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The president and the
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Jan 24th 2015 | From the print edition
Bello
The Mexican morass
A president who doesn’t get that he doesn’t get it
IN A new year message Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, promised to work to
“liberate” his country from crime, corruption and impunity. His cabinet has duly set these
as its priorities. The message is the right one. But unfortunately for Mr Peña, Mexicans
are increasingly cynical about the messenger.
Mexico is still seething over the government’s leaden response to the kidnap in
September of 43 students by municipal police in the south-western state of Guerrero and
their apparent murder by drug traffickers. The investigation of the case seems to have
stalled. Mr Peña’s main policy response to the massacre is a proposed constitutional
amendment to abolish municipal police forces. But Congress may not approve it, not
least because some are less rotten than the state forces, which would take their place.
In the government’s defence, the rule of law cannot be
created in Mexico overnight. It will take years, perhaps
decades, to clean up and strengthen the country’s police.
But his critics believe Mr Peña is dodging the most important
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2. 22/01/15 19:32Bello: The Mexican morass | The Economist
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My way or the highway
The Mexican morass
Reprints
task: to punish corrupt political bosses who are complicit in
organised crime. And the government itself is now stained
by scandal.
The latest embarrassment, reported this week in the Wall
Street Journal, is that in 2005 Mr Peña bought a house from
a small builder who has won a slew of contracts from his administration. This follows the
revelation that Luis Videgaray, his finance minister, bought a $500,000 house at a
fashionable golf club with a mortgage from the vendor, a company owned by Juan
Armando Hinojosa. The businessman has received much work from the federal
government and previously from the state of Mexico when Mr Peña was its governor and
Mr Videgaray was finance secretary.
This confirmed the close links between the administration and Grupo Higa, Mr Hinojosa’s
business empire. In November the government abruptly cancelled a $3.7 billion contract
for a high-speed train awarded to a consortium including Grupo Higa. Days later it
emerged that the president’s palatial private home had been bought with a large
mortgage granted to the First Lady by the group.
Both Mr Peña and Mr Videgaray insist that they have done nothing illegal. They are
missing the point. In modern democracies, whose ranks Mexico aspires to join, the kind
of mutual back-scratching they appear to have engaged in with Grupo Higa is seen as
unacceptable behaviour.
If they are serious about tackling corruption and conflicts of interest, Mexico’s political
leaders could look to Brazil. Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, is embroiled
in a much bigger scandal involving kickbacks of perhaps $4 billion over the past decade.
Prosecutors believe much of the money went to the ruling Workers’ Party and its
governing allies. The president, Dilma Rousseff, chaired the Petrobras board for much of
this period.
Thanks to fiercely independent prosecutors and courts, and a tough new anti-bribery law,
Brazilians can be confident that the wrongdoing at Petrobras will be investigated and
punished—even were the trail to lead to Ms Rousseff herself. In 1992 a Brazilian
president was impeached for corruption; more recently, several ministers have been
forced to resign over dodgy contracts or unethical links to private businesses. Dozens of
managers of construction firms under contract to Petrobras face criminal charges.
For such things to become thinkable in Mexico, several changes are needed. Proposals
for an independent prosecutor’s office and anti-corruption agency should be fast-tracked
(depressingly, Mr Peña’s supporters want the latter under government control). The
second missing element is political accountability. Nobody has taken responsibility and
resigned over the security failings, the dodgy train contract or the conflicts of interest.
Nobody has barred Grupo Higa from government contracts while it is independently
investigated, if only to establish that it is blameless.
“They don’t get that they don’t get it,” says a former senior official. But Mexicans do get it.
Mr Peña’s approval rating has fallen to 40%, close to the lowest-ever for a Mexican
president.
His bold economic reforms may yet bring political reward. The opposition’s splits may
help him win a congressional election in June. But the past few months have undermined
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3. 22/01/15 19:32Bello: The Mexican morass | The Economist
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the authority he used to secure the reforms. And with polls suggesting that turnout in the
election will be dismal, the main beneficiary of the cynicism the president is engendering
may be Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a messianic populist who has twice almost won
the presidency. Mexico deserves better.
From the print edition: The Americas
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