"The disastrous Juan": Salvador García Soto rips Juan Molinar Horcasitas apart

Juan Molinar Horcasitas is decidedly one of the most controversial members of Felipe Calderón's government; the current Secretary of Communications and Transportation has most recently been pummeled for his appointment of the seemingly utterly unqualfied Mony de Swaan as head of COFETEL, the Federal Commission of Telecommunications, and of the granting of media spectrum licenses far below market value to Televisa and Nextel. Yet as commentator Salvador García Soto in El Universal points out, there is much more:

"There are people who should never opt for public service. They neither have a vocation for service nor provide any benefit to society they should serve. One graphic case, judging by this results as a functionary and public servant, is Juan Molinar Horcasitas. His tenure in different public institutions over the past 10 years has left a trail of errors, problems, disasters and inefficiencies that have had high political, social and even economic costs."

Ouch. Yet he is absolutely right: Juan Molinar Horcasitas is a case of a man who was a great academic, yet who has left a trail of destruction in his wake wherever he has gone. The time for his retirement from government "service" is long overdue.