Bloomberg View: Mexico's President Is in No Position to Restore Trust Mac Margolis - Bloomberg View
go to original September 10, 2015

Enrique Pena Nieto's disquieting assurances (Susana Gonzalez/Bloomberg)

When anti-corruption protests and dedicated prosecutors helped chase Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina from power and then into prison last week, many Latin Americans nodded in approval, and not a few in envy.

Barely a news cycle passes in the region without some cabal of political chiefs and cronies getting caught with their hands in the public till. A recent report by Global Financial Integrity pegged Latin America for nearly a fifth of the yearly global outflows of illicit funds, worth 3.3 percent of regional GDP, from 2003 to 2012.

And yet bringing Latin American political leaders to justice for graft, kickbacks and payola is rare, and locking them up is almost unheard of.

Mexico knows that all too well. Cronyism and a culture of impunity, typically papered over by shabby investigation, allow dodgy dealings to flourish in the highest offices. Little wonder Mexico consistently polls as one of the dirtiest countries in Latin America, placing a lowly 103 out of 175 countries on Transparency International's latest corruption perception index - slightly above Guatemala, 82 rungs below Chile and 34 below Brazil.

In 2013, nine out of 10 Mexicans told Transparency International that police were corrupt or extremely corrupt, while 80 percent dismissed the country's judiciary as crooked.

In his state of the union address last week, President Enrique Pena Nieto acknowledged that a series of scandals have "hurt the spirit of the Mexican people and their trust in public institutions." The souring mood follows a reversal of fortune for Mexico's economy, hit by sagging oil prices and the plunging peso, down 20 percent from a year ago.

Yet most of Pena Nieto's worst woes are made in Mexico.

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