How can we trust in the presumption of innocence, in due process or in the strict application of the law when those who lead the institutions use them in this way, with such shamelessness? How can we conceive a minimum of legal certainty in the face of such a display of arbitrariness?
“It has never been any other way,” some will object. “These have always been the parameters of the political game in Mexico,” they will indignantly pontificate. “If the PAN nominated a candidate so susceptible to extortion, it is their responsibility. They knew that this is the game and they played it badly.”
I dwell on this not-so-hypothetical response because I identify in it the logic of a grotesque and terrifying normalization. It is not a “realistic” argument, as those who use it boast; it is, rather, an argument halfway between cynicism and resignation. Cynicism because it implies accepting that politics is like this without even expressing a reservation that it should not be like this; and resignation because it implies assuming the impossibility of politics being, as in fact it can be and has been, any other way.
Obviously it was a huge mistake to have made Yunes the candidate (and his father the substitute!); obviously there is a responsibility for which the PAN leadership will have to be held accountable and obviously it will end up paying a high political price for it.
But the most obvious of all is, or rather, It should bewhich is absolutely unacceptable for a government to extort (regardless of the party) and for the extorted (regardless of the party) to have “a tail to step on” or not.
Even if we concede that extortion was once considered a normal political phenomenon, we must at least acknowledge that at that time the public was very clear that this was wrong, we were outraged and we criticised it. Why is this not the case now, or not as much? Why is the focus of outrage now more on the stupid mistakes of the opposition than on the deliberate strategy of the government? Is it that, unlike before, we have already become accustomed to it? Or that we have given up demanding from this government the same things that we demanded from others? Why?
