Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, January 22, 2016

Hoping good news gives hope

Things have not been going well for Mexico's president. No wonder he trumpets a newsworthy success: for his country, his government, his party, and himself.

Mexico's beleaguered president seizes on El Chapo's arrest to lift gloom

Peña

Two days after fugitive cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was apprehended by Mexican marines, President Enrique Peña Nieto took to the airwaves to boast about the capture of a man whose two escapes from high-security prisons had come to symbolize institutional failure and corruption in the country.

“The detention of the world’s most wanted criminal confirms the coordination of our institutions in favor of the rule of law,” said Peña Nieto.

But a stream of news reports over recent days have offered a rough reminder that the rule of law – even a semblance of security – is absent from much of Mexico.

Over the weekend 17 people were abducted by gunmen as they travelled to a wedding; on Tuesday, five teachers were snatched from their school by kidnappers…

And a reminder of Mexico’s endemic political corruption came on Friday, when a former head of Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary party – and one-time ally of the president – was arrested in Spain as part of a money-laundering investigation…

Analysts say the response to the recapture and the president’s sudden propensity to speak on security issues reflects a shift in approach, but also a chilly economic climate, with a plunging peso and falling oil price…

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