As reported by The Economist:
Suspicion falls on politicians
FELIPE CALDERÓN has bet his presidency on fighting Mexico’s drug-trafficking syndicates and their penetration of his country’s institutions. Yet for the first two and a half years of his administration, not a single elected official was arrested for complicity with the traffickers. That encouraged some of his Mexican critics to claim that his efforts were half-hearted. Now the government has started to answer them.
Last month troops and federal police swooped on the president’s home state of Michoacán, arresting 28 officials including ten mayors, a senior official in the prosecutor’s office and a judge. They are suspected of collaborating with La Familia, a notorious outfit that produces designer drugs and runs extortion rackets. Further arrests have followed across the country this month. Although they have not caused as much of a political stir, they involved eight employees of the prosecutor’s office in the central state of Morelos, nine soldiers suspected of providing information on troop movements to the Sinaloa mob and 98 police in Nuevo León in the north.
The government claims the Michoacán raid as the fruit of reforms of the federal police, who have been equipped with new investigative and intelligence units, better salaries and more leeway to strike deals with informants. Much of the evidence came from the earlier arrest of Rafael Cedeño Hernández, a leader of La Familia who also ran youth centres with the ostensible aim of preventing drug addiction.
But critics worry that the raid is just a fishing expedition and that the government may lack the evidence it needs to secure convictions. None of the detainees has been charged. Prosecutors are relying on orders of arraigo, a power beefed-up in a judicial reform last year that allows them to hold suspects for up to 90 days while detectives do their work. “Instead of investigating to arrest, they’re arresting to investigate,” says Ernesto López Portillo of the Institute for Security and Democracy, an NGO. “Arraigo is an exceptional instrument, and they are abusing it.”
Although two of the arrested mayors are members of Mr Calderón’s own conservative National Action Party, the raid has soured his relations with the opposition. Michoacán’s governor, Leonel Godoy, who belongs to the leftish Party of the Democratic Revolution, is not suspected of corruption, but was not told of the arrests until they were under way. Mr Godoy took particular offence when federal agents barged into his palace. This jeopardises co-operation between federal and state officials, though the government would argue that it has to prevent tip-offs.
Some opponents accuse Mr Calderón of pulling a stunt ahead of a mid-term election on July 5th. To deflect such claims, the government will need to secure convictions, and continue its campaign against narco-politics after the election.
