Politics: Law enforcement system in crisis, with reversals and new scandals
The Mexican prosecutorial system as represented by the Federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) has been unable to implement the promised modernization and, in fact, is mired in new scandals. Despite broad recognition across the political spectrum that the country’s prosecutorial system is in need of a massive overhaul, promised attempts to begin doing so with new legislation regulating the FGR have not only failed to modernize it, but in fact have also resulted in reversals.
The FGR’s deficiencies are hardly a secret. They include poor investigative capacity, an investigative model characterized by the analysis of isolated and not interconnected cases, adherence to a bureaucratic, ritualistic, and excessively formalized methodology, and failure to prosecute organized crime, human rights and corruption cases, among many others.
Public attention is now centered on the FGR because of Federal Attorney General Alejandro Gertz’s behavior in a case in which he has a personal interest, the death of his brother, which he blames on his sister-in-law and niece. Following the release last week of recordings of phone calls in which Gertz indicates that he had access to a confidential draft of the Supreme Court rulings before they were supposed to be handed down, and in which he talks about his pressure tactics on the justices of the country’s top court, coupled with previous instances of more-than-questionable behavior, opposition leaders and others have been calling for his resignation or for his dismissal, which is the exclusive faculty of the President.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador is now faced with the option of maintaining Gertz, which to date has been his stance, or dismissing him. Both alternatives imply political costs for the President, who has made the fight against corruption and the abuse of power centerpieces in his discourse. Independently of how this plays out, however, the FGR and the country’s prosecutorial and judicial system have been increasingly discredited by the scandals, and AMLO’s reputation might be tainted as well.
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