Mexico City.- The approval in San Lázaro of the official initiative to replace the current Science and Technology Law has generated commotion and indignation in the national community of researchers.
Above all because of the way in which said project was endorsed, with 257 votes in favor and 210 against, ignoring the multiple warnings that members of the scientific union had made to what they consider a centralist, authoritarian and anti-constitutional proposal, and in breach of the previous agreement. to first hold seven sessions of Open Parliament.
“They did not want to follow the legal procedures to review and discuss the initiative -procedures approved and defined by themselves at the beginning-. Five Open Parliament sessions were missing to hear the voices of the scientific community. It is false that (the new law) has been agreed “, tweeted the chemist Miguel Ángel Méndez Rojas, confident that such an outrage will be stopped in court.
With a highly questioned urgency that contrasts with the almost three years of delay that the issuance of this new legislation already added, the deputies approved an opinion that they just received this Tuesday night from the United Commissions for Education and Science and Technology.
Another process riddled with irregularities.
“It should be noted that the majority of Morena and her allies dispensed with reading the document with modifications that had been delivered just a few hours before the call, so the vote was carried out on an initiative that was not read by those who voted for it,” pointed out Brenda Valderrama, a biomedical doctor at UNAM.
Something serious taking into account the more than 250 modifications made to the original text of the initiative, according to what was stated by Conacyt itself in a statement where it applauded the resolution of the representatives of the Lower House.
“With the #SíALaLeyHCTI in the @Mx_Diputados, the legislators provide the people of Mexico with a historic victory to continue advancing on the legislative route to consolidate and vindicate the humanist nature of the country’s scientific and technological policy,” said the agency headed by María Elena Álvarez-Buylla, whose responsibility in the proposal -called by many as #LeyBuylla- is not celebrated by all.
“@ElenaBuylla will go down in history as the architect of the greatest setback that the scientific and technological research and development system has suffered in more than 50 years,” said the popularizer Martín Bonfil Olivera.
The establishment of a National Agenda that will dictate the research priorities in the Country, in a clear attack on the freedom of scientists; discrimination against specialists attached to private institutions, and the incorporation of the Secretaries of the Navy and National Defense to the Conacyt Governing Board, are some of the worrying points of the new law, now turned over to the Senate of the Republic for its review .
“If the #Buylla Law is approved in the Senate, will Sedena and Semar allow violence, institutional violence and corruption to be investigated, to give an example? Will there be funds for that? Dictatorships intervene in universities; in this ‘democracy ‘ include the Armed Forces (Armed Forces) in the leadership of scientific research”, criticized the academic Lucía Melgar.
“We trust that the Senate of the Republic, before submitting the proposal to a vote, will listen to the substantive arguments of the academic sector on the negative consequences of the bill and reject its content,” urged, for their part, the Mexican academies of Engineering , Sciences and the National Medicine in a joint statement.
