Mexico picked the head of the national intelligence agency as the country’s new interior minister on Thursday, beefing up the job’s security profile as the government attempts to bring violent drug cartels to heel.
Center for Research and National Security Director Alejandro Poire succeeds late interior minister Francisco Blake, who was killed in a helicopter crash on Friday last week.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon said former national security spokesman Poire would help lead the crackdown on organized crime, a conflict which has dominated his term in office.
“Crime is the biggest threat to our society and our citizens,” Calderon said in a televised statement, saying that he had picked Poire for the post “because of his profound knowledge and his vast experience in security matters.”
More than 45,000 lives have been lost in drug-related violence since Calderon sent in the army to crush the gangs shortly after he took power in December 2006.
Calderon has staked his reputation on restoring security to Mexico and analysts say he needs to make tangible progress to give his conservative National Action Party (PAN) a chance of retaining the presidency when elections are held in July next year.
Calderon is barred by Mexican law from running again.
The latest surveys show the PAN polling at about half as much support nationally as the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The centrist PRI ruled Mexico for 71 years until being ousted in 2000.
Poire, 40, will be Calderon’s fifth interior minister. Blake, who died with seven other people in the helicopter, was the second interior minister to die in an aircraft crash.
As national security speaker, Poire was seen as a very loyal ally of Calderon, whose drug war policy he staunchly backed during some of the conflict’s most testing moments.
A Harvard graduate who later worked as an academic, Poire served as an adviser to Calderon early in his presidency.
Poire blamed lax US gun laws for allowing high-powered weaponry to reach Mexico and arm the cartels. The entry of US arms into Mexico has been a regular bone of contention between Mexico and Washington during Calderon’s presidency.
The interior minister was for years viewed as the No. 2 to the president, though Blake, who took the job in July last year, had a lower profile than many previous incumbents.
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