Mexico Faces Growing Gap Between Political Class and Calls for Change Randal C. Archibold - The New York Times
go to original December 13, 2014

Will Mexico's Government Be Overthrown? (TestTube)

MEXICO CITY — As the Nobel Peace Prize was being awarded in Oslo this week, a young man dashed on stage, unfurled a Mexican flag streaked with red paint and begged for help for his country because more than 40 college students have been missing for months after clashing with the police.

At the Latin Grammy Awards ceremony in Las Vegas last month, the big winners, Calle 13, shouted solidarity with the victims as they performed. At home, mass marches have regularly filled Mexican streets with angry calls for the government to act against corruption and crime.

But is the country’s political class listening?

In the coming days, Mexico is expected to name a special prosecutor to investigate corruption — a supposed Elliot Ness who would spare no sacred cows and answer the clamor of the public. The prosecutor is supposed to finally root out bribery, favoritism, kickbacks and reveal the kinds of organized crime that prosecutors say were at play in the case of the missing students.

That kind of prosecutorial determination may be what the public demands. What it is getting, however, is a prosecutor with little of the independence necessary to carry out the stated mission, government watchdog groups say.

The new position will operate under the attorney general’s office — headed by an ally of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who will have veto power over the Senate’s nominee. But the president himself is facing accusations of conflict of interest over a house that his wife tried to buy from a government contractor, raising public concern about how aggressive a special prosecutor can be.

And so, in a time of widespread tumult over the missing students, presumed dead at the hands of authorities working with drug gangs, Mexico now faces an ever-widening breach between the political class and the demands for change.

Read the rest at The New York Times

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