AMLO normalizes influencerism

The economy, despite the rebound in 2021, is far from recovery. Hopefully, at the end of the six-year term we will return to the levels we had in 2018…

“Our main legacy will be to purify public life in Mexico,” said President López Obrador just in September 2020, on the occasion of his second government report. After his electoral victory in 2018, the Tabasco politician made the fight against corruption the central axis of his speech. He sought to convince public opinion that if that evil was eradicated, everything else would follow.

The facts, however, have been leaving the speech without content. Concluded the first quarter of the fourth year of government, the results are conspicuous by the absence of him. The figures of criminal violence show that the national tragedy continues its course. The economy, despite the rebound in 2021, is far from recovery. Hopefully, at the end of the six-year term, we will return to the levels we had in 2018. Poverty has returned to levels that Mexico had surpassed years ago.

Of course, President López Obrador’s diagnosis was simplistic. Preventing and correcting corruption could serve if anything as a transversal strategy; help, but by itself it is unable to give the promised results. However, over time it has become clear that it has been more of a political strategy to concentrate power, persecute opponents and put pressure on the opposition.

This is demonstrated by the most recent scandal involving Alejandro Gertz, head of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR). A phone call between him and Juan Ramos, deputy prosecutor for federal crimes, was recently leaked to the media. In it, they candidly discuss the draft ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) in the case of Alejandra Cuevas, imprisoned since 2020, accused of murdering Federico Gertz, the prosecutor’s brother.

The recording shows how the prosecutor uses the influence of his public office to lobby SCJN ministers for a sentence in which he has a personal interest. Alejandro Gertz himself was the one who denounced Alejandra Cuevas and her mother, Laura Rojas, a sentimental partner of her brother. He charged them with intentional homicide for failing to provide necessary medical care. Federico died in hospital at the age of 82.

On two occasions, the CDMX Attorney General’s Office filed the complaint due to lack of evidence. The case, however, took a sudden turn once Alejandro Gertz assumed his current position and all the power of the new FGR was left in his hands. In 2020, the CDMX prosecutor’s office reactivated the complaint and immediately got a criminal judge to grant preventive detention. Since then, her family of Alejandra Cuevas has sought by all legal means to obtain her freedom. Her case finally reached the SCJN.

Of course, Alejandro Gertz has the right to request the application of the law, if he considers that his brother was the victim of a crime. But he is legally prevented from using the influence of his office to get other authorities to resolve in his favor a matter in which he has a particular interest. If there were suspicions before, the leaked wiretaps seem to confirm that the prosecutor has crossed this line.

President López Obrador was able to pronounce himself in favor of an impartial prosecution of justice. But he chose in his morning conference to give the accolade to Alejandro Gertz. He said that he understands “the personal, moral, human situation of the prosecutor, because it was a matter related to his brother.”

Of the purification of politics hardly a memory remains. We fully enter the normalization of influence and the use of power to consummate personal revenge. As in the end what counts are the facts, this would seem to be the true legacy of the current government.

*Professor at CIDE.

Twitter: @BenitoNacif