Politics: A State of Systemic Corruption
Mexico may be no stranger to the scourge of corruption, but it certainly had no precedent for the parade of state governors arrested, charged, and otherwise denounced for acts of corruption just in the past two weeks. Although the arrests were confined to two fugitive former governors – Tomás Yarrington in Italy and Javier Duarte in Guatemala, who may constitute extreme examples in some respects – at this point it’s becoming more difficult to find an ex-governor from this century who is not facing serious corruption charges.
Some cases involve a longer-standing problem of officials with ties to organized crime that dates back decades, but the seeming ubiquity of massive corruption in state governments this century would also appear to have a substantial structural component. After the authoritarian and highly centralized government of the 20th century gave way to a period of alternation of power, state governors amassed enormous power, and the already vast federal transfers and subsidies at their disposal were more than doubled, with virtually no oversight or controls at the federal level, where serious problems of impunity are also apparent. To make things worse, governors have come to wield almost absolute control over all institutions within their states and in many instances, over most opposition legislators.
But recently there has been something of a fissure in this history of impunity as a combination of quality reporting, much of it originating on digital news sites, and a public now accustomed to a daily diet of social media have for the moment begun to trigger tangible waves of outrage and even street protests. Official political calculations may well have also played a role given that the governing PRI, to which the vast majority of the accused governors belong, is struggling ahead of this summer’s state elections and the 2018 presidential contest. However, it is hard to see how voters might be sufficiently placated by such arrests this late in the game.
But it is far from clear that we are witnessing a more definitive tipping point. The absence of serious oversight mechanisms and a new anti-corruption system that remains leaderless and ineffectual, guarantee that the vast majority of corruption cases end in impunity, and most governors and ex-governors, and officials at even higher levels, will never be touched.
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