Congressional Vote on Mexico's Contentious Water Bill Postponed 'Until Further Notice' teleSUR
go to original March 10, 2015

Hundreds of thousands of residents of Mexico City, the capital of Mexico, are failing to receive a permanent water supply. It is a puzzling problem in a city the Aztecs built on five lakes and which consequently suffers annual flooding. Some analysts are saying that it is an example of the stark divide between rich and poor in the country. Authorities are promising changes to deal with the long-term problem, but soultions have not yet been seen. Al Jazeera's Rhodri Davies reports. (Al Jazeera English)

A Mexican congressional vote on proposed legislation that could lead to the privatization of the administration and distribution of Mexico’s water has been delayed.

As a result of a unanimous vote Monday by the political coordination commissions of Mexico’s House of Deputies, the General Water Law will be taken off of Tuesday’s list of debate and vote until “further notice”.

Manlio Beltrones from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who proposed the measure, affirmed Monday that the main political parties requested that the vote be postponed “although with different reasons as to why.”

The president of the lower house’s political coordination commission said that the delay will be “for whatever time is necessary so that doubts and misinformation that certain politicians have taken up as their campaign, can be cleared up.”

It was mainly members of the minority coalition that have rejected the measure that the ruling coalition says will protect the constitutional right that the resource “belongs to the nation.”

However, legal experts critical of the bill call that argument misleading. Legal researcher and professor at Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM) Maria del Carmen Carmona, told teleSUR that there is a legal difference in what is of the nation’s interest compared to the federation’s.

Read the rest at teleSUR

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