Enrique Peña Nieto

Pegasus: Mexico Detains Man Implicated in Spying Conspiracy Targeting Journalist

The previous administration of Enrique Pena Nieto had faced accusations of wiretapping journalists and others using Pegasus software.

Mexico City: A Mexican man was arrested on allegations of cyber spying on a journalist using Pegasus, a global spy tool that has been used to hack smartphones, according to the attorney general on Monday.

The suspect was detained last week in the central city of Queretaro and is being held in Mexico City, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement which did not identify the targeted journalist.

The previous administration of Enrique Pena Nieto faced accusations of wiretapping human rights activists, opposition officials and journalists using Pegasus software, developed by Israeli company NSO Group.

Pena denied the accusations and said he would instruct a team to investigate the case.

According to recent local media reports, at least 50 people from the close circle of current president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who assumed power in 2018, have also been potential surveillance targets, including his wife, children and brothers.

The Pegasus Project is a collaborative investigation that involves more than 80 journalists from 17 news organisations in 10 countries coordinated by Forbidden Stories with the technical support of Amnesty International’s Security Lab. Read all our coverage here.

(Reuters)

Before His Election in 2018, Mexican President Was Encircled By a Massive Spying Campaign

A leaked database shows that government entities may have targeted phones of over 50 individuals connected to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

New Delhi: Two years ago, Andrés Manuel López Obrador won an extraordinary victory. He obtained an outright majority to become the first leftist politician to become Mexico’s president in over three decades.

But, in the run-up to the 2018 election campaign, as the challenger to the incumbent president, Lopez Obrador, also known by his initials AMLO, was encircled by a massive spying campaign by Mexican government entities as per a leaked database of thousands of phone numbers believed to have been listed by multiple government clients of Israeli spyware firm, NSO.

France-based media non-profit organisation Forbidden Stories and human rights watchdog Amnesty International obtained access to 50,000 phone numbers listed by clients of NSO since 2016. This was shared with a group of 16 media partners across the globe, including The Wire, who worked together in a joint investigative project called the Pegasus project.

According to this data, the largest cluster was of more than 15,000 Mexican phone numbers which were selected for potential surveillance in 2016 and 2017, the crucial two years before the last presidential elections.

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The Pegasus Project’s journalists were able to identify and verify more than 400 Mexican numbers. However, the leaked list of phone numbers does not make it clear how many were successfully targeted. Most of those interviewed no longer had the phones they were using when their numbers appeared on the database or had deleted their earlier SMSes, which made it impossible to forensically verify if their device had been penetrated.

The reportage for this article was done by journalists of the following Pegasus Project media partners – the Washington Post, Proceso, Aristegui Noticias, Forbidden Stories and Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

The Pegasus software is used to target phones, selected by clients, by sending customised text messages with a link. If the phone user clicks on the link, the NSO client will be able to access all the information on the device, from call records to chats, photos and emails. The spyware can also be installed through a zero-click exploit, which means the user does not have to click any link for the phone to be infected. Besides, the phone’s microphone and camera can also be remotely switched on for eavesdropping.

The consortium of 17 partners was able to identify traces of Pegasus in phones of two Mexicans employed in news organisations, whose numbers figured on the list. The analysis of the phones of a human rights activist and a former prosecutor proved inconclusive, as they had replaced the devices they were using in 2016 and 2017.

In response to a detailed questionnaire sent by Pegasus Project partners, NSO Group has denied all charges, claiming that its technology has helped prevent terrorist attacks and break up criminal gangs. “NSO Group will continue to investigate all credible claims of misuse and take appropriate action based on the results of these investigations,” the company said. It asserted that it had no visibility into its clients’ data and neither does it operate spyware licensed to clients.

Previously, Citizen Lab, a digital surveillance research organisation based at the University of Toronto, and Amnesty International had detected at least 26 infections in phones of Mexican journalists, activists and politicians.

The Israeli firm has repeatedly asserted that it sells Pegasus only to “vetted” government entities. In Mexico, three different government agencies had signed deals with NSO, as per media reports.

Also Read: Pegasus Project: How Phones of Journalists, Ministers, Activists May Have Been Used to Spy On Them

A few years after the War on Drugs began, the Mexican defence ministry was reportedly the first to buy the software, but its usage was never officially confirmed. Milenio, a national newspaper, published documents in 2017 that showed that the attorney general’s office was using Pegasus to monitor 500 people.

The current administration, led by López Obrador, also said that the domestic intelligence agency, Cisen, extensively used Pegasus from 2014 to 2017, coinciding with the term of President Enrique Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in power.

In 2017, Peña Nieto had also publicly confirmed that his government was using the Pegasus spyware. However, he stated that it was being used to fight organised crime and categorically rejected “any sort of intervention in the private lives of activists or any other citizens.”

Defeating his predecessor Felipe Calderón, Peña Nieto arrived with a lot of promise, but eventually his six years as head of state between 2012 and 2018 became synonymous with massive corruption scandals and soaring criminal violence.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announces the resignation of Education Minister Aurelio Nuno (not pictured) during a ceremony at Los Pinos Presidential Residence in Mexico City, Mexico December 6, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Carlos Jasso

Enrique Pena Nieto, former Mexican president, in December 2017. Photo: Reuters/Carlos Jasso

Snooping on politicians, others

Meanwhile, AMLO was campaigning across the country with his new political party, Movement for National Regeneration (Morena), armed with a pro-poor message, with an emphasis on ending corruption.

The leaked records show that AMLO’s wife, three brothers, two sons, two chauffeurs, legal adviser, party finance head, close aides, potential cabinet members were all selected as targets by official Mexican entities. It even included the manager of Amigos, the amateur baseball team in which the 67-year-old AMLO played. The president’s phone didn’t figure in the list, with his aides saying that he uses it infrequently.

In total, the phone numbers of over 50 individuals connected to AMLO were confirmed to be in the leaked NSO data by media partners of the Pegasus Project.

In 2013, right after losing his second presidential bid, AMLO suffered a heart attack. It became an electoral issue that his political rivals raised frequently, especially to contrast his apparent ill-health with Peña Nieto’s youthfulness. Mexican media carried leaked reports about his health that were used to raise doubts before the elections. AMLO’s cardiologist Patricio Heriberto Ortiz Fernández figures in the Pegasus Project data, but it is not clear if his phone was successfully compromised.

Also Read: Hacking Software Was Used to Spy on Jamal Khashoggi’s Wife Months Before His Murder

Besides, more than scores of Morena party members, both at the national and local level, were selected for infection through the controversial NSO spyware. This, as per the leaked records, included Claudia Sheinbaum, who became Mexico City’s first woman mayor in 2018.

As the first country to buy Pegasus, Mexico had been the laboratory to develop the application of the software.

In an interview to CBS News in the aftermath of the Jamal Khashoggi murder fallout, NSO Group’s founder and CEO Shalev Hulio did not directly admit that Pegasus was being used in Mexico. Nevertheless, he cited newspaper reports to say that the arrest of El Chapo, a notorious drug lord, had required authorities to “intercept a journalist, an actress, and a lawyer”. “Now by themselves, they –
you know, they are not criminals, right?”.

While high profile Narco kingpins and corrupt politicians have been selected as targets, it is also clear that Pegasus was probably a tool for massive political snooping by government entities.

In June 2017, the New York Times had reported on the hacking of phones of Mexican journalists and activists over the previous two years, via Pegasus. The latest leak shows that the surveillance campaign was unprecedented in scope.

The sheer scale of the leaked records which lists judges, footballers, diplomats, lawyers, models, relatives of public figures belies claims by NSO that its products are used only to combat terror and crime. It also includes phones of at least 25 journalists, as well as representatives of teachers’ unions who were fighting the Peña Nieto government over education reforms.

Guillermo Valdés Castellanos, who led the domestic intelligence agency, Cisen, from 2006 to 2011 stated that while “technology like Pegasus is very useful for fight organised crime”, the lack of checks and balances means it easily ends up in private hands and used for political and personal gains.

Rights activists say the Mexican journalists targeted were investigating links between criminal syndicates, local politicians and law enforcement authorities. Credit: Reuters

Journalists who were targeted were investigating links between criminal syndicates, local politicians and law enforcement authorities. Photo: Reuters

In March 2017, just hours after he made a Facebook live broadcast about collusion between local authorities and criminal gangs, journalist Cecilio Pineda was shot dead by gunmen. His phone number had been added to the list in the previous weeks. However, no forensic analysis can be done as his phone disappeared from the crime scene.

According to former Mexican government officials, a judge’s order is usually required to tap phones, but more often than not, the procedure is not followed. So far, no individual has been convicted for violating privacy laws.

With the war on drugs in the backdrop, Mexico has become a major buyer of spyware. Media reports had stated that at least 25 private companies, including the NSO Group, have sold products for surveillance to Mexico’s federal and state police forces.

“Under Peña, the use of Pegasus went wild,” said the former head of Cisen.

But, its fingerprints in government machinery have also been carefully wiped away.

Alfonso Navarrete Prida took over as secretary of the Interior in the last few months of the Peña Nieto presidency. He told a Pegasus Project journalist that when he became head of the ministry in January 2018, the spyware was not being plied, as per official records. “There were no documents that showed that this software had been used,” he said.

Mexico’s former government minister, Ángel Osorio Chon, whose ministry supervised the domestic intelligence agency, denied that they had access to spyware. “The head of the Government Ministry between December 2012 and January 2018 never authorised, nor had knowledge or information that CISEN acquired or used the Pegasus hacking tool,” he said in a letter to the Pegasus Project.

Former president Peña Nieto was unreachable, despite various attempts made through his former aides, former ministers and letter written to his daughter.

Pena’s predecessor targeted too

Among those listed in the leaked list is Pena’s predecessor, Mexico’s 63rd President Felipe Calderon and his wife, Margarita Zavala from the conservative National Action Party (PAN).

Zavala recalled to a Pegasus Project journalist that when she was preparing for her own presidential campaign in 2016, an odd-sounding text message popped up. “We always assume we’re spied on,” she said.

Since she doesn’t have access to that mobile phone, the hacking cannot be forensically proven. But, as per the data, Zavala, as well as her campaign team were targeted by more than one NSO client in 2017.

The widespread surveillance gnawed away at Mexico’s political system, with many browbeaten and forced to leave the field. “It shouldn’t be so difficult to be a politician,” said Zavala, adding, “It shouldn’t cost you so much”.

A senior PAN official, Fernando Rodriguez Doval, also remembers that in 2016 text messages with links to open for a news magazine featuring him and renewal of Netflix subscription. At least 80 PAN politicians, ranging from governors of states, legislators and office-bearers, figure in the database.

The first female governor of Mexico’s northern state of Sonora, Claudia Pavlovich, is not surprised that she was one of the possible Pegasus targets. “They had been listening to me for a long time,” she said.

During her 2015 gubernatorial campaign, local media published leaked recordings of her conversations that suggested that a member of her party, PRI, was involved in bribery. She claimed that the recordings were doctored.

According to the leaked list, Pavlovich, along with aides and cabinet colleagues, were selected for surveillance after she became governor.

Perusing the leaked records, Pegasus Project journalists also detected phone numbers of at least 45 former and current governors of Mexico’s 32 states. This included 29 who were sitting governors in 2016 and 2017.

Peña’s home province, the State of Mexico, held its governor elections in June 2017. The province is a PRI stronghold – the party had held the state for just shy of a century – and the president’s cousin was running for governor. But with Peña’s approval ratings tanking, the election was seen as a dress rehearsal for the following year’s general elections.

The Pegasus Project media partners have found from analysing phone records that politicians from every party were targeted, including gubernatorial candidates, their families and associates, in the run-up to polling day. Finally, PRI’s Alfredo del Mazo Maza scrapped through with a narrow victory.

While Peña faced an avalanche of political scandals, the most damaging was perhaps the disappearance of 43 protesting trainee teachers from a college in Guerrero state’s Ayotzinapa town. On September 26, 2014, they were last seen being driven off in police vehicles.

Activists hold a sign that reads “We are missing 43” during the delivery of the final report of the 43 missing students from the Ayotzinapa teacher’s training college by members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), at Claustro de Sor Juana University in Mexico City, Mexico, April 24, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Edgard Garrido

As per the leaked data, relatives of at least three of the victims were selected as targets. This included Meliton Ortega, uncle of 19-year-old Mauricio Ortega, who became the spokesperson for the families. “I have always suspected that the authorities are monitoring me. They are absolutely capable of it,” he said.

Vidulfo Rosales, a lawyer of a human rights NGO working for the families, was also in the crosshairs. “[The government] felt pressure and began a smear campaign against experts, parents and representatives of the GIEI… They tapped my phones and misrepresented many conversations, making them public to discredit the work we were doing,” Vidulfo Rosales told a Pegasus Project journalist.

An international panel of investigators, known by their Spanish acronym GIEI, had found that the official probe had not taken into account the presence of soldiers and federal police.

University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab had first revealed that one phone belonging to the group was targeted by Pegasus in March 2016. The leaked data accessed by Pegasus Project shows that at least one other phone belonging to the panel was also selected for surveillance.

The widening outrage over the presumed massacre implicated Tomás Zerón, the director of the attorney general’s Criminal Investigation Agency, who was also a signatory of Pegasus contracts. He had previously been more well known for leading the investigations against the drug baron, known as ‘El Chapo’.

Also Read: FAQ: On the Pegasus Project’s Digital Forensics

After AMLO took over the presidency, Mexican authorities charged Zerón with embezzling state funds in one case and kidnapping and evidence tampering in the investigation of the students’ disappearance.

Zerón escaped to Israel in 2019, where he applied for political asylum. Last week, the New York Times reported that Israel has refused to extradite him due to Mexico’s criticism of Tel Aviv’s treatment of Palestinians.

Mexico’s undersecretary for human rights, Alejandro Encinas, stated emphatically that the “instructions from the president are, we don’t spy on anybody”. He claims that even after he became a minister, his phone battery suddenly drained inexplicably at least three times, fueling suspicion of surveillance.

The Leftist leader considers himself a veteran of being kept under watch, with his phone tapped since his days as a student activist. Admitting that accountability in the official machinery over deploying spyware for blanket surveillance will take some time, he said, “There’s a long way to go in investigating and ending the impunity associated with these practices”.

Read The Wire’s coverage as part of the Pegasus Project here.

Massacres, Disappearances and 1968: ‘Perfect Dictatorship’ Lives on in the Minds of Mexicans

It was a “perfect dictatorship” – an authoritarian regime that “camouflaged” its permanence in power with the superficial practice of democracy.

Ten days before the opening ceremony of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, uniformed soldiers and rooftop snipers opened fire on student protesters in a plaza in the capital city’s Tlatelolco neighborhood.

Hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators, who were rallying against the country’s semi-authoritarian government, were gunned down.

Foreign correspondents reporting from Tlatelolco estimated that about 300 young people died, although the toll of the October 2, 1968 massacre remains contested. Over a thousand people who survived the shooting were arrested.

Tlateloloco was not the first time Mexico’s government would send the army in to kill its own citizens. Nor, as my research on crime and security in the country shows, was it the last.

Mexico’s perfect dictatorship

Technically speaking, Mexico was a democracy in 1968. But it was run by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, the same party that governs it today under President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Using press manipulation, electoral fraud and coercion, the PRI won every presidential election and most local elections from 1929 to 2000. In the words of the Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, it was a “perfect dictatorship” – an authoritarian regime that “camouflaged” its permanence in power with the superficial practice of democracy.

The PRI kept kept a tight rein on Mexico during its 80-year rule.

Also read: Universities Cannot Be Isolated From Political Processes

In the 20th century, Mexico had none of the wild violence that ravages the country today. It prospered economically and modernised rapidly.

But the PRI demanded acquiescence in exchange for this peace and stability.

The party bought off potential political opponents and ostracised members who wanted to reform the party. It gave rabble-rousing union leaders positions of power. It killed, jailed, tortured and disappeared leftists, dissidents, peasants or Marxists who challenged its authority.

But it did so in secret. When soldiers sent by President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz killed scores of students exercising their constitutional right to peaceful protest in broad daylight and cold blood, something the Mexico’s national consciousness shifted and snapped.

It would take Mexicans another four decades to unseat the PRI, electing in 2000 Vicente Fox of the National Action Party – the first non-PRI president to run modern Mexico.

But most thinkers and historians agree that Tlatelolco was when democracy’s first seeds were planted. After the massacre, a “tradition of resistance” took root in Mexico.

1968’s Summer of revolution

The Tlatelolco massacre came after a tense summer of student demonstrations.

Triggered by an aggressive police intervention in a gang fight in downtown Mexico City in July 1968, young Mexicans – like their counterparts in the United States and worldwide – engaged in various acts of civil disobedience.

Throughout late summer, Mexico City saw peaceful marches, demonstrations and rallies. The students demanding free speech, accountability for police and military abuses, the release of political prisoners and dialogue with their government.

President Gustavo Díaz Ordez before the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Credit:
German Federal Archive/Wikimedia

Díaz Ordaz said the protesters were Communist agents sent by the Cubans and Soviets to infiltrate his regime – a claim the Central Intelligence Agency debunked in a now-declassified September 1968 report. The uprising brought bad publicity at an inconvenient time. Mexico was about to host the 1968 Olympics. President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz wanted to showcase a modern nation at the forefront of emerging economies – not unruly leftists decrying an authoritarian government.

By early October, with the Olympics rapidly approaching, the government had decided to put an end to the unrest. So when students planned an October 2 rally at the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Tlatelolco, Díaz Ordaz sent undercover agents and soldiers in.

Their mission, as some of the raid’s organisers later admitted, was to delegitimise Mexico’s pro-democracy movement by inciting violence. Plain-clothed soldiers from Mexico’s “Batallón Olimpia,” created to maintain order during the Olympics, opened fire on the crowded plaza.

Díaz Ordaz claimed that he had saved Mexico from a communist coup.

But even Lyndon B. Johnson administration’s – which had no sympathy for communism – described the crackdown as a “gross over-reaction by the security forces.”

No one was ever punished for the murders.

50 years to freedom

Each year, Mexicans commemorate the Tlatelolco massacre with marches and rallies.

For the past four years, these events have coincided with nationwide demonstrations over the unexplained disappearance of 43 student activists from Ayotzinapa Teachers’ College, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, on Sept. 26, 2014.

The students were traveling via bus to Mexico City to attend a commemorative rally for the victims of Tlatelolco and engage in civil acts of disobedience along the way – an annual tradition at the college.

According to the government’s official investigation, police in the town of Iguala confronted the caravan under instructions from the town’s mayor. His wife had a party that day, the report says, and he didn’t want any disturbances.

The officers opened fire, killing six students on the bus. The remaining 43 passengers were then allegedly taken to a police station, where they were handed over to a local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, which is alleged to have ties to the mayor. Gang members say they took the 43 students to a local dump, killed them and burned their bodies.

That horrifying tale is the official story endorsed by President Enrique Peña Nieto, whose six-year term ends in December. Iguala’s mayor, his wife and at least 74 other people were arrested for the disappearance and murder of the Ayotzinapa students.

But an international team of forensic investigators could not corroborate this story. They found no evidence of the students’ remains at the dump. In fact, they determined, it was scientifically impossible to burn 43 corpses at that site.

Also read: Brazilian Women Protest Against Far-Right Presidential Candidate Bolsonaro

They believe it is more likely that the Mexican army – and therefore the federal government – was involved in the disappearances.

In June 2018, a federal court re-opened the Ayotzinapa case and ordered the creation of an Investigative Commission for Justice and Truth to clarify what really happened to the 43 students.

“They were taken alive,” their parents insist. “We want them back alive.”

Transforming Mexico, again

Forty-six years after the Tlatelolco massacre, almost to the day, this brutal abuse of power by President Peña Nieto and his PRI party – which had retaken power in 2012 – rekindled something of the revolutionary spirit of 1968.

In July, Mexican voters once again rejected the PRI, handing a landslide presidential victory to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist outsider who promised to “transform” the country.

López Obrador, who takes office in December, supports launching a new investigation into the 43 missing students.

But he also plans to continue using Mexico’s military – the same efficient killing force that fired on students at Tlatelolco and allegedly disappeared them in Ayotzinapa – in law enforcement duties.

This, in my assessment, is a dangerous mistake.

According to an analysis done by Mexico’s CIDE university, between 2007 and 2014, in armed confrontations the army killed eight suspected criminals for each one it wounded and arrested. In most countries, the ratio goes the other way.

As CIDE legal scholar Catalina Pérez Correa has written, using Mexico’s army as police carries the same risks today it did in 1968 – and in 2014, for that matter.

President-elect López Obrador has declared that under his government Mexico’s military will be not an “instrument of war” but an “army of peace.”

The ghosts of Tlatelolco and Ayotzinapa are a reminder that all Mexicans should have their doubts.

Luis Gómez Romero is a senior lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory at the University of Wollongong

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Mexico’s New President Has Plans to Make His Country Safer. Will They Work?

Even with the best will in the world, there’s only so much social policy can do to stop organised crime.

Mexican voters upended their country’s political establishment this summer when they elected Andres Manuel López Obrador – the left-wing former mayor of Mexico City known as AMLO – by an overwhelming margin. His impressive victory owed a lot to his personal charisma and populist rhetoric, but it also reflected the public’s weariness with Mexico’s current state of affairs – and in particular, with criminal violence.

Long a problem for Mexico, deadly violence is now at an all time high. There were more than 31,000 murders in 2017, the highest number on record, and this year is shaping up to be even deadlier.

López Obrador’s term begins on December 1, but his incoming government has already pledged to reduce violent crime by between 30-50% within three years, and to bring crime rates in line with those in OECD countries within six years. To achieve this, it has come up with three strategies: tackling the “root causes” of crime through social policy, ending the war against organised crime, and restructuring security institutions.

One of the central ideas behind López Obrador’s approach to security is that when it comes to fighting crime, the best policy is social policy. But muddling social policy with crime policy is troublesome; rather than lifting people out of criminogenic conditions, it can simply spawn a welter of social programmes that have little bearing on crime at all.

This is what happened during the tenure of the outgoing administration, when every proposal from cooking lessons to handing out free glasses to schoolchildren was held up as a worthwhile crime prevention initiative. This sort of policymaking neglects the fact that the police can actually be very effective at preventing crime in the short term.

AMLO clearly sees things differently. He plans to roll out an extensive scholarship programme aimed at preventing the 7 million young people not in education, employment or training from joining criminal gangs, even though there is no consistent evidence showing that youth unemployment and poverty are the main drivers of involvement in organised crime. Though scant research on this topic has been conducted in Mexico itself, evidence from the UK has shown the opposite: as youth unemployment and poverty has increased, the amount of crime committed by this age group has actually decreased.

Beyond the drug war

On a different front, the incoming government has correctly identified the decade-long war on organised crime as one of the main drivers of violence. But while it has proposed a three-pronged plan to bring about peace, it is unlikely that this is achievable in the short term.

First, AMLO and his team have proposed implementing a process of transitional justice to break the cycle of violence, including a controversial amnesty for low-level drug-traffickers. There is still much uncertainty as to how this would be implemented, but it remains unclear whether it would actually help end violence in Mexico, since these mechanisms were designed to manage the aftermath of political and ethnic conflicts.

Second, with a growing global consensus that the current drug prohibition regime has failed, the new government plans to legalise cannabis and the cultivation of opium poppies. However, wholesale legalisation of cannabis has never been attempted in a country as large and complex – and as fraught with poor institutions – as Mexico. That means it may be years before legalisation is implemented, as the necessary regulatory frameworks and institutions will have to be established first.

In addition, legalisation in Mexico would create more opportunities for smuggling drugs into the US – potentially a boon for some organised crime groups, and potentially a serious risk to an already troubled relationship with Washington.

Finally, the new government has pledged to train enough police officers to remove the armed forces from the fight against organised crime in three years. But this plan is based on a highly optimistic estimate of the state’s capacity to recruit and train new police officers.

Between 2015 and 2016, there were 133,000 soldiers involved in the fight against organised crime; replacing them would require at least 50,000 new elite federal police officers. President Calderón (2006-2012) took six years to recruit 20,000 federal police officers. His successor, Peña Nieto, promised a 50,000-strong National Gendarmerie, but ultimately delivered a force of fewer than 5,000. It’s highly unlikely that the new government will be able to perform any better.

Reinventing the police

The incoming government has also hinted at yet another redesign of Mexico’s security institutions. Though they have dropped a plan to create a “National Guard” incorporating the army and the police, AMLO plans to recreate the Federal Security Ministry (dissolved by the outgoing president, Enrique Peña Nieto), to form a new police force charged with protecting tourist destinations, and to replace the country’s intelligence agency with an entirely new body.

These reforms are likely to take much longer than anticipated, wasting precious resources that could otherwise be spent on actual police work. And even if they’re implemented swiftly, they are unlikely to directly improve the security situation.

Mexico is simply too vast and too diverse for centralised control of security policy to work. The federal government does not and will not have the resources to properly deal with most of its crime problems. A better approach would be to delegate responsibility to state and local governments, using federal policy to induce improvements in local policing. Security institutions require continuity and time to mature; small, incremental improvements to their operations are a better bet than wholesale redesign.

The security situation in Mexico remains dire, and it’s likely to remain that way for some time. Social policy can help reduce poverty and improve welfare, but it’s no substitute for intelligent, evidence-based crime prevention delivered by a well-trained local police. Removing the army from the streets without capable police officers to replace them could strengthen organised crime groups and make the situation worse.

Patricio R. Estévez-Soto, PhD Candidate in Security and Crime Science, UCL

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Mexico’s Lopez Obrador Commits to NAFTA After Big Election Win

“We are going to accompany the current government in this negotiation, we are going to be very respectful, and we are going to support the signing of the agreement”, says Obrador about NAFTA.

Mexico City: Mexico’s next president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said on Monday he will seek to remain in NAFTA along with the US and Canada and that he respects the existing Mexican team renegotiating the trade pact.

Lopez Obrador, a 64-year-old former mayor of Mexico City, won a landslide election victory on Sunday, getting more than double the votes of his nearest rival, dealing a crushing blow to establishment parties and becoming the first leftist to win the Mexican presidency since one-party rule ended in 2000.

“We are going to accompany the current government in this negotiation, we are going to be very respectful, and we are going to support the signing of the agreement,” he told Milenio TV in a telephone interview, saying the aim was a deal on the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement that was good for Mexico.

A veteran of two previous unsuccessful presidential runs who moderated some of his policies this time around, he said he would pursue a frank dialogue and friendly relations with the US. Lopez Obrador, who will take office in December, said he would discuss NAFTA with President Enrique Pena Nieto when they have their first meeting after the election, set for Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump has been openly antagonistic to Mexico over trade and migration since his own presidential campaign. The current NAFTA talks began last year after Trump called for the agreement to be renegotiated to better serve US interests.

Although Trump congratulated Lopez Obrador in a Twitter message on Sunday night, a White House aide then reiterated one of the US leader’s most controversial campaign promises.

“In the case of Mexico, obviously we share a border with them (and) this president has made very clear about building that wall and having Mexico pay for it,” Kellyanne Conway said on Fox News.

Mexican politicians across the political spectrum have long said Mexico will not pay for Trump’s proposed wall along the southern US border, which he has said is needed to keep out both illegal immigrants and narcotics.

Strong mandate

Lopez Obrador won more than 53% of votes in Sunday’s election, preliminary results showed. That was the biggest share of the vote in a Mexican presidential election since the early 1980s and gave him a strong mandate both to address the country’s domestic problems and to face external challenges such as US trade tariffs.

In his victory speech and in comments to local TV networks, Lopez Obrador sought to assure investors he would pursue prudent economic policies and the independence of the central bank. His economic advisers repeated this message in a call on Monday with investors and in an interview with Reuters.

Even so, the peso weakened 1.3% against the dollar and Mexico’s S&P/BMV IPC benchmark stock index was also down almost 1.5% as exit polls showed Lopez Obrador‘s MORENA party performed strongly in the elections, which were also for members of Congress.

MORENA and its allies could win majorities in both chambers of Congress, according to projections based on results still trickling in.

That would make it easier for Lopez Obrador to work with Congress, but the parties are expected to fall short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to unwind a five-year-old energy sector reform that has attracted oil majors such as Shell to Mexico.

Oil contracts review

During the campaign, Lopez Obrador often flirted with the idea of overturning the energy sector opening, although his only firm promise was to say he would review more than 100 oil and gas contracts that have already been awarded, checking for signs of corruption. Fighting corruption in government was a major plank of his campaign.

Credit ratings agency Fitch warned on Monday of prolonged uncertainty over the future of the oil sector opening, achieved via a constitutional reform enacted in 2013.

Rating agency Moody’s said Lopez Obrador‘s election win brought short-term market volatility and raised risks for the oil sector.

Others believe that little will change.

“His coalition is unlikely to secure the two-thirds Congressional majority required to reverse constitutional reforms, and existing contracts do not appear to be at risk,” said Paul Sheldon, chief geopolitical adviser at S&P Global Platts Analytics.

The man tipped to be Lopez Obrador‘s senior finance official also said the next government was not planning on pursuing major legislative overhauls.

“I would say that (majorities in Congress) will make day-to-day management easier… but we really aren’t thinking about changing the Constitution or major laws,” Carlos Urzua told Reuters.

(Reuters)

Former Mexican Governor Extradited by Panama on Charges of Corruption

A former state governor for Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was extradited on Thursday from Panama to Mexico.

Roberto Borge (C), former governor of Quintana Roo state of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is escorted by Panamanian security forces while being extradited to Mexico to face charges for corruption, at the Toncontin airport in Panama City, Panama January 4, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Carlos Lemos

Panama City: A former state governor for Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was extradited on Thursday from Panama to Mexico, where he faces corruption charges, Mexico’s attorney general’s office and secretary of external relations said in a statement.

Roberto Borge, who governed the touristy state of Quintana Roo from 2010 to 2016, was taken under strict security from the offices of Panama‘s national police to an air force base, where he boarded a Mexican plane, local television footage showed.

Mexican prosecutors accuse Borge of using funds obtained illegally, embezzlement and abuse of public office. Borge has denied the allegations.

Borge was arrested in Panama City in June as he was preparing to board a flight to Paris. Panama‘s foreign ministry said last week that it would send Borge to Mexico.

For the PRI, the extradition is the latest reminder of corruption scandals as the party tries to rehabilitate its image ahead of a presidential election in July.

The PRI, which is trying to keep hold of power as President Enrique Pena Nieto’s term ends, has faced a spate of graft allegations, and four of its former governors were arrested on such charges last year in various countries, including Borge.

Last month, Mexican authorities arrested Alejandro Gutierrez, a former high-ranking PRI official, in a corruption investigation in the northern state of Chihuahua.

Mexican National Human Rights Commission Likely to Take Legal Action Against Security Law

Called Law of Internal Security, the bill, proposes to regulate the deployment of military in Mexico more than a decade after it was sent to fight drug cartels in a conflict that has claimed over 100,000 lives.

Activists hold a protest against a law that militarises crime fighting in the country, outside Los Pinos Presidential Residence in Mexico City, Mexico, December 17, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Ginnette Riquelme

Mexico City: Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) may take legal action against a bill that would enshrine into law the use of the army in the country’s long war against drug cartels, saying it could ask that the measure be ruled unconstitutional.

Known as the Law of Internal Security, it will formally regulate the deployment of the military in Mexico more than a decade after the government dispatched it to fight drug cartels in a conflict that has claimed well over 100,000 lives.

Bucking widespread protests from rights groups, Congress on Friday gave a green light to the law, which was backed by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and some members of the centre-right opposition National Action Party. It will now head to President Enrique Pena Nieto’s desk to be signed into law.

The new law could lead to the “violation of Mexicans’ basic rights and freedoms, affect the design and constitutionally established balance between institutions, state organs and powers, and lead to states of emergency being imposed on Mexican society,” the CNDH said in a statement late Saturday.

Supporters of the legislation say it will set out clear rules that limit the use of soldiers to fight crime.

Multiple human rights groups and international organisations, including the UN, attacked the bill, mindful of the dozens of reported cases of abuses by members of the military in Mexico over the past 11 years. They say it could usher in greater abuses and impunity by the armed forces.

Opponents of the bill have taken to the streets to protest and demand the measure not be signed into law.

The CNDH said it has asked Pena Nieto to make the necessary changes to the bill to make sure it upholds human and civil rights.

(Reuters)

Mexican President Asks Senate to Broaden Discussion Over Security Bill

The Bill comes during a particularly violent year, with the 2017 murder tally almost certain to be the highest since modern records began twenty years ago.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announces the resignation of Education Minister Aurelio Nuno (not pictured) during a ceremony at Los Pinos Presidential Residence in Mexico City, Mexico, December 6, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Carlos Jasso

Mexico City: Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Friday asked Senate lawmakers to include civil society’s views in their discussion of a divisive Bill that critics say would give the military greater powers and deepen its role in the country’s drug war.

The Bill, which enjoys cross-partisan support, aims to regulate federal defence forces’ involvement in the drug war, which has claimed well over 100,000 lives in the last decade.

But the United Nations, Amnesty International and Mexican human rights organisation have all criticised the Bill for prioritising the military instead of seeking to improve Mexico’s police.

Pena Nieto’s unusual comments reflect the growing international pressure his government has come under over.

“I’d like to make a call to the Senate to broaden the space for dialogue with civil society organisations in order to hear all voices and enrich what will eventually be decided,” the president said at a human rights event in Mexico City.

The Bill has already passed the lower house and is due to be discussed in the Senate next week, but could potentially be delayed in the wake of Pena Nieto’s comments.

Lawmakers who support the Bill say it will give clear rules that limit the use of soldiers to fight crime.

However, rights campaigners worry the law opens the door to military intervention in protests, as well as expanding military powers to spy on citizens.

It is opposed by the party of leftist presidential frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which has only a handful of senators.

The Bill comes during a particularly violent year, with the 2017 murder tally almost certain to be the highest since modern records began twenty years ago.

(Reuters)

Mexico: Finance Minister Resigns to Seek Presidency for Ruling Party

Jose Antonio Meade had been widely expected to run for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, whose credibility has been seriously undermined by corruption scandals, gang violence and accusations of electoral fraud.

Mexico’s outgoing Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade waves next to President Enrique Pena Nieto during an event where Pena Nieto announced the resignation of Antonio Meade, at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City, Mexico November 27, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Henry Romero

Mexico City: Mexico‘s finance minister resigned on Monday to seek the 2018 presidential nomination of the ruling party, anticipating a major break with tradition as it seeks outside help to clean up its tarnished image and stay in office for another six years.

Jose Antonio Meade had been widely expected to run for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose credibility has been seriously undermined by corruption scandals, gang violence and accusations of electoral fraud.

Meade is not a PRI member, and his reputation for honesty has persuaded many party grandees that he is the best bet to take on the front-runner in the July 2018 presidential race, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

PRI hopefuls can register from December 3, and early indications suggested Meade would not face any major challenges. The PRI will formally elect its candidate on February 18.

He was warmly received by party members on a whistle-stop tour of organizations affiliated to the PRI in Mexico City on Monday. All the other early PRI favourites for the presidency expressed their support for him on Twitter.

Mexico’s outgoing Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade is seen as Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto (not pictured) announces his resignation at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City, Mexico, November 27, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Henry Romero

Soft-spoken and measured in tone, Meade, 48 first entered the Cabinet under the previous centre-right administration of the National Action Party, or PAN. His ability to draw votes from other parties is viewed as one of his principal assets.

“He’ll be an attractive candidate for those who don’t necessarily support the PRI,” tweeted Daniel Karam, who headed the Mexican Social Security Institute during Meade’s initial Cabinet stint under the PAN.

Eager to mend its reputation, the PRI changed its statutes in August to make it easier for outsiders to run for the job the party has held for most of the past century.

At an event at his official residence, President Enrique Pena Nieto said Harvard-educated former World Bank official Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya would leave his job as chief executive of state oil company Pemex to replace Meade in the Finance Ministry.

In a brief address at the ministry afterwards, Meade said he would run for the presidency “after 20 years of serving my country continuously with integrity and honesty.”

Lopez Obrador, twice runner-up for the presidency, has railed relentlessly for years against government graft. He quickly lashed out on Twitter against the PRI as “corrupt” and “predictable” after Meade made his announcement.

Meade remains unknown to much of the Mexican public, and in opinion polls he lags far behind the veteran Lopez Obrador, who has sought to characterise all of the main opposition parties as corrupt extensions of the PRI.

Avoiding scandal

Serving as energy, then finance minister in 2011, Meade became foreign minister when Pena Nieto took office in December 2012. He later switched to the Social Development Ministry before returning to the Finance Ministry last year.

Seen by allies as a discreet and diplomatic official, Meade’s grasp of finance and economics is matched by few in Mexico, and his academic career includes degrees in law and economics as well as an economics doctorate from Yale.

Crucially, argue his supporters, he has avoided the damaging scandals that have engulfed the PRI under Pena Nieto, who cannot constitutionally seek a second six-year term.

“I thank (Meade) for his dedication and commitment and I wish him success in the project he has decided to undertake,” Pena Nieto said at the event at his Los Pinos residence.

TV images showed Meade driving toward Los Pinos behind the wheel of a modest compact car, a frequent prop among Mexican politicians seeking to project the common touch.

Gonzalez Anaya, who is related by marriage to influential former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, will be replaced at Pemex by Carlos Trevino, a senior executive at the company.

(Reuters)

Mexico Enacts Law to Help Find Thousands Missing in Gang Violence

Over the past 50 years, more than 32,000 Mexicans have been reported missing, according to government data. More than half of the disappearances have been during Pena Nieto’s six-year term.

Relatives of missing people hold a protest, outside Los Pinos presidential residence, for the strengthening of the new general law on disappearance, in Mexico City, Mexico November 16, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Carlos Jasso

Mexico City: Mexico on Thursday undertook to focus more resources on the search for missing people, the number of which has grown dramatically in recent years as gang violence has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

President Enrique Pena Nieto signed into law the creation of a national commission dedicated to finding people who have disappeared that in its first stage will add some 469 million pesos ($25 million) to better fund search efforts, officials said.

Over the past 50 years, more than 32,000 Mexicans have been reported missing, according to government data. More than half of the disappearances have been during Pena Nieto’s six-year term, which began at the end of 2012.

“The disappearance of people is one of the greatest challenges facing our human rights … and one of the most painful experiences anyone can suffer,” Pena Nieto said during the signing ceremony.

The law, which also creates new forensic databases and rules on the exhumation of cadavers, goes into force in about 60 days.

Raging gangland violence in Mexico has claimed well over 100,000 lives over the past decade. Authorities are often unable to identify bodies found in mass graves, many of which are located in remote areas.