In it epilogue of the six-year term, Andrés Manuel López Obrador you are already imagining his seventh year of government with the singing of birds and walks through the Palenque rainforest. But not everything will be peaceful during his reinvention as former president, because they are persecuting him nightmares of more revelations about alleged acts of corruption from his family and nearbywhose defense once his residence is not in the National Palace or has a morning Every day, it will be increasingly difficult to fly as the connection with the Center weakens and its moorings become more blurred and fragile.
The strategy to confront his seventh year of governmentwhich begins October 1st This year, it had its first design in the second week of May, and it began to be applied in the third. In the first 15 days of this month, Lopez Obrador agreed with Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero that he would initiate a legal process against Maria Amparo Casarpresident of the civil organization Mexicans Against Impunity and Corruption (MCIC). On May 13, the Prosecutor’s Office announced that it had opened a investigation folder against Casar and her two sonsfor alleged irregularities of obtaining a pension of Pemex behind the death of her husband and father in 2004. The following week, they opened another file for the alleged crime of falsifying statements. More will come, as the president has instructed the prosecutor to expand the accusations against his children.
A family tragedy 20 years ago was revived by the president to punish, as he had done to no one during his violent six-year term, a vendetta against the president of a civil organization that he detests, to the point of having accused the State Department of being intervening in internal affairs due to limited annual financing provided by the US Foreign Ministry to private and public institutions in Mexico, such as the Secretariat of National Defense.
Casar has not had access to the investigation folders and has learned about them through the media or in the morning. Legally, the Prosecutor’s Office has a small space to litigate against her because it is an ongoing action (the pension), but as for her children, she has no legal head or tail: aid for their education ended in 2008, one, and in 2010 , the other. That is, if there was a crime to prosecute, it would have already expired. But as have been all the high-impact cases of political interest for López Obrador, the important thing is not legality or justice, but revenge and, in this case, the neutralization of Casar who, to increase the cost and lack of control, His children were included at the proposal of Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, the head of the presidential propaganda machine and spokesperson for López Obrador.
Since its founding at the end of 2015 as a three-story organization, journalistic, academic investigations and strategic litigation, MCIC has been an accountability box for the government in power and revealed multiple acts of corruption. The organization was key in building the massive perception of corruption in Enrique Peña Nieto’s government, with one of its most acclaimed investigations, the “Master Scam,” and paved the way for López Obrador’s rhetorical crusade against corruption. swept the 2018 presidential election. But it is not the same as being in opposition to the government, and when it was his turn to be subjected to the same scrutiny, he did not like it, he did not accept it, and he reacted to crush the president of the civil organization.
The strategy designed in the National Palace seeks that with legal harassment and the systematization of an attack on his reputation, Casar backs down and, to call it colloquially, throws in the towel. Not only does the president want MCIC to stop publishing investigations against his family and those close to him, but he also wants the political and legal barrage, constantly fed from social networks, to inhibit her so that once her six-year term ends, she continues to reveal alleged actions. corrupt.
Peña Nieto, who never openly acted against his critics – his security apparatus spied but acted discretionally in his revenge -, ceased to be a priority issue for MCIC once his mandate ended, which is a precedent that was either ignored in National Palace, or it is not part of its stages starting in October. The fear in López Obrador’s circle, whose main voice is Alejandro Esquer, the president’s private secretary who has also been the subject of investigations by the organization, is that once he is a citizen, the investigations will continue and could document irregularities. .
Within the National Palace, no act of corruption is recognized either by the president’s family or those around him, but it is admitted that there may be cases of anomalies that generate criticism and public accusations of influence peddling and inexplicable enrichment, which are some of the alleged crimes that have emerged from the organization’s investigations. There is fear that the next government of Claudia Sheinbaum – they are convinced of her victory -, in the event that new scandalous cases arise, would have reduced room for maneuver to lessen criticism.
Given this possibility, the president instructed Ramírez Cuevas to promptly follow up with those who have written in favor of Casar. When the attacks against her intensified, a group of 15 intellectuals, journalists and former officials published an article titled “Enough is Enough,” where they accused the president of violating the law for the way he exacted revenge against her. That positioning grew and in a matter of days, the signatures totaled more than a hundred.
Until now, the task of neutralization due to fear has not been posed against any of the undersigned, but as the case of the president of MCIC has proven, no one’s life is politically or legally assured until, at least, the government of López Obrador goes down in history.
X: @rivapa
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