Reforma: Mexico President Pena Nieto's Plagiarism Should Result in His Removal from Office Eduardo R. Huchim - Reforma
go to original August 25, 2016

The President plagiarized a large part of his thesis [for his law degree, in Mexico a five-year undergraduate course], taking texts from various authors without giving them credit. Twenty years after graduating, a website discovered and published the plagiarism and the university retracted his professional degree as a result. As a consequence, the President resigned, acknowledging that his office symbolized national unity and that, because of his conduct, this unity had been lost.

The resignation occurred in Hungary in 2012, and the president was Pál Schmitt. Something similar has happened to other officials in various countries: resignation following the reveal of their irregular academic conduct. Enrique Peña Nieto has also been showcased by a website, Aristegui Noticias, whose investigative journalism unit found and revealed that nearly 29 percent of his bachelor's thesis (at least 197 paragraphs of the 682 in the text) were copied from publications by ten authors without giving them corresponding credit, a proportion classified as "considerable and unacceptable" by Enrique Krauze, one of the plagiarized.

Manuel Gil Antón, professor and researcher from The College of Mexico, has rigorously cataloged the plagiarism and raised the need for the Panamerican University, which approved the thesis, to retract the law degree from today's president. Víctor López Villafañe, who was also plagiarized, agreed with this and came up with a hypothesis: Peña didn't plagiarize the texts because he didn't write his thesis, but instead commissioned another person.

The plagiarism and thesis bought and presented as his own are another symptom of the corruption corroding the nation. Mexico is a country sick with corruption, suffering from a metastatis of corruption that invades the national body. If corruption is at the top of the Mexican State, it's clear that there's hardly any public agency where it's not. Certainly, it's also a part of the private sector and society. And when it comes to this issue, it inevitably points out the worst: the impunity that accompanies corruption.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Related: 125 Thousand Sign Petition to Revoke Mexican President’s Law Degree (PanAm Post)

Translated by Rachel Alexander

Photos: (Saúl López e Isaac Esquivel/Cuartoscuro)

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

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