CORRUPTION WILL CONTINUE IN GOVERNMENT LED BY CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM

Yesterday, April 1, the ruling candidate for the presidency of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, presented her plan to fight corruption in the country, should she win the elections on June 2.

President López Obrador won the 2018 elections under the banner of fighting corruption, which he considered to be the cause of the country's main problems.

But how to measure whether corruption has decreased in the current government?

The government itself does not have any measures to evaluate whether corruption has decreased, since the president has pointed out that “he is not corrupt”; that he is not like previous presidents and therefore, corruption was not allowed in his government.

But there is no way to measure, evaluate and/or compare it, because the government has not developed any method or procedure to do so.

At the international level, Transparency International conducts annual surveys on perceptions of corruption in 180 countries.

Since López Obrador took office, Mexico has not made significant progress in the measurements of this organization, ranking 126th (with 31 points out of 100 possible) out of 180 countries evaluated.

In other words, from an international perspective, Mexico has made no progress in the fight against corruption.

But López Obrador disqualifies Transparency International, since he says that is part of the neoliberal international organizations that are against his government, so he does not take them into account.

At the national level, there was a survey conducted by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), an autonomous body of the Mexican State, though it is not considered a very reliable measure because it is based on questionnaires to people (who may or may not answer truthfully), on the times they have had to pay improperly to avoid a fine or sanction; to speed up a procedure or to grant them a public service. The survey reported in 2022 that corruption cost Mexicans 9.5 billion pesos a year ($558 million).

This figure refers only to what individuals claimed they had to pay to civil servants illegally.

While 86.3 per cent of those surveyed indicated that corruption is common in the country, only 14.7 per cent of those persons indicated that they had experienced some act of corruption on the part of public employees or officials.

For the non-governmental organization, Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, INEGI data are inaccurate, because according to its own surveys conducted between 2019 and 2023, corruption costs the country about 43 billion pesos (2,530 million dollars), since the people surveyed affirmed that they had to pay at least 2.5 times a year illegally for some form of service or to avoid some fine.

The same organization points out that middle-class people are the ones who pay the most money in acts of corruption per year, with 622 pesos per person; followed by upper-class people with 579 pesos per person per year; and finally, the lower-class people with 284 pesos per person per year.

This does not mean that the middle class is more prone to corruption, but it is the one that is most exposed to it, because of greater contact with authorities at all levels (local, state, and federal).

However, it is the corruption at high levels of politicians and businessmen that involves the most monetary cost, since according to Transparency International, the annual costs of corruption for Mexico would reach 100 billion dollars, which seems more realistic than the figures obtained by INEGI and Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity.

For example, the famous Mayan Train, President Lopez Obrador's flagship public work, is supposed to cost 150 billion pesos (8,823 million dollars). But so far, there are over-costs of 500 billion pesos (29,411 million dollars), and the contracts for this work cannot be audited because the president has labeled it as “national security,” so all that over-cost has remained completely opaque.

It has transpired that the president's sons have been beneficiaries (along with their friends) of numerous contracts for this work, which is why the president does not want them to be revised.

Similarly, the Dos Bocas refinery in Tabasco, which is supposed to have a cost of $8 billion, is already at $18 billion and is not yet operational. And just like the Mayan Train, it was designated as a work of “national security.”

Rocío Nahle, who was the Secretary of Energy during most of the López Obrador government and the main promoter of the refinery, is now the official candidate for the government of Veracruz, and has gone to live in the most expensive and luxurious neighborhood in Boca del Río, Veracruz, where she rents a house for thousands of dollars, which she would not have been able to pay with her salary.

The biggest corruption scandal in López Obrador’s six-year term, that of the Mexican Food Security Agency, where 18 billion pesos were embezzled, has not been cleared up, and its director Ignacio Ovalle (who was López Obrador’s first boss in his political career) has been protected by the president, placing him in a lower position in the Ministry of the Interior.

Now Sheinbaum has presented her anti-corruption plan in which she reaffirms the same promises as the current president.

First, she states that it will accept only honest officials in her government. And it will be since they file their asset declarations (which is what all civil servants are required to do by law) and that they have a “history of honesty.”

That is, Mrs. Sheinbaum will only receive the curriculum vitae of the officials, ask them, looking them in the eye, whether they are honest or not, and if they convince her, ready, they will have passed the test to be part of her government.

She also noted that penalties in the laws for the corrupt will be increased. As it happens, there are already numerous punishments for those who commit acts of corruption, what happens is that the laws are not applied, or they are only applied against political enemies, without disturbing the allies (there is the case of Ignacio Ovalle to prove it).

She also said she would create a Federal Anti-Corruption Agency, without specifying too much what its functions would be. But such an agency would report directly to the President of the Republic.

It is the same as what already exists with the Civil Service Secretariat, which is subordinate to the Executive and is responsible for reviewing the property and income declarations of civil servants.

In other words, it is not an independent body and will therefore do whatever President Sheinbaum tells it to do. This was already experienced in Peña Nieto’s government when he ordered his secretary of the Civil Service to “investigate” whether there was any act of corruption in the case of the purchase of a luxury house by Peña Nieto’s wife. And what do you think that the official told the president? That, of course, there was nothing illegal.

So, this proposal by Mrs. Sheinbaum is a real mockery of the people.
She also noted that laws and regulations need to be simplified to prevent acts of corruption. In this case, what she is saying is that she is going to eliminate agencies such as the National Institute for Access to Information (INAI) and other regulatory agencies, which precisely prevent public officials from awarding contracts and concessions to their relatives or partners, discretionary, and in non-transparent manner.

And to avoid this well-founded criticism, Mrs. Sheinbaum promised that up to 65% of public contracts would be put out to tender, in full view of the fact that during the government of López Obrador, up to 90% of all public contracts were awarded directly, without tender and with the greatest opacity.

But it just so happens that that 65% is to be achieved by the end of the government, in 2030. So, Mrs. Sheinbaum may well continue to award public contracts directly for the first 5 years of her government, and only for the last year, tender the 65% promised.

In short, Sheinbaum's proposal to combat corruption is a deception, not even a covert one, to follow corruption to the maximum, as it has happened during the government of López Obrador.

And, of course, the Mexican people will continue to pay the enormous costs that corruption inflicts on the country.