Politics: New Challenges to Anti-graft Reform

MEXICO - Report 09 Mar 2016 by Guillermo Valdes and Esteban Manteca

Fighting corruption is an issue that is at the center of public debate these days in Mexico, thanks in large part to the call for a citizens’ initiative in support of their proposal for a General Law of Administrative Responsibilities, which has been promoted under the hash tag “#Ley3de3”. Following ten months of foot-dragging by politicians after the constitutional reform establishing a National Anti-corruption System was signed into law, political parties are suddenly giving more lip service to implementing laws needed to make the system a reality. But actual motion continues at a snail’s pace and details that were leaked of a joint proposal by the governing PRI and its main minor party ally suggest they will try to derail central aspects of the “#Ley3de3” initiative. This means the debate in Congress will be long and that any progress this session will fall short of what is needed to combat the scourge of corruption. Further evidence of the scale of the problem came from the Supreme Federal Auditing Authority’s report on the 2014 public accounts. Though that body is very limited in what it can investigate, it uncovered widespread problems in the ways federal funds are distributed to the states and the ways those funds are used or accounted for.

A case in point: Public insecurity is an especially pronounced scourge in a number of states, some of which have been beneficiaries of huge federal transfers intended to strengthen their police forces, public security systems, equipment, etc. However, the states that have received the most funds and have spent the least of those monies on their intended purposes are precisely those with the highest crime rates.

Mexico has the worst corruption ratings of any OECD country. Citizen discontent with corruption has been steadily growing for a number of years. The success of independent candidates in recent elections can be traced in large part to public outrage over issues such as graft. Political parties now have the opportunity to offer the public attractive options for dealing with these issues ahead of this year’s contests at the ballot box and the 2018 presidential race, but will they find that enough of an incentive to bring about change?

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