It was bad for him President Andrés Manuel López Obrador the appearance of the book of the journalist Mario Maldonado about Enrique Pena Nietowhich weaves from three on-the-record interviews he did in Punta Cana, where he currently lives, and three informal ones in Madrid. Peña grandson He told him that it was going to be published, but assured him that there would be no surprises, respecting the pact of mutual respect they had, and without the intention of generating noise in the community. presidential election. In his confessions to Maldonado, it is true, Peña Nieto treats him well. Lopez Obradorbut he lies about some paradigmatic points of his government, the transition and the exile.
Peña Nieto surrendered to López Obrador even before it swept the presidential election. For reasons that he will hardly reveal publicly, although he justifies that the PRI franchise was carrying a lot of burden, he opted for a candidate outside the party, José Antonio Meadewho they sabotaged and abandoned without Peña Nieto doing anything about it, without resources or electoral operation, and without representation in 30% of the polls on election day.
It doesn't mean that more active participation would have changed the result, but it also didn't do anything in favor of its candidate. López Obrador continues to praise him for not having intervened – euphemism for supported – in the election, which is what paved the way to build a non-aggression pact. That agreement, which both deny, was during the transition, and focused on who would not be criminally persecuted – such as Luis Videgaray and Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong – and who would. Peña Nieto selected the list for the guillotine headed by Emilio Lozoya, former director of Pemex, followed by Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, former Secretary of Communications, and Rosario Robles, who was head of Social Development and Agrarian Development. Only Ruiz Esparza did not go to jail, because he died before being charged.
Peña Nieto handed over de facto power to López Obrador from the day after the presidential election and had four meetings with his successor, which he recounted to Maldonado, one of them at the president's Tlalpan home. After that, she only had a few telephone conversations with him, such as when she told him that a book would come with statements that would not upset his government. There was more communication, through secondary channels to send messages.
One, the afterbirth of exile, was after photographs of Peña Nieto were published in the press. The first were from the wedding of the daughter of his lawyer and friend Juan Collado in May, and the second in about fifteen years where he danced with his then partner, the model Tania Ruiz, in June, which unleashed much criticism in public opinion about the failure to fulfill his promise to combat corruption, which was transferred to the National Palace, where those close to him and the most radical part of his movement considered it a message of impunity.
López Obrador sent him the message through Collado, and one week they flew together to Madrid. In the book, the former president tells Maldonado that his departure had not been to “political exile,” but rather was a simple “formality to achieve a positive transition in the handover of presidential command.” As the journalist explains from Peña Nieto's reflections during informal conversations, the former president considered it necessary to leave the country to respect López Obrador's victory and management.
The truth is that Peña Nieto said before leaving the Presidency that he saw no reason to leave the country, and that he would continue living between Ixtapan de la Sal – where he played golf – and Mexico City. In the book he talks as if he had been a statesman who he saw higher and farther, when in reality he was quite the opposite. In his confessions he has found justifications that exalt him, when superficiality and lack of care led López Obrador, to protect him, to ask him to leave the country.
In his confessions, Peña Nieto is ambiguous on several points, such as when he remembers the “unfairness” of the resignation of his Secretary of the Treasury, Luis Videgaray, who promoted the visit to Los Pinos of Donald Trump, Republican candidate for the Presidency, during the campaign. electoral. He now admits that it was a “disaster” with an enormous negative impact on Mexico, and although he mentions that it also bothered President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, he hides that Videgaray left the government not for those reasons, but because he demanded it. the White House. If Peña Nieto wanted to mend his relationship with Obama, they told him, he had to cut off the head of the person responsible for the visit. And so he did it.
In the book, Peña Nieto tries to hide his inabilities, deficiencies and weaknesses. For example, he omits details in the dismissal of Lozoya, suggesting to Maldonado that he fired him because he lied to him and because he had carried out a “terrible management.” In reality, Peña Nieto defended him several times from Videgaray who asked him to fire him, running into a wall and in the end, the warning that he not to touch the subject again. Peña Nieto got rid of him because the White House, upset by Trump's reception, demanded that he had made an official visit to Saudi Arabia, with whom they had a very strained relationship at that time.
The former president also wants to show himself as a statesman, as when he talks about the Ayotzinapa Case, and says that “when he learned of the disappearance of the normalistas, he anticipated the most critical moment of his administration.” What he showed at that moment was an arrogant and ignorant insensitivity, accepting for more than two weeks that it was a municipal problem, and that the disappearance of the young people “was an adjustment between drug traffickers,” as former prosecutor Jesús Murillo Karam said.
The Planeta publishing house, which published the book, announces it as “who really is the man who governed Mexico between 2012 and 2018?”, to which another punch line could be added: he was a coward and a liar who tries to wash his face by hiding. in forgetfulness.
X: @rivapa
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