VZCZCXYZ0044
PP RUEHWEB

DE RUEHPE #0309 0331504
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 021504Z FEB 07
FM AMEMBASSY LIMA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 3829
INFO RUEHBO/AMEMBASSY BOGOTA 4325
RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA 7204
RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS 0137
RUEHLP/AMEMBASSY LA PAZ FEB MONTEVIDEO 9106
RUEHQT/AMEMBASSY QUITO 0985
RUEHSG/AMEMBASSY SANTIAGO 1098

UNCLAS LIMA 000309 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV KDEM PE
SUBJECT: GARCIA RE-CENTRALIZES DECENTRALIZATION 
 
REF: 06 LIMA 4519 (AND PREVIOUS) 
 
Sensitive But Unclassified.  Please handle accordingly. 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary: The Garcia government in late January 
formally placed the bureaucratic entity responsible for 
decentralization into the Council of Ministers structure. 
Some observers emphasize the irony that the central 
government has reasserted control over a mechanism intended 
to distribute authority to regions and municipalities, others 
believe decentralization will now have the high-level 
political attention it needs, while many see the government's 
move as politically heavy-handed whatever its longer term 
effects.  End Summary. 
 
¶2.  (U) The GOP on 1/25 merged the previously independent 
National Decentralization Council (CND) into the Council of 
Ministers (PCM), the cabinet structure presided over by 
President Garcia.  (The CND was created in 2002 to guide the 
political, economic, and administrative decentralization 
process; the Executive Board included local and regional 
leaders.)  This move increases the President's control over 
the faltering decentralization process and, according to 
critics, eliminates an "autonomous" forum for regional and 
local governments to discuss decentralization policy among 
themselves and with the central government.  Some observers 
have highlighted the irony that decentralization appears to 
have been "recentralized," and questioned the legality of the 
executive decree given that the CND was created by an organic 
law in Congress. 
 
¶3. (U) The President, Prime Minister, and other APRA 
politicians have defended the move.  The Prime Minister said 
the "fusion by absorption" of the CND would eliminate 
duplication and promote decentralization by giving the Prime 
Minister policy oversight.  More hopeful observers noted that 
the PCM might provide the political will needed to jumpstart 
the government's high priority  decentralization process, 
which was increasingly seen as adrift.  In this connection, 
many also agree that something needed to be done to improve 
the effectiveness of the weakly-led CND. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Comment: Garcia announced the restructuring without 
consulting the CND, regional presidents, local authorities, 
or Congress, all of whom seemed blindsided by the decision. 
Regional and local leaders, the presumed central actors in 
any authentic decentralization process, now wonder what their 
role in decentralization will be and whether the central 
government's decision will slow the concrete transfer of 
functions and resources.  This has raised broader questions 
about the President's willingness to subject policy questions 
to the political give-and-take necessary to build consensus, 
and generated accusations of political clumsiness and 
heavy-handedness that could undermine the country's long-term 
interests in successfully decentralizing state functions, 
structures and resources.  End Comment. 
POWERS