Immediately after declaring [three days of] national mourning during his dinner with the Employers Confederation of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto "honored" the dead from the explosion at Pemex while vacationing at a luxury hotel on the beaches of Nayarit. Meanwhile, the head of the Mexican Council of Businessmen (CMHN), Claudio X. González took advantage of the long weekend to launch [an attack] against the elimination of tax privileges included in the Pact for Mexico.
The river returns to its natural course. Peña Nieto's vacation and the stance of the CMHN are two sides of the same coin. Both "national mourning" and "national unity" end up being mere smokescreens covering up the same old cynicism and vested interests. The strategy of governing by means of media spectacles is wearing thin, and public indignation increases.
It is not enough that investigations of the Pemex explosion "are to be conducted with transparency". One has to make the leap from the information of accountability and transparency to punishment of those responsible. For example, regardless of whether it was a bomb or an accident, the head of Pemex, Emilio Lozoya Austin, is required to submit his resignation immediately for his complete negligence in guaranteeing the safety of the oil company's central facilities.
Accountability is perverted when it is reduced to the mere display of data. Mexico is an outstanding global example of the consequences of this type of transparent impunity. Despite advances in access to public information, the country remains one of the most corrupt in the world. In 2012, Transparency International gave Mexico a rating of 34 (out of 100) on corruption, placing it below countries like Mali, Bolivia, Senegal, China and Cuba on the global table.
One of the main reasons for the failure of the transition to democracy and the fight against corruption in Mexico is precisely the impunity of the powerful. Nobody pays the piper. Felipe Calderón enjoys his respectable retirement funded by the federal treasury under the protection of Harvard University. Similarly, [former President] Ernesto Zedillo strolls peacefully through the halls of Yale University.
Last Friday, a large group of victims' relatives shouted at the top of their voices "murderer" at Peña Nieto as he left in an armored van from his whirlwind visit to Pemex's Regional Hospital in Azcapotzalco.
"He is the culprit that killed these people and who injured my father. Surely, what he wants is to privatize Pemex, and this is an example that he is hurting us workers," said one of the protesters to the national press.At the time of writing these lines, we still don't know the real cause of the accident at Pemex, but the statement by this relative of one of the injured is very logical. If what happened on Thursday was an accident, then there is a deplorable and unforgivable lack of monitoring, maintenance and care of the semi-public Pemex facilities by federal authorities. As head of the executive branch and the federal public administration, Peña Nieto is directly responsible, along with Lozoya and Pedro Joaquín Coldwell, for the security of those working in the company. Just as Juan Molinar Horcasitas should have been prosecuted for the case of the burned children in the ABC Nursery, the most senior civil servants also have to face up to the Pemex case.
Now if the explosion was intentional, it is also imperative that investigations be carried out to their logical conclusion. In that case, it is almost impossible to imagine that a "leftist" group might be responsible for the event. These groups seek to defend the oil and the state-owned company, not destroy it. It would not make any logical sense to bomb the facilities of a company in order to avoid its privatization. On the contrary, those who benefit from the impression of vulnerability and neglect in the company are precisely those who are rubbing their hands together with [glee at] the possibility of giving the state-owned company to their friends and to the transnational corporations.
It is most likely that we will never have the complete information about this terrible event, and much less likely will we know who the real culprits are. As in the case of Luis Donaldo Colosio [presidential candidate, assassinated just before 1994 election]; Juan Camilo Mouriño [Cabinet Secretary killed in 2008 crash of government Learjet]; Francisco Blake Mora [Cabinet Secretary killed in 2011 government helicopter crash]; Fernández de Cevallos [former PAN President of the Senate, kidnapped from his ranch in 2010 and held for ransom; released after seven months and payment of about 20 million dollars]; Monex [FX firm alleged to be involved in vote-buying for PRI in recent election] and FOBAPROA [government financial agency whose role in Mexico's 1994 financial crisis remains highly controversial], opacity and impunity will be the rule once again.
The only hope, then, is that the public might respond today in a way similar to how it acted faced with the irresponsible and criminal response of President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado following the 1985 earthquake. Three decades ago, a renewed spirit of civic solidarity and citizen participation emerged from the rubble of the city to push the country's democratization. Today it will again have to be citizens who fill the power vacuum in order to impose a true regime of accountability and to prevent the looting of the national heritage. This would be the best way to honor the revolutionary spirit of our Constitution which tomorrow completes ninety-six years.
MV Note: Mexican Constitution was signed by the Constitutional Congress on February 5, 1917.