A former official fires a legal missile at Mexico’s political class
Emilio Lozoya’s explosive allegations of corruption will test the country’s institutions, and its president
ONE OF THE rituals of Mexican politics is for a president to begin his term by locking up a supposed miscreant from the previous administration. Four of the six presidents from 1982 to 2018 did that. They incarcerated two union leaders, a former president’s brother and the head of Pemex, the state oil company. They presented these as giant victories in the fight against corruption. But they were not. Two of the jailbirds were acquitted, one was pardoned and the sentence of the fourth was overturned. Corruption continued to be rampant, uninvestigated and unpunished.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Bombshells on board”
From the August 29th 2020 edition
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