting project is essential—not one limited to airing concerts and sports events, but one that revitalizes local journalism and news production in a context where there are fewer and fewer media outlets and journalists, as documented by various studies.
The third challenge is ensuring transparent, rational, and democratic use of public spending. While defended as a driver of innovation, the outsourcing model promoted by the previous administration had several flaws. First, it was opaque: once the funds reached the three companies, tracking how and on what they were spent was difficult. Second, public resources were transferred to private companies without competitive bidding processes. Third and most importantly, the experience, knowledge, and data acquired by these companies did not remain with the municipalities or the state government but with private firms. If this model continues, it must guarantee transparency, legality, and the use of resources that benefit Jalisco residents in the short, medium, and long term—not the officials passing through who use these communication resources for their next political ventures.
Lastly, Lemus will have to avoid the frivolity that has occasionally characterized his public life, where he has acted more as an influencer than as a public servant. Communication is important, but it should never outweigh politics or the public life of our state.
This article was published in Grupo Reforma’s Mural newspaper on Thursday, January 2, 2025, in the “Community” section, page 2, under the title “The Challenge: Improving Communication.”