Fox's popularity and the pledge to halt corruption

[aabdo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Tony Abdo)]

The ability of Fox to posture as the Liberator of Modern Mexico, rides
on two key points....

1) Continuing to hitch Mexico on board the US economic bubble.

and...
2) The struggle to eliminate official corruption.

Official corruption is seen as a hinderance to binding Mexico to the US
economic ship.     Plus, it is politically unpopular at home.
Official corruption is what sunk the PRI.     And struggling to contain
its extent is something that now unites both the Mexican elite, and the
common people.

Of course, counterposed to the traditional PRI corruption is the danger
of an even greater corruption ahead.      That being a TOTAL indebtness
to foreign capital and foreign control.     But it is only the
debilitated Mexican Left that can make the case against this future
danger.

The PRI opened the floodgates to the privatization proposals to come.
The PRI even actually championed the victory of its 'opposition',
Vicente Fox.    It can't be a real opposition in the years ahead.
And no one in Mexico sees a future for the PRI, beyond being a moribund
semi-official opposition, promoted by the official press.

This report from The Dallas Morning News gives a small taste of the
current level of 'reform' propaganda awash in the Mexican and American
press.      Que Viva 'Chente!       He's going to do away with crooked
Mexican police!      No mas mordida!

Tony
____________________________

Mexican customs supervisors fired
Fox tackling border corruption
02/02/2001
By Laurence Iliff and Ricardo Sandoval / The Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY ? Mexico's top Customs Service official has fired nearly
all of the agency's supervisors across the country in what is part of
the new administration's effort to stamp out widespread corruption.
The office of President Vicente Fox confirmed Thursday that Customs
Chief Jose Guzmán had fired 43 of 47 directors of the nation's customs
offices along the borders and at its ports.

The removal of the supervisors in places like Ciudad Juárez, across
the border from El Paso, Texas; in Tijuana, across from San Diego,
Calif.; and the Pacific Coast port of Manzanillo began almost
immediately after Mr. Fox took office Dec. 1.

"We found personnel who were totally disconnected from the agency,
administrators who felt that they were independent," Mr. Guzmán told
The Associated Press on Thursday. "They didn't take orders from anyone,
they weren't meeting the requirements of the law, and they weren't
properly supervised."

A presidential spokesman, confirming the firings, said the
anti-corruption campaign would continue.
The Customs Service has about 6,700 employees.

"We are trying to replace all the personnel necessary and to inculcate a
new focus in their work. Those who don't work out will be leaving," Mr.
Guzmán told the Mexico City daily Reforma.

The mass dismissals are at the cornerstone of Mr. Fox's pledge to battle
crime and corruption. Last week, Mr. Fox went to Sinaloa, one of the
country's top drug-producing and smuggling states, to announce plans to
fight narcotics traffickers. On Wednesday, he went to Tijuana, one of
the country's most crime-ridden cities, to denounce corruption and plead
with citizens across the country to report crime and corruption.

The customs director said he would overhaul the agency, which has been
widely accused of extorting money and goods from immigrants returning to
Mexico from the United States, among others, and with collaborating with
criminals entering ports and crossing checkpoints along the 2,000-mile
border with the United States.

Analysts along the U.S.-Mexico border said that new Mexican presidents
have a history of announcing such cleanups, only to see the new
officials become just as corrupt as their predecessors.

For example, President José López Portillo launched a campaign
against corruption after he became president in 1976. But soon after he
left office in 1982, the friend he had appointed as Mexico City police
chief was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for
racketeering, arms smuggling and extortion.

The police chief, Arturo Durazo, had amassed millions of dollars during
Mr. López Portillo's six-year term. His arrest was the result of a
campaign launched by the new president, Miguel de la Madrid, who himself
failed to fully carry out a pledge to eliminate government corruption.
Mr. de la Madrid's successor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, also attempted
a customs cleanup. Analysts said it worked for a while, but the same
problems arose.

Nonetheless, some analysts are hopeful, given that Mr. Fox is the first
opposition president in 71 years and appears to be bringing in new faces
rather than recycling the old ones.

"People on the border have seen this film before ? a new president
cleans house," said Alfredo Quijano, editor of the Ciudad Juárez
newspaper El Norte.

"But this time, there is hope of something different. Our clue is that
here in Juárez, for example, the new local customs chief is not from
within the agency," said Mr. Quijano.

In December, Mr. Fox personally greeted Mexican immigrants returning
home for the holidays, and Mexican television caught immigration and
customs officers shaking them down for bribes.

After seeing the story, Mr. Fox promised that the officials would be
prosecuted.
The news of the firings comes the same week as reports that a 3-ton
elephant named Benny had been smuggled from Texas into Mexico last year.
The elephant, who had been the main attraction at a Mexico City circus,
is expected to be placed in a zoo outside Mexico City.

Meanwhile, Mexican officials said the four remaining customs supervisors
would be replaced as well, along with corrupt agents, who also are under
investigation by federal comptrollers.

The dismissal of the customs supervisors, Mr. Guzmán said, has had
immediate results. The number of semi-trailer trucks carrying contraband
goods seized during all of last year was 38, while the number seized
just last month was 150.

Still, analysts agreed that the corruption fight in customs and every
other Mexican government agency has to be a long one ? far longer than
Mr. Fox's six years in office.

"There's never been wholesale changes of personnel like this in the
past, only a shuffling of the same people within agencies when a new
president arrives," said Jonathan Brown, a history professor at the
University of Texas at Austin, who has studied Mexican institutions.

"The problem is so difficult that the only way to make clear gains is
almost to clean out one institution at a time, and those that you can
control," said Mr. Brown.

Mr. Fox "has shown an interest already in customs because of his visits
in December to the border, where I'm sure he heard plenty of horror
stories from average Mexicans," Mr. Brown said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.