With a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a spot on one of those ubiquitous lists of "leading global thinkers," Mexican Finance Minister L.uis Videgaray is just the kind of technocrat to bring the country the radical economic reform it needs. He's also financially entangled with a businessman who does hundreds of millions of dollars in business with the government.
Sadly, he isn't an anomaly. Mexico's ruling caste is seriously and systematically compromised by shady dealings. It's part of a wider failure of governance--exemplifying the kind of corruption that's inciting more and more Mexicans to protest indifferent public institutions, police who kill rather than protect, and clubby technocrats who pursue economic reforms but put themselves above the rules.
Even as Mexico's economy has opened up, its score on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index has barely changed, and its ranking lags that of many other Latin American nations. In 2013, more than 90 percent of Mexicans said that corruption either grew or stayed the same over the last two years.
The anti-corruption provisions of the Pact for Mexico, the agreement that Mexico's biggest political parties signed, may ultimately be more important to Mexico's future than its economic reforms. Foreign companies worried about losing out to sweetheart deals or becoming ensnared in stiff U.S. anti-corruption laws may shy away from Mexico's newly opened energy and telecommunication markets. More broadly, without strong anti-corruption laws and the political will to enforce them, public confidence in government will continue to suffer.
This year, Mexico strengthened its transparency laws and created a special prosecutor for corruption. Disputes over who should be appointed to that role, what powers the office should have and how independent a new auditing body should be have blocked the initiative--a stalemate fed by the fears of all Mexico's political parties that their past misdeeds might be exposed.
Massacres and scandals have stoked public anger over deep-seated dirty-dealing. Citizens fed up with crime are taking the law into their own hands. At this rate, the question isn't so much what happens at next year's midterm elections. It's whether reform is overtaken by revolt.
Editorial on 12/27/2014