President Andrés Manuel López Obrador received numerous criticisms yesterday for having avoided commenting on the complaint for abuse of power, conflicts of interest, omission of responsibilities and extortion against the prosecutor Alejandro Gertz Manero and the former Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, who published by the former legal adviser to the Presidency, Julio Scherer, last Saturday. But the important thing was not to have avoided taking a public position on the issue but, precisely, to reflect that the conflict, deep down, did impact him and has him trapped.
Scherer’s complaint left him without weapons. His daily narrative that every attack is the fault of “neoliberal conservatives” had to be put away in the rhetoric drawer. The support that he has shown weekly for the prosecutor, was not present either. López Obrador must be aware that not having acted when Scherer asked him almost seven months ago and minimizing the problem, caused a putrefaction in the National Palace that is rising through the body of his government and those closest to him. The frivolity with which he approaches many of the state affairs that are not electoral, became his enemy.
The president said yesterday, as the only indication of relative substance on this subject, that the courts will be where the disputes are settled, as if he ignored that the clash between Gertz Manero and Scherer is not judicial, but political. The prosecutor has absolute power because López Obrador allowed it, and when he could have stopped it, after the Supreme Court session when reviewing the protections of Laura Morán and Alejandra Cuevas, political relatives of Gertz Manero, they pointed out their abuse of authority , chose to support it. If Gertz Manero has acted in the atrabilious and illegal manner as he has done, it is because he had the president’s endorsement, as he asked in the Odebrecht case and demanded to keep Rosario Robles in jail. Now the president has fallen into his own trap.
Scherer has problematized it. In his complaint, he states that the prosecutor has requested information about all the legal matters and businesses in which he was involved for 11 years. The attorney general is using all the power of the position to ask federal and local authorities for information to carry out a financial and legal autopsy of the former legal adviser since the penultimate year of the Felipe Calderón administration. In 2011, where the investigation begins, Scherer was López Obrador’s lawyer and confidant, the product of a personal and professional friendship of almost three decades as his legal representative and one of his financiers.
Gertz Manero must feel shielded by the president to investigate what Scherer says is an investigation outside the law, after the endorsement he has had from López Obrador when he comes out in his defense and places all his trust in him, when he has been criticized by experts and media. The president probably fails to see the magnitude of allowing him to abuse his power. However, an investigation like the one Gertz Manero is carrying out against Scherer is going to inexorably run into the president.
The president’s ties with his former legal adviser, whom he calls “brother,” have crossed over time. Scherer designed the civil association Honestidad Valiente in 2006, through which millions of pesos were collected in an irregular and opaque manner, and from which resources came to support the president and his family. In 2011, when the investigation of Gertz Manero began, there were reports of irregularities in the handling of the association’s money. During that time, Scherer was key in identifying and approaching López Obrador with businessmen to finance his presidential campaign in 2012, secretly – as other candidates did – from the National Electoral Institute. In the last decade, likewise, the sons of Scherer and López Obrador formed companies to do business, several of which remain active.
Gertz Manero is not only investigating Scherer. He is also investigating in this first phase the finances and patrimonial evolution of his son, a nephew and his partners. The names of the eldest sons of the president are going to jump in the inquiries, because the prosecutor is not going to stop. It is not a guess. It is a fact. Even before the scandal broke out over Scherer’s complaint, she opened an investigation against Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, the son of the president most involved in political issues, and the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López. Last week, the president’s spokesman denied the existence of the investigation against the Secretary of the Interior, published by columnist Roberto Rock in El Universal, but it is true. The source of it is López himself, who has been entrusting it to different people.
If the prosecutor can open an investigation against the son of the president and the secretary of the interior, it is because he feels he has the power to do so, beyond what the president thinks, whom he holds, in some way, as a hostage. Could López Obrador ask him to suspend the investigation against his son and his secretary? Yes, but it is not certain that the prosecutor will listen to him. Gertz Manero did not protect Scherer in the investigations against law firms, as requested, and escalated the war against him.
When the press criticized the prosecutor, the president washed his hands and said that it was a matter for the courts. He claimed that Gertz Manero was honest and trusted him. As it benefited his political narrative, he gave her a letter of impunity. With that support, Gertz Manero submitted to the majority of the Supreme Court and crushed the senators who called him to account. Now the prosecutor is targeting the Executive and the presidential family, but if the investigation against Scherer deepens, he may end up targeting López Obrador himself.
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