Aristegui Noticias: Tanslated by Reed Brundage Mexico Voices
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He noted that
Last week,during a conversation with reporters (Conversations in Depth), President Enrique Peña Nieto said,
"I do think there is a cultural issue that, unfortunately, has provoked corruption at all levels and in all organizations, both private and public; it isn't only an issue of public order, and it is fed from both sides, and it has been so, as you have pointed out that one responsible agent is the political party that, precisely, I represent. [But] I think you have to go beyond that; it is a matter that is in the social order."
In this regard, the participants in MVS' [radio] Political Roundtable agreed that if this premise is true, it removes accountability from institutions.
Sergio Aguayo said that under that logic, it can not be combated.
Lorenzo Meyer said that if corruption is cultural, we have to wait one or two generations to change that culture.
"If corruption is in the center and it will take so long to change because institutions do nothing, we're fried," he said.
In turn, Denise Dresser said that if corruption is a reflection of our culture, "then the country has no salvation."
Plus, she said, institutions don't work against it.
On this subject, Jesus Silva-Herzog Márquez wrote an article for the newspaper Reforma ("Conversation His Way "), released today, which said that
"the President sees corruption as a minor annoyance, a cultural habit. It’s a world phenomenon. It’s human nature, he insisted. Then he gave us his deep and firm conviction: corruption is a cultural phenomenon. Corruption 'is a cultural matter'."
"to locate corruption in the space of custom is to abdicate combating it institutionally; it is to rely on the intervention of the centuries, to excuse abuses with anthropological rationales. The presidential confession is extremely worrisome. To continue thinking at this point in time that corruption is a matter of 'cultural order' means that corruption exists because 'that's how we are. Cheating is in our historical nature'."