Q4, a government without corruption as AMLO promised?

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said time and again that his purpose is to apply the criterion of “cleaning up and down, as the stairs are swept away” to the corruption of his government. We will not take a step back or to gain momentum. It is a shame that Mexico is placed 135th in corruption globally, by the government, not by the people,” the president said in the first month of his administration. However, President López Obrador’s inner circle, which includes sons and brothers, has been embroiled in ‘video scandals’, exonerations, sumptuous weddings, investigations and accusations of corruption.  In an interview for Debate, four organizations specialized in the fight against corruption confirmed that, in Mexico, Q4 is not sweeping the stairs, because AMLO’s speech is very different from the background elements that we see with the uncovering of these scandals among his closest, without neglecting that there is no Prosecutor’s Office or institutions that have the power and the will to really combat impunity in this Fourth Transformation. ‘The carousel of 40 million’ For Darío Ramírez, director of Communication of Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), one thing is the discourse and another the background elements to be able to evaluate if corruption has been eradicated or diminished in the current administration. The report of “The carousel” is a case that had already sounded previously when the INE together with the Electoral Tribunal announced that they had this information, however, what had not been exposed, until now, is the graphic vision of those deposits and how rare it could be to move with this carousel strategy so much money, Mentioned. Read more: INE counselor affirms that they proposed revocation of mandate according to the law “What we did was to have the empirical evidence of that carousel operation that, what I meant is that more than six members of the group surrounding the president made small deposits to move more than 40 million pesos. What we published was simply to give the public the video evidence of those small deposits,” he shared. In the case of the report “Sembrando Vida y la fábrica de chocolates”, Fernanda Galicia Pacheco, director of Mexiro AC, a feminist organization that fights against the accumulation and centralization of power that prevent sustainable development, highlighted to Debate that in this case, exposing the benefit that AMLO’s children have when planting cocoa where their farm and factory are located, not only does it talk about the red circle, but the most important thing is that it also talks about the peasants who are in that plantation and who do not agree that the cocoa was being planted, because it was decided without a legitimate process, which speaks of acts of possible corruption that begin to be made visible. MCCI has a perspective in which it does not qualify the federal government, but rather on being objective, based not on opinions but on facts, he said. In these three years of government, the issue that has most concerned this organization is that to combat corruption state institutions are needed, because the fight against corruption is not given by presidential will, by decree or by good intentions of the president, said Darío Ramírez. “That is one of the red lights, the dismantling of state institutions to combat corruption,” he added.  Ramírez indicated that what is required is to combat impunity with an autonomous and independent Prosecutor’s Office that pursues the cases and that is not the political agenda of the federal Executive.” We need law enforcement, that is, how is the attorney general allegedly going to investigate a crime if that prosecutor is in office? (Report ‘Gertz Manero’). Also, that there be political will from all parties, not only from the Executive, but from Congress and the autonomous bodies. Likewise, that there is also a follow-up of civil society to the actions of government that it may have, that there may be and that may raise suspicions, he explained. What the president is doing to give national security contracts and reserve them is one of the biggest red spots that we can have in recent weeks, because it implies that contrary to what is needed to fight corruption, which is information, because he is closing the information more and more and that, what it is going to lead to are black hotbeds of corruption and impunity.” And the prosecutor’s offices? In that sense, Fernanda Galicia Pacheco, director of Mexiro AC, exposed another important point that is missing from the anti-corruption agenda of the current government and even at the international level, which is that of the attention of victims of femicides and forced disappearance. A recent investigation referred that Mexiro AC made about these crimes and their relationship with the anti-corruption prosecutor’s offices, specifically in Puebla, where they found that most of the families observe that, in matters of corruption, it is the public prosecutors and later the prosecutor’s offices that are the first to disappear evidence or to interfere with the investigations of forced disappearance, due to their proximity to organized crime. ”  Fernanda Galicia affirmed that corruption exists and persists with this administration. Well, the political discourse is not aligned with an agenda of the institutions that are really working on anti-corruption issues. Therefore, it becomes a discourse that is not consistent with the decree published by the Presidency, talking about this fast track of public works, and that limits the entire field of accountability and transparency in the megaprojects of the federal public administration, hurting the human rights of defenders of territories, as in the case of the Mayan Train, he said. Luis Ángel Martínez, anti-corruption researcher at Ethos Laboratorio de Políticas Públicas, told this media that in the fight against corruption unfortunately not only the discourse is enough, because actions and facts are needed when in Mexico there is a National Anti-Corruption System that includes detection, investigation and sentencing processes. ” We see that the president, far from relying on this system to do this fight, has done little more than attack it.” So far there has not been a single sentence of a serious act on corruption issues, he said. On the ostentatious wedding of Santiago Nieto, in the context of the president’s rhetoric on austerity, he mentioned that austerity does not necessarily need an anti-corruption issue, because austerity is a moral issue.” I believe that what each public servant does with his income, as long as it is legal corresponds to his own interests, we should not judge anyone by what he does with his money,” he said. He also said that something relevant is the president’s attitude to the alleged acts of corruption of other people close to him. He said that the president as such cannot investigate it, he does not have the powers and for this there is the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and for administrative matters there is the Secretariat of the Public Function. However, despite the fact that, on some occasions, in his conferences, he himself has said that he does not have these powers, in other cases he has given orders to the Prosecutor’s Office, as in the Lozoya case or in the issue of organized crime with the release of the folder of General Cienfuegos, Luis Ángel Martínez explained. Two actions that are deeply illegal, because it is getting into the powers of the Prosecutor’s Office, where it should not get involved,” he added. So this shows that if there was a will to independence from the powers that be he would not have said it publicly and it is something he has already done, he said. Citizen participation Sarahí Salvatierra, researcher of the Accountability and Fight against Corruption program of Fundar, Center for Analysis and Research, spoke about the research “The fight for water sanitation in Huitzilzingo”.  This was a citizen complaint about irregularities in the construction of the wastewater treatment plant in the State of Mexico in 2016.He mentioned that what is still a great limitation in these processes so that citizen participation is really considered as an element of fight against corruption, it has to do with what corresponds to inter-institutional coordination, since there is a lot of talk about the National Anti-Corruption System and the National Audit System, which are systems of coordination between entities, but in the end they do not make a presence because they are limited to seeing the complaint and the part that touches them only. “It is not so applicable this situation that they point out that only if it is warned or a person goes and alerts that there is a possible case of corruption is investigated, of course not.” This is because there are legal and technical requirements in society that are probably very difficult to comply with and that is something that would have to be changed, because then it will discourage society from filing complaints because they will see that they do not proceed, he explained. While it is appropriate that there is a citizen complaint mechanism, much progress is still needed to strengthen it, added Sarahí Salvatierra. The duty of the press Darío Ramírez, of Mexicans against Corruption, pointed out to this media that the president has a very black and white perspective, “if you cover me favorably you are in favor of me, if you do not cover me favorably you are against me,” as what recently happened with the journalist Carmen Aristegui and the magazine Proceso, Said. Faced with AMLO’s words in which he mentioned that they are against him, Ramírez made it clear that the press cannot be for or against any ruler, for its role is to inform the citizenry.  “Being for or against is a very twisted view to explain the function of journalism. I think the president is wrong and should really approach the press because many of the reports that Mexicans and others have taken out can help him to make a profound change in the federal government and in the fight against corruption, but if he thinks that those facts are attacks, then we are in a frank setback, democratically speaking,” he said. It should be noted that in May of this year, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador urged the United States Government to immediately suspend funding to Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, which he identified as a political group disguised as a civil association. In this regard, Darío Ramírez responded that López Obrador himself used much of his journalistic material when he was on the campaign trail to expose the corruption of the outgoing administration. “He used the Odebrecht case, the master scam for it, the problem is that now he forgets that and when we continue to do those same investigations with those who are now in public power, he feels it and labels it as attacks. We continue to work, we are not against Q4, it is not our role to set a position of encouragement or discouragement to what President López Obrador is doing, but what we do is journalistic and academic research on the phenomena of corruption in this country. ”  The director of Mexiro, Fernanda Galicia Pacheco, said that for her organization the use of gender parity to “say” that there is a fight against corruption is worrying. An example of this was the quick appointment of Loretta Ortiz Ahlf as minister in the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, the fourth appointed during this six-year term, who combines academic solvency and political militancy with López Obrador. For Fernanda Galicia Pacheco, although she is a woman, she has a close proximity to AMLO and it was a very “night” appointment. “The appointments are being given in a way and that is corruption and does not contribute anything to the issue of women,” she denounced. Read more: AMLO oversees construction of the Mayan Train by Air Force plane The data 6 collaborators from President AMLO’s close circle were captured on video in the carousel operation. 2 brothers of the president were caught on video receiving money from David León. Mexico rose 6 places in the ranking of the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) in its 2020 edition.  Dengue cases rebound in the last two weeks: 241 in Ahome and El Fuerte

Original source in Spanish