It is no coincidence that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, without prudence or diplomatic modesty, has thrown himself headfirst to defend the President of Peru Pedro Castillo, who, to prevent his third trial for corruption, attempted a self-coup d’état, dissolving Congress hours before of the vote. His gesture was excessive, but there are deep reasons that are motivating him, and in the example of others, such as Castillo, or the vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández, sentenced to six years for the crime of fraudulent administration during her 12 years in government – he will not go to prison soon because he has jurisdiction-, he is building a transexenal route in the event that the same fate brings him.
In a message on Twitter, he regretted that “for the interests of the economic and political elites” -the daily justification in the National Palace in the face of the mediocrity of his alleged transformation-, the “legitimate Presidency” -as his proclaimed after losing the presidential election with Felipe Calderón-de Castillo, has been swept away by “the sui generis precept of ‘moral incapacity,’” which has existed in the Peruvian Constitution since 1993, for which reason, at least, if not to remain silent, it should have forced him to better phrasing. in defense of the former president.
Except for Bolivian President Luis Arce, whose comrade-in-arms Evo Morales -another friend of López Obrador-, who violated the Constitution of his country to stay in power, the truly left-wing governments in Latin America were more cautious and proactive. López Obrador, who is in the antipodes of those virtues, preferred to distort the Peruvian reality. It was not the elites who rejected Castillo’s putsch, but his party, cabinet members who resigned when he dissolved Congress, the Armed Forces and the National Police, who said they would side with the Constitution, the National Prosecutor’s Office, the Judiciary, figures from the left, among many others who opposed the coup.
López Obrador has underlying reasons for raising his voice, at the risk of coming off as an interventionist, but his concerns shine through. Not in him, that he said on Wednesday that he was not afraid of going to jail after leaving the Presidency. Indeed, based on the information collected from federal sources, he does not have those fears, but he has others, his three eldest children. In November, according to reliable information, he asked the Attorney General’s Office to work on strategies that could stop any investigation against his sons José Ramón, Andrés and Gonzalo. López Obrador seems to be afraid that investigation folders will be opened to his three sons for alleged acts of corruption.
Until now, much has been said without verifying the intense business management of his son Andrés, in the presidential megaprojects. But so far nothing has been documented and there are no public complaints. The known part of Andrés is the placement of friends and acquaintances in various government positions, which, despite the management disaster and damage to the treasury due to incompetence, committed by the majority of his recommends, is not enough to hold him criminally responsible for the crime of influence peddling, as he is not a public servant. In a similar case, as far as is known, Gonzalo is the furthest away from public scrutiny.
His eldest son, José Ramón, has been involved in two cases of alleged conflict of interest. The first was for having lived in 2019 and 2020 together with his family in the house of an executive from the Baker Hughes oil company, which has long had business with Pemex, without a link being found to prove it. In the clarification process, accusations arose of another conflict of interest, bribery or bribery with the owner of Grupo Vidanta, a close friend of López Obrador, but the Ministry of Public Administration found no crime to prosecute. What until now can be pointed out, not accused, to José Ramón, is that his private life is totally opposite to what his father preaches. But having money and enjoying it is not illegal. In any case, that is a private issue that father and son would have to settle so that he does not get involved in so many rhetorical contradictions.
What else can exist for the president to have requested that the legal shield be prepared for them, is something that cannot be known, at least for now, but it is an issue that worries López Obrador. But his children shouldn’t be the only ones to worry about. The president himself could face several probable crimes. A very notorious one that passes invisibly in front of our eyes is the probable crime of embezzlement, whose article 223 of the Constitution in section II punishes the illegal use of public resources to denigrate “any person”, as happens daily in the morning. . Another obvious one, where he is a confessed criminal, is by omission, contemplated in article 109 of the Constitution, for having ordered the release of Ovidio Guzmán, the son of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, whose moral justification was annulled by never instructing his government to continue his search. and catch.
There are more possible crimes. One for past acts, the deaths caused in children by the lack of medicines for cancer, as part of a health policy ordered by him. Others, to be analyzed within article 108 on patrimonial damage to the State and corruption, by the Mayan Train -in addition to irreparable environmental damage- and the Dos Bocas refinery, projects derived from their occurrences, not from feasibility and viability analysis, which have almost tripled their budgets without even knowing at this time that they will operate at the planned times and give the results offered, as is happening with the “Felipe Ángeles” airport.
López Obrador’s defense and rhetoric in favor of Castillo and Fernández is certainly not accidental. Out of caution or fear, he knows or intuits that in the winter of 2024, the peaceful life that he told himself in his retirement could be the opposite.
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