Mexico's corruption scandals don't stop. Veronica Balderas Iglesias investigates claims that the Mexican media is being used to destroy political candidates The leader of the Mexican capital's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Florentino Castro, recently filed a corruption complaint against two civil servants that had worked closely with the Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) favourite for the 2006 presidential elections. Obrador dismissed the issue as "one of many more attacks that are expected against [his] government in these politicised times". During a press conference last Wednesday, 24 March, he spoke openly about Mexico's latest corruption scandal. While admitting to "mistakes" made when employing corrupt public servants, he pledged to fight corruption and impunity and repeated his claim that officials of the federal government, including National Action Party (PAN) member Federico Doring and senator Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, aided by the Centre of Investigations and National Security (CISEN) plotted to tarnish his image. A few weeks ago footage was aired on the leading national broadcast channel Televisa showing Lopez Obrador's former finance chief, Gustavo Ponce, at a high-stakes gambling table in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Furthermore, Lopez Obrador's former personal secretary Rene Bejarano was aired stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a briefcase while in the office of construction magnate, Carlos Ahumada. Officials are investigating allegations that a city borough paid $3 million last year to companies owned by the Argentine businessman for services never performed. Ahumada received lucrative paving contracts during former City Mayor Rosario Robles' administration. Denying any wrongdoing and accusing rivals in the PRD of taking advantage of confusion for a settling of accounts, Robles offered her resignation from the organisation. Last Friday, the capital's administration under-secretary Marti Batres Guadarrama said on national television that de Cevallos -- who has admitted being advisor to Ahumada -- has been under investigation since 1996 for receiving money from the Juarez drug cartel. De Cevallos had been interviewed in the same TV news show minutes earlier and harshly criticised the capital's administration. "He behaved like a street fighter rather than a lawmaker," PRD's Jesus Ortega said. Investigations continue with further murky details looking set to surface in coming weeks. The latest scandal only proves that politically motivated revenge is rampant in Mexico; that those in power are serving their own ends using media and intelligence bodies to get rid of opponents. José Antonio Soberon, president of Mexico's National Criminologists College, told Al-Ahram Weekly, "It is not justifiable when bodies like the CISEN are misused to strengthen or support a political party." He further added, "In the application of Mexican laws regarding previous scandals, one can clearly notice the protective hand of power." It is a matter of concern that none of the four main political parties -- the ruling PAN, the PRI, the Green Party (PVEM) and the PRD -- is free of the mark of suspicion. While the media has forced authorities in particular to look into thorny issues they might otherwise have hoped would remain hidden, it is more widely used as a weapon in domestic political struggles. In 2000, Vicente Fox invested enormous amounts of money in his presidential campaign, placing massive amounts of advertising on TV, radio and in newspapers. Officials in Mexico's then-ruling PRI party later presented evidence of possible money laundering, in the form of bank cheques. The media highlighted the apparently illegal donations that Fox received from foreign sources while campaigning with the group "Amigos de Fox". Fox's response to the accusations was published in the El Universal newspaper. He said "the money came from donations by simple people to professionals and business owners." He moreover accused the PRI of espionage against him. Later came time for Fox's "revenge". The Pemexgate scandal -- in which the PRI was accused of siphoning as much as $120 million from national oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) and pumping the proceeds into the campaign coffers of the PRI candidate in the 2000 presidential race -- was first highlighted in the daily newspaper Reforma. Fox then pledged to look into the allegations. Fox denies any knowledge of the latest videos scandal. He also rejects the claim that there is a link between CISEN and the scandal. More recently, videos aired on national television have shown PVEM leader, Jorge Emilio Gonzalez, dubbed the "Kid Green", promising to obtain a permit for a businessman to build a huge tourist development on a stretch of the Caribbean coast near beach resort Cancun. "The images of Gonzalez negotiating a $2 million bribe damaged the party's credibility and reduced the number of its followers," journalist and former TV host Eduardo Blancas told the Weekly. Lopez Obrador also took advantage of the situation, declaring, "The Green Party scandal shows that part of Mexico's political class is rotten." Nevertheless, according to Blancas, the impact of the latest "video shows" in the case of the capital's administration, promises to have more severe consequences. "It was a strategy to damage Obrador's image. He committed a big mistake by starting an early political campaign before the 2006 elections. The videos were sold to a political enemy and were used just when Obrador thought that his popularity would win him the presidential chair," Blancas explained. Leaders, officials, public servants and businessmen are fully aware that the power of the media can never be underestimated. They have also come to realise that when unethical and illegal acts surface, it is the mass media that increases or decreases the fatal impact. Lopez Obrador has been flirting with the mass media on a regular basis by "feeding" news to reporters early almost every morning. Nonetheless, and despite the fact that he is not directly implicated in any corruption, the press has recently published polls highlighting that his popularity has decreased almost 40 per cent, with many Mexicans casting doubts on his statements that he didn't know what his subordinates were doing. "All the work he had done to win popular acceptance, including infrastructure work and policies to benefit the elderly is going down the drain," Blancas told the Weekly. Even if Ponce, Bejarano and Ahumada tried to defend themselves, it would be difficult for them to file a successful complaint against Televisa for airing the shameful videos, as Soberon explained: "The media is protected by the Freedom of the Press and Expression Law. There are only a few instances -- for example, the assassination of a person -- when a complaint would be considered in court. It is therefore more convenient for the affected to abstain from making public declarations in order to let the audience forget about the issue." Lopez Obrador, however, does not seem willing to adhere to the latter course of action. He believes that he has to speak out to defend himself, planning further use of the media to recover his popularity. Unsurprising perhaps, when, as Blancas laments, "Politics is a business."
