Peña Nieto's Government Thrashed by the World

Lucio republished from Sinembargo: Translated by Leila English Mexico Voices

 

 EPN's Catching the capos' makes a nice diversion, like a  Hollywood movie set,

impressive to see, but nothing real or of substance

 

A friend in Europe called me over the weekend after hearing about the arrest of La Tuta.  "I read that the 'most wanted drug trafficker' in Mexico has been apprehended.  Knowing what you have shared with me, I respectfully ask if this is a big deal, and is the press here correct in celebrating Peña Nieto’s successes in fighting organized crime and his taking hold of corruption in general?".......You can use your imagination as to my answer, but my point being; how in the world can much of the world press be so lazy as to fly the EPN PR banner and not dig in and present the truth?  The truth surrounds us all, it is not difficult to see.  Exemplified in this article from Sinembargo.

 The United Nations rebuked Peña Nieto’s government when it declared that:

“forced disappearances are widespread throughout much of the Mexican territory.”

Pope Francis warned his fellow countrymen about violence in Argentina by saying

“hopefully, we’re in time to avoid the fate of Mexico.”

(referring  to his concern over the increase of drug trafficking in his native country, as well as rampant corruption. “I hope we are in time to avoid Mexicanization,” he said)

Members of the European Parliament warned, upon visiting the country, that Mexican justice is slow, selective, and fails to protect victims’ families.

And, in case that wasn’t enough, Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu delivered a message, from Hollywood and with an Oscar in his hand, that the entire world saw and heard:

“I pray that we may discover and build the government that we deserve…”

And official voices and writers must not skirt the issue: the message was directly targeted at Peña Nieto and his government. Iñárritu’s dart. was aimed at them, and nobody else.

[Later he added: "My frustration peaked, like with all Mexicans due to the level of impunity and corruption that prevails now as a generalized system ... the things that happen every day; every day there is news that is outrageous, right? 
 

“Because a government must serve a society, and not use that society, for personal gain" said the filmmaker. González Iñárritu said that the political class in general is backed by corrupt businessmen who weave alliances.

"Impunity is the lifeblood of corruption, because if there were  justice,  the first who would go to jail, are those who commit such crimes, and it’s those at the top "]

Mexico in the spotlight. Mexico beaten. Mexico admonished.

The filmmaker is right: we don’t have, today, the government that we deserve.

[interesting that mainstream Mexican media laundered the story, at first, Proceso reported "The best director dedicated the win to all Mexican's", completely side stepping the real story, until the following day and when the news was widespread]

When the PRI [Party of the Institutional Revolution] won the presidential election in 2012, party members smugly declared: “Mexico has changed.” It’s true: it’s a country distinct from the government of Luis Echeverría Álvarez, [President, 1970-76] and even differs from the government of Carlos Salinas [President, 1988-94]. But that wasn’t the point. The question was: the PRI, have they changed?

In just two years of Peña Nieto’s government, the response has become automatic: Mexico has changed, but not the PRI. Examples? The corruption, conflicts of interest and network of influences that today drown the President, his wife, and his friend Luis Videgaray [Secretary of the Treasury]; a complete lack of transparency; the farce of naming a subordinate employee – Virgilio Andrade – to fiscally investigate his own boss Peña; the PRI’s resistance to approve the Anticorruption Law; the doctoring of statistics on violence and on the economy; the Federal District’s [Mexico City] embarrassing candidates: Christian Vargas, alias “Politicohooligan,” and mafiosa Alejandra Barrios, both nominated to become heads of Mexico City delegations (boroughs). Shall we go on? The list is interminable.

PRI party members were not designed for democracy. They don’t know, practice, or understand it. And such is revealed, whether they want it to be or not, in their relations with world powers.

Faced with criticism from the UN, the Pope, and European legislators—who describe the country in grim terms, yes, but who aren’t lying—what does Peña’s PRI government do? Fight among itself rather than proving, with actions, that their international critics are mistaken; refute with arguments, and not with hollow rhetoric; debate with numbers and reasons, instead of falling back on their tired and useless demagogy that only paints them as outdated and prehistoric politicians.

The letter Pope Francis sent doesn’t leave room for doubt: from the Vatican, he warned Argentina about the danger of reaching extreme levels of violence, out of control in a situation equivalent to the Mexican one. “I was speaking with some Mexican bishops and the thing is terror,” wrote Pope Francis. Neither the Pope nor the bishops are wrong about the chaos in Mexico.

How did the government respond? With futile talk, full of hot air:

“We should look for better approaches and spaces for dialog and for recognizing the efforts that Mexico and Latin America are making with respect to the matter that worries us,” was the earful offered by Chancellor José Antonio Meade.

(Certainly, Meade has played a lamentable role since he joined Foreign Relations. He shouldn’t have left the Treasury, where he had turned in good figures at the end of Calderón’s tenure. Mexico gained a poor Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and lost a good Secretary of the Treasury.)

 Criticism comes from Pope Francis and from the United Nations.

 On February 14, the message offered by the UN Committee Against Forced Disappearance was neither loving nor friendly: Mexico faces a situation of “widespread disappearances” across much of its territory. The verdict was solemn.

It was what the Mexican government wanted to avoid at all costs: to be crucified at the heart of the United Nations on the issue of forced disappearances. They didn’t manage to avoid the condemnation. Moreover, our country was presented to the world at the level of horrors like those in African dictatorships and Syria. Who can deny it?

And the more that Peña Nieto’s government tries to censure or veto its critics, the more it fails to clarify or contradict their critiques. The report that representatives from the European Parliament took back to their respective nations, for example, is of a lawless, violent, and corrupted Mexico. What to do, if that is true?

The opinion of European representatives Heidi Hautala and Franziska Keller about the situation in Mexico is forceful and accurate.

“If human rights are not respected, if there is not a free press, if there is no rule of law, if victims are not supported, then there is no future.”

Nothing more to add.

If all that weren’t enough to demonstrate the poor and questionable performance of the Peña government after two years, the message of González Iñárritu last Sunday night, delivered to millions of eyes watching worldwide, was a crushing blow to Los Pinos [The Pines, Presidential residence, Mexico's "White House"].

Let’s not be mistaken: the phrase “construct the government which we deserve…” had addressees: the Mexican President and his government. It wasn’t intended for anyone else. Let’s hope that Peña Nieto’s official spokespeople don’t complicate things unnecessarily.

“I believe that the level of dissatisfaction, of injustice, of corruption, of impunity, has risen to an unsupportable degree,” Iñárritu said to Carmen Aristegui in MVS.

To whom was the message spoken? Surely not for the parents of Ayotzinapa. It was directed to those in power in Mexico: businesspeople, politicians, and, of course, the President and his team.

 A government, Peña Nieto's , that in two years has collapsed

 A government paraded before and admonished by the world.

A government that, in its disgrace—and this is the serious part—is also taking the country into the abyss.