Translated by Rachel Alexander
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.
This impunity is almost certainly the corollary of the plagiarism of today's President. Maybe the Panamerican University, whose prestige is seriously in doubt, will dare to do something, but, as Javier Risco said on Twitter, it would probably "do a Virgilio."
MV Note: Virigilio Andrade, appointed by Peña Nieto as Secretary of Public Administration to investigate whether he had engaged in any conflict of interest in his wife's purchase of the "White House", found the President innocent of any such conflict, since he did not hold public office at the time. He was campaigning for the presidency.For his part, in an interview with Enrique Hernández Alcázar (W Radio), Peña's thesis director, Eduardo Guerrero Martínez, attributed the plagiarism to misprints(!) and to Carmen Aristegui, who, he said, hates the president. By the way, in a strange statement that avoids blaming Peña, the President of the Senate, Roberto Gil, blamed Guerrero for the plagiarism and questioned his aptitude for "continuing to overseeing the formation of youth" (Reforma, Aug. 23, 2016). Meanwhile, presidential spokesman, Eduardo Sánchez, limited the topic to "errors in style like data without citations or a lack of references to authors" (Id., Aug. 22, 2016). "It's almost, almost blaming the plagiarism on the typewriter," said Gil Antón in contrast, adding, "This is not a problem of wording and style, it's a problem of shamelessness, a lack of ethics and impropriety."
Although he is shameless and lacking ethics, what's certain is that nothing will happen to Peña Nieto, as nothing has also happened to him for the apparent conflict of interest in the case of the "white house" in Lomas de Chapultepec, and in the apartments used by his wife, Angélica Rivera, in Miami [the property tax of $29,000 being paid in 2014 by a Mexican businessman who is a friend of the President; she also apparently has free use of the businessman's adjacent apartment]. Nothing will happen to him, and not only for the weight that presidentialism has on nearly the entire political class, but also for the near criminal impunity enjoyed by the President, who constitutionally can only be charged for treason and serious crimes against public order.
Here is a failure in our Constitution that should be corrected. If it's healthy for the Executive to have some privileges, among the causes of his being thrown out of office should be corruption and lack of ethics. In the federal constitution, the revocation of the mandate should be established. If the electorate is entitled to make mistakes when choosing a President who ends up being incompetent, unethical or corrupt, they should also have the right to remove him.
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*Eduardo R. Huchim is a journalist, writer and, from 1999 to 2006, member of the General Council of the Electoral Institute of Mexico City, where he presided over the Audit Commission. His books include The System Crashes (Grijalbo, 1996), The Plots (novel, Grijalbo, 1997), New Elections (Plaza y Janés, 1997), Media (Santillana, 2002) and What's Up With the Vote (Terracotta, 2006). @EduardoRHuchim