La
Jornada: Editorial
The president of the Business Coordinating Council (BCC), Juan Pablo Castañón, admitted yesterday that there’s also corruption in the private business sector and he said that when an act like this involves a public official and a private party, both parties should be punished.
It is noteworthy that the statements of the leading businessman coincided with the date of Mexican businessman Juan Manuel Muñoz Luévano’s arrest, in Spain, in the context of the the case opened by Spain’s district attorney's office against PRI’s ex-national president, Humberto Moreira, because of supposed money laundering, criminal association, embezzlement of public funds and dishonesty.
It would certainly be inappropriate for the leaders of the business sector to resist admitting that corruption is not a one-dimensional plague confined to government offices, but rather an illegal and unethical relationship between public servants and private actors. The business sector itself is responsible for the phenomenon, in that from there comes the greater part of the bribes, “commissions” and illegitimate payments for “favours”, preferential treatment and privileges, that invariably lead to serious losses for the public funds: between 400 and 740 billion pesos [US$23 to 42.3 billion] every year -according to different studies-, equivalent to 4 percent of the GDP.
Such a relationship between corrupters and the corrupted, based on the systematic violation of both public and private frontiers, has become structural in the federal, state, and municipal governments and in the three branches of government, and in order to get rid of it, it’s necessary, before anything else, to battle against impunity and dissimulation. In that sense, the relevant thing is not for the BCC to now admit that there’s also corruption among businessmen, rather that they continue to do it and that this statement doesn’t come with a obligation to report and help battle against this scourge
What is certain is that, with the recognition made by the the highest business organization of the country, it will end up burying one of the lies with which technocratic rhetoric supported itself during the last years of the last century and the first years of the current one: cozy deals between public officials and private businesses are a desirable norm and it’s necessary to adopt them in public administration to give it tidiness and efficiency. During the dawn of his term, Vicente Fox [2000-2006] reached the extreme by insinuating that a government of businessmen and for businessmen would be an antidote against the deep-rooted corruption in public offices.
In counterpart, the demand for a true head-on fight against corruption has been raised for a long time from other sectors and by other actors and this indicates an unavoidable consensus on society’s part. Said combat will not be made only by the mere recognition of the problem: in the end, corruption would be unthinkable without the factors of obscurity and impunity. The dominance of the last one, in particular, links corruption with human rights’ violations, violence and insecurity, which are the other central problems in Mexico today.
As long as it isn’t accepted that facing corruption calls for the demonstration of political will to punish the corrupted as much as the corrupter according to law, then there will be no real possibilities of ending this scourge. Spanish original