Talk of former US President Donald Trump wanting to return to the White House in 2024 is the most obvious example of fake news in the last 10 years. It is not that lies have not been told before, but rather that nobody did it with as much cynicism and looking towards the cameras as the New York tycoon.
Yes, indeed, Trump is one of those personalities who is willing to do and say whatever it takes to achieve his goals; and if he does not succeed, he says he is a victim and politically persecuted.
The tycoon never accepts any guilt, even if he has not paid taxes in his life as a businessman or has committed fraud or abuse to maintain his high profits in certain types of businesses.
We could say that the lies against his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in 2016, simply flowed from beginning to end, and not only against her rival, but against anyone who challenged him and disagreed with him, including Mexicans a whom he called “criminals”, “rapists” and “bad men”, among many other adjectives.
In the end, Trump won the elections, of course, with the help of the Electoral College, its lies and a population tired of the false promises of the traditional political parties; otherwise, Clinton, who got the most votes in that election, would surely have become the first female president of the United States.
In other words, and although American society does not describe it that way, Trump won by fraud in an electoral system where the candidate who is chosen by the powerful, not by the people, wins the presidency. The same thing had happened 16 years earlier in the elections between Al Gore and George W. Bush, when a judge refused to recount the votes and simply handed over the presidency to the individual who started a war based on lies, committing a catastrophe. in which millions of people lost their lives.
In the Mexican case, the opposition seems to follow the same formula: tell lies one day and another against President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), hoping that sooner or later people will believe them.
Let’s remember that the corporate media in Mexico are owned by that political opposition that wants to recover executive power at any cost. They have not stopped lying, exaggerating, misrepresenting or taking any information related to AMLO out of context since before he was elected president.
These efforts have been joined, on numerous occasions, by the international press, such as the Washington Post, The New York Times, The countryfrom Spain, and other media with great neoliberal influence.
Even among the Mexican opposition we can include the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) and the Electoral Tribunal, which have practically rejected all the cases that come from the current administration; In addition, they have released countless criminals who complicate security tasks. The objective is for Mexico to do badly so that the people are upset and do not vote again for the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), the president’s party.
Something that truly exceeded all levels of corruption was the fact that they dared to take the president’s statements out of context and accuse and sanction him of things that he did not say; however, they have already retracted. The goal is for AMLO to remain in the collective imagination of Mexicans as a “liar” and “corrupt.”
All this is part of a plan that they hope will finish convincing the people themselves to vote for the opposition; but in the worst case, that at least they don’t go out to vote.
Like Trump, the opposition in Mexico is known for high levels of corruption. They not only left a country a graveyard, but looted and turned over natural resources to international corporate companies with little or no benefit to Mexicans.
Despite everything, this opposition in Mexico always claims that its members are “politically persecuted” when they are investigated, detained or imprisoned. Just to mention one example, the energy reform was approved in the six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto at the point of bribery by the Odebrecht company, from Brazil, a crime confessed by the company itself and by Emilio Lozoya, former director of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex). and currently in prison; but Ricardo Anaya, former candidate for the PAN presidency in 2018, maintains that he is “innocent” and that he is being persecuted for “revenge” on Obrador.
Like Trump, the crimes committed by the opposition in the past and some currently, such as the so-called Real Estate Cartel in Mexico City, simply do not seem to matter to them, or they think that people will forget about all the harm they have done to Mexicans. ; meanwhile, they continue with their lies to the point that they have as one of their candidates an official who has been accused of obtaining contracts for her own company for up to 1,400 million pesos, all this during the time that she represented the mayor Miguel Gentleman. But that does not stop them and they bet on the lies of the mass media that paint her as an “entrepreneur” of “indigenous” origin who knew how to get ahead, while about the corruption of her past they appeal to the forgetfulness of the Mexican electorate. .
Like Trump, the opposition in Mexico is willing to do and say anything in order to come to power or, at least, win enough seats in the Chamber of Deputies and Senators to allow some of its members to maintain control. jurisdiction and not be investigated or imprisoned.
Like Trump or possibly worse, the opposition in Mexico has distinguished itself by favoring corporate companies and national and international private initiative, but worst of all, it did not charge them taxes and gave them juicy contracts, many of which were never fulfilled. . And far from the companies investing in Mexican soil, the government ended up subsidizing loans to these international corporations.
In other words, they made and undid the budget as they pleased and they and their friends benefited, while millions of Mexicans fell into poverty. It is not for nothing that in the neoliberal period (1982 to 2018) the number of millionaires increased between 1 percent of the population; while thousands were killed, others evicted, and still others fled north.
Being a little benevolent, we could say that Trump is not as mean-spirited as the Mexican opposition. Although the tycoon rules for the millionaires, no matter what, he knows that in the United States, national or state social programs will help low-income Americans to get the basics to survive. But in Mexico, until before the current administration, social programs were insignificant or non-existent, leaving that segment without resources.
Of course, now former President Vicente Fox has dared to request that social programs be eliminated, those that have now restored dignity to those below and possibly prevented the death of thousands of them; but Fox asks that his millionaire pension be returned to him. I think this cynicism, if not superior, is at least equal to Trump’s.
Thanks for reading to the end.
Agustín Durán is editor of the local section of the newspaper La Opinión in Los Angeles.