Corruption undermines the confidence of citizens in politics, erodes the credibility of institutions and encourages disenchantment and disappointment with projects that at one point received popular support at the polls, assured the president of the National Electoral Institute (OTHER), Lorenzo Córdova Vianello.
During his participation in the inauguration of the International Seminar on Corruption and Politics in Latin America: checks and balances, held within the framework of the 35 Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL), Córdova Vianello highlighted the need for citizen involvement in the fight against this scourge that afflicts Mexico.
To banish this evil from our public life it will be necessary for all of us to get involved: the institutions of the State, the three Powers of the Union, the autonomous constitutional bodies, civil society and, of course, the academy ”, he said.
He considered that the construction of a clean, transparent public life, with accountability and with institutional and democratic controls for the exercise of power requires an active, critical, informed and demanding citizenship with those who exercise power.
Córdova Vianello stressed that the democratic transition has not implied the eradication of these deeply rooted, painful and reprehensible practices.
He said that this allowed the idea to take root in the collective imagination that everyone is equal and produced disenchantment, which in turn led to a third alternation in the 2018 presidential elections.
Blanca Lilia Ibarra, president of the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (Inai) considered that corruption is one of the causes of governmental inefficiency and democratic disenchantment that, being a consequence of the historical construction of our political system, must be faced as a systemic problem that is anchored in our administrative, political and social structures.
For his part, Mauricio Merino, director of the Institute for Investigations in Accountability and Combating Corruption of the University of Guadalajara, said that there is an ominous environment in which the institutions that provide a counterweight to power are being stigmatized, as if they were part of enemy and abominable territory.
For her part, Lourdes Morales, coordinator for the Network for Accountability, emphasized the importance of promoting meetings for reflection and exchange of ideas and not prejudices, a civilized exchange of opinions based on arguments and not on stereotypes, especially due to the open threat that emblematic institutions of democracy experience.
Elisa Gómez, Coordinator of Political Dialogue of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, highlighted state weakness as the main enemy of the construction of democracy that makes it impossible to build a social democratic program in Mexico.
However, he said, it will be impossible to achieve this objective as long as the basic democratic conditions are not in place: a functional State of Law, conditions for citizen participation and the guarantee of rights. “And this will not be achieved with weak states.”
Alejandro González, director of projects for the Rule of Law of the World Justice Proyect, warned about a global trend of weakening institutional, political and social checks and balances during the pandemic, which is emphasized in the Latin American region, where Mexico is not exempt.
In this sense, he recalled that two of the central elements of any democratic country are the limits to governmental power and the absence of corruption, variables that are measured in 139 countries around the world by their organization and that reflect a setback in the State of Right.
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Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx