I don’t know if his illnesses make López Obrador unable to hold office; I do know that hiding them from the public eye created the opportunity for many rumors to circulate and now a scandal to break out about it. It is a defect in his communication policy not to have taken the initiative to make them known in a timely manner, to explain what they consist of, what their treatment and evolution has been. That would have saved him the cost of being exposed as someone who deceives, who pretends, that he has something to hide. Opacity is the best breeding ground for the germ of mistrust.
I also don’t know if the story about the president’s health was the best way to break the story that they hacked to the Sedena; I do know that this article was very effective in attracting attention in a highly competitive media environment that is sometimes dazzling with so much speed and information. Some will think that there was sensationalism or bad faith; others, that if the data is true (as López Obrador himself has already admitted) the note is valid to present the story. In the end, journalism is also the ability to create conversation and the audiences –not the ideal ones, the really existing ones– are the ones that have the last word. Having an impact matters.
After that first moment, however, it should be remembered an old journalistic lesson: that the note does not eat the story. Because the findings on the president’s health were a “hook”, but that is not the story. There will be many other articles, in fact several are already circulating (on sexual abuse in the armed forces, on the acquisition of programs for illegal espionage, on how Sedena seeks to do business in the tourism sector), this is just the beginning of what which may become a true tsunami of revelations. About what? Not so much –or not only– about López Obrador but, rather, about the Army.
That Army that was simultaneously negligent and perpetrator in the case of the Ayotzinapa 43. The one who covers up and exerts pressure to derail the investigation and prevent the truth from being known and justice from being done. That Army that is absorbing the National Guard, despite the fact that the Constitution mandates that it be a civilian body under the command of the Ministry of Public Security. The Army that for years denied the necessary information to calculate its fatality rates; and that, when he was forced to provide it, he turned out to be one of the deadliest in the world, although not for that reason successful in combating organized crime.
