Federico Reyes Heroles
The photo says it all. The much-questioned senator, in the middle of the Treasury Secretary’s hearing, was watching a soccer game on his screen! The secretary was explaining the fight against fuel theft, which has cost Mexicans around 500 billion pesos. The coordinator of the parliamentary group—regardless of everything else—is disrespectful in the strict sense of the word: “attention and care given to someone or something.” He disrespected the secretary, all his fellow legislators, the public, and his office.
Under the spotlight, he mocked everyone, including the president, who, incidentally, has systematically blocked offensive remarks against the former governor. Inevitable: Why is Sheinbaum willing to pay the price that this character brings to her, her government, and her movement? Two days later, on a very significant occasion—the 204th anniversary of the founding of the Mexican Navy—she firmly reiterated that corruption within institutions will not be tolerated. Very good.
However, the corruption she inherited is pervasive: CFE, Pemex, customs, ports, airports, Birmex, and now the Aeronautical Agency, as well as purchases made without bidding, including those for trains. Suppliers are linked to Morena and La Barredora. That’s what can divide them. The peak of fiscal huachicol was in 2021. The Federal Superior Audit Office has detected anomalies since 2019. Thousands of people were involved. Nothing happened.
In her big Sunday celebration, the issue of fiscal fuel theft disappeared. Instead, with a dose of paranoia also inherited from AMLO and the permanent “conspiracy,” the president launched into a harangue: “They have set out to separate us, to break us up. Their goal is none other than to destroy the movement…” “…Andrés Manuel López Obrador was, is, and always will be an example of honesty…”
Surely there are external figures who actively seek to divide Morena. But what we see is a president bound by her own party, in the Chambers, by the powerful interest groups that benefit from it—a quagmire. Incidentally, last Saturday, the New York Times published a front-page article on the lavish spending of certain Morena members this summer. This is nothing new to us, but the newspaper lists its income and extraordinary expenses—$2,600 at a restaurant in Japan—and reminds us that Morena’s primary objective at its inception was to fight corruption. Regardless of the intention to separate them, the fact is that it must be pretty uncomfortable to be a colleague of people who embody ostentatious extravagance. Or, worse still, who may appear on the lists of accomplices that deported drug traffickers provide to the US authorities.
It is of little use to Morena that the coordinator of its deputies gives lessons in ethics to supporters of his party, when his family will be remembered for nepotism and perhaps other issues. Sheinbaum’s slogan against nepotism crumbles when the president of her party, the secretary of the same party, and the cases of Guerrero, San Luis Potosí, and Zacatecas contradict her.
Sheinbaum should be able to govern fully. There has been progress in burying the hugs, not bullets, and coordination with the US. External pressure, internal will, or both? Other advances include returning to clean energy and promoting partnerships with oil companies that contribute capital and technology in exploration, without Mexico bearing the risks, as was previously the case. However, misgovernment prevails, in the form of nepotism, disobedience to austerity measures, and the rebellion of almost all governors—except Querétaro—against the gender parity mandate, as well as the transfer of the (dis)amparo law. The ineptitude is such that it provokes laughter and then… sadness (see Joaquín Marín de do Pingüe, chapter 31). Her real enemies are within: disobedience, cynicism, mockery of her person and office.
So far, what is behind the little screen is more important.
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