“Someone, judging from what happened, from what the authority told me, wanted to kill me last night.” Ciro Gomez Leyva
I do not think, of course, that the president or any of his close collaborators ordered the attack against the journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva. Despite his admiration for some of the great assassins in history, such as Pancho Villa or Che Guevara, López Obrador also expresses enthusiasm for pacifists such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He himself does not realize the contradiction in which he falls, but he does not appear to be a violent man.
Nor does he realize that a political leader cannot constantly disqualify his critics, call them corrupt, liars, dishonest or traitors to the country, without any of his followers trying to do him and the country a service by physically attacking them. If listening to Ciro Gómez Leyva, Carlos Loret or Sergio Sarmiento produces tumors in the brain, as López Obrador affirmed on the morning of December 14, who can be surprised that some faithful enthusiast of his movement decides that he has the moral responsibility to liberate to the country of one of these perverse journalists?
Many officials and supporters of the president are peaceful, sensible, and well-meaning; but a group, some of which have found welcome in the Fourth Transformation, have more aggressive and intolerant positions. They even try to accuse the victims of the crimes they suffer. For example, Fadlala Akabani, a former PAN member, today Mexico City’s secretary of economic development, said in a tweet hours after the attack on Ciro: “The rapacious oligarchy and the morally defeated, petty, treacherous, and lying opposition are capable of pay for an attack”.
The Head of Government of the capital, Claudia Sheinbaum, has not been hooked on this discourse of intolerance. She not only publicly condemned the attack, but also immediately offered official protection to the journalist and his family: “Whatever it takes,” she said. She commissioned her citizen security secretary, Omar García Harfusch, also a victim of a recent attack, to carry out investigations into the case.
In the same way, President López Obrador offered words of support for Gómez Leyva on December 16: “The most important thing is to express our solidarity, tell Ciro that he is not alone. And I do this out of conviction, because we have differences, they are notorious, they are in the public domain. We will continue to have them, but it is completely reprehensible that an attempt is made against the life of any person and, in this case, of a journalist like Ciro Gómez Leyva.” This did not prevent him, however, from denouncing in the same morning those who “live off this regime of corruption, all of them”, because they belong to the Krauze group, the Aguilar Camín group, the Reform group.
No, López Obrador has not understood the power of his statements. He doesn’t know Jean-Paul Sartre’s phrase: “Words are loaded guns.” He has refused to be the president of all Mexicans and continues to use his press conferences to charge against his alleged adversaries. He thinks that he can solve the problem of an attack against a journalist by expressing “solidarity” while continuing to distribute expressions of intolerance and disqualification.
The press is “the enemy of the people,” said Donald Trump, López Obrador’s friend. But no, the real enemy is the ruler who thinks that his popularity gives him a license to harass anyone who dares to have their own opinion.
Cabotage
It is another AMLO revenge. Since Mexican airlines do not go to AIFA, the president has sent Congress an initiative to legalize cabotage in national territory by foreign companies. Almost no country does. The measure would benefit consumers, and for that reason I applaud it, but it is a simple threat to force national airlines to send more change to AIFA.
#loaded #guns