Luis Rubio
“If it does not make sense, it sounds metallic” goes a popular refrain. In Mexico the governments change but not the practices nor the customs. Corruption could be an evil, a cultural factor or a characteristic, but never a crime. Many are accused of corruption, but never for the corruption itself, but instead as an excuse for some political violation of another order or because it is an effective way of eliminating contenders, enemies or rivals. The President frequently stated that he would not cover-up for anyone, but that ceased to be valid when those presumed to be involved began to be close to him. The issue here is that corruption cannot be eradicated with speeches or wishes, but instead with a correct diagnosis that later translates into consistent actions.
Corruption is inherent in the Mexican way of being and being governed. There’s no getting away from that fundamental principle. Everything in the national life, especially in the public ambit, is designed -or at least highly inclined- toward corruption because the laws and rules reward impunity. Although the phenomenon is as old as the country itself, it has worsened due to democratization. Luis Carlos Ugalde* wrote that the pyramidal corruption of the era of authoritarian presidentialism has been “democratizing itself” on becoming incorporated into all levels of government, political parties and branches of government. What was formerly concentrated, and an instrument of political cohesion, has become a mechanism of political control in the hands of a growing number of actors. Worse yet, its ubiquitousness has generated widespread repudiation in society, anger that has become hate.
Campaigning politicians tend to adopt a priggish, moralizing tone in matters of corruption: they vow a heavy hand, all-out combat, and severe measures to eradicate it. The proposal that the then-Morena-party candidate published during her campaign rejects the scheme of citizenry-led effort that characterized the so-called “national anticorruption system,” to be replaced by the strengthening of the judicial instances, that is, more of the old same. The proposal sounds like the diagnoses that led to the creation of the Ministry of the Comptroller’s Office back in the eighties that, like all of the previous efforts, increased bureaucratic requirements and made life ever more complicated for public functionaries, but did not touch corrupt practices in the slightest.
It’s one or the other: either the diverse proposals to combat corruption do not understand the phenomenon, or they constitute nothing more than a rhetorical resource employed to emerge from the situation. The innumerable proposals -the honest ones as well as the merely rhetorical ones- for combatting corruption entail an evident punitive bias: corruption must be penalized and the best way to accomplish that is with sanctions, though these rarely materialize. Some proposals (and politicians) prefer a more powerful authority, others recognize that, given the strong deficit of trust, greater transparency is required. But none of these proposals acknowledge the problem of origin: Mexican laws and regulations make corruption possible, they in fact promote it.
Fortunately, there are examples of that it is possible to diminish or eradicate corruption: when the spaces of arbitrariness and impunity are eliminated, corruption is no longer possible or inevitable. That is what occurred at the end of the eighties in the former SECOFI (today the Secretariat of Economy) where a change in the rules modified the entire nature of the Secretariat dedicated to trade and industry. Historically one of the spaces of greatest corruption in the government, the SECOFI bureaucracy lived from the exploitation of its discretionary powers in the awarding of permits for investment, importing, exporting and other similar permissions. With the liberalization of the economy (that, essentially, consisted of the substitution of the permit requirements with tariffs or rigid rules), nearly the whole industry of corruption in that Secretariat disappeared. The thousands of bureaucrats devoted to paper-shuffling (or impeding papers being shuffled) stopped being necessary and the personnel was reduced to less than 10% of what it was. In that world, corruption simply vanished. With the elimination of the need to obtain permits from the Secretariat and the establishment of clear and transparent rules for the obtaining of those still required, corruption virtually evaporated.
There is no science in this: Mexican bureaucratic practices and the extreme use of discretion conferred on the authority by the laws and regulations are a permanent source of corruption. When a governmental functionary is endowed with ample faculties to contract, permit or render a project possible, grant a permit or authorize a work, the tendency to become corrupt is immense. If the son of a functionary can de facto decide who will be in charge of a public work, the probability of corruption flourishing is infinite. The phenomenon is not new and it affects all politicians and all political parties. Although the outgoing government denies this, the old saying that goes, “Don’t give me anything; just put me where it is” is as valid today as it always was in the past. And it would get worse should the judicial reform be approved.
If someone really means to change the panorama, they should start with the issue at hand: the excessive discretional powers that lead to absolute impunity.
*Nexos, February 2015
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