This Op-ed is perhaps one the harshes editorials Lopez Obrador has faced since he began his government. Mainly because every day, more and more people who voted for him, who trusted him, feel profoundly disappointed.
Everything was rushed. The doubts dissipated. AMLO’s 4T is collapsing. He doesn’t know how to govern. The economy, security, health, education, all falling apart. The speed is terrifying. But perhaps the most severe thing is the ethical collapse.
The lie.- When a government is caught lying, its legitimacy collapses. They started outlying, and they’re still lying. There was no such thing as 500 billion pesos, but they repeated it ad nauseam. They lied because there is no willingness to make public purchases transparent; today, direct allocations are proliferating.
They lied about the ephemeral achievements of the huachicol. They lied about the decrease in violence. They lied that there was no shortage of medicines. They lied about the viability of Dos Bocas and Santa Lucía. They lied about the fiscal surplus and oil production figures.
They lied about the achievements of their social programs. They lied by inventing cases of corruption that they never proved, especially in civil society organizations. They lied grossly with the figures from the march against violence against women.
They lied with the appointment of the president of the CNDH. They were lying as a form of government-led them into this crisis in the worst condition.
Today it is difficult to believe the figures given by COVID-19: hundreds of cases of “atypical pneumonia,” saturated hospitals, epidemiologists who do not know what the symptoms are. In a sea of lies, doubts are eating away at Mexican society. Why should we believe them?
Deception.- When a government deceives, it assumes that the population is oligophrenic, dumb, stupid. Of course, it is not. They cheat with the consultations as a form of decision, they deceive, because they are a farce.
They deceive because they represent nothing, and they know it. But the joke fell on them with the Constellation Brands case, now the world knows what their consultations are made of. Everyone knows about the deception in the cancellation of the NAIM (new airport) and so it will be back on the list because it comes from a farce. They cheated by evading facts, trying to impose the national agenda from the morning. They failed.
The plane raffle was a gross hoax. They cheated on the numbers of migrants and their condition. They cheated or tried to cheat, with the revocation of their mandate in an election year. They cheated with the Mayan Train permits. They cheated because the auctions do not help public finances that are against the wall. They cheated with their “deep respect for the law” because they have been 18 months of tricks, among them a reform of the justice system that was left without authorship, but that coincided in the threats to individual liberties.
The leadership is collapsing because lies and deceptions have short legs; they do not go far. It collapses because they set fire to a society that is much more organized and informed than they imagined. A society that now follows public purchases, bidding processes, economic and social figures. A society that asks questions and disbelieves the word of the president, the great instrument of lies and deceit. Citizens who get off the planes where the President travels, people who demand that he takes his temperature before boarding.
It collapses because during the health crisis he talks from “La Rumorosa” about the aesthetic damage of wind energy. Pathetic. It is collapsing because society today, in the face of lies and deceit, is more alert than ever. It collapses because they thought that social networks were the exclusive territory of the 4T, showing their contempt for free citizens. They lost them. It is collapsing because they believed and sold the idea that the popularity of the “Great Leader” was stable and untouchable, and today it is plummeting. We are in different country, and they just don’t understand. They were hope, and today they are a reference of hypocrisy.
Presidential ridicule benefits no one. The lies and deception quickly came up against a Mexico that today denounces them.
Now, in the face of the collapse and weakness of the opposition, it is society that must assume ethical leadership with information and ideas.
Federico Reyes Heroles
For El Excelsior
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Federico Reyes-Heroles is a Mexican writer and political commentator with more than 20 published titles, including essays and novels. Since 1980 he has been a weekly columnist for various national newspapers such as Uno Más Uno, La Jornada, El Financiero, Reforma. Since July 2013 he has been writing for the daily Excelsior. His weekly articles are reproduced in different newspapers in Mexico