Fear walks in videos – El Financiero

The mother case of corruption with which President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wanted to settle accounts with the past and justify the mandate of the polls in 2018, collapsed in the first weeks of this year, when the Attorney General’s Office reported in court that the only person responsible for acts of corruption in the Odebrecht case was Emilio Lozoya, former director of Pemex. Consequently, the accusation negotiated by prosecutor Alejandro Gertz Manero and Lozoya’s father, Emilio Lozoya Thalman, which involved dozens of officials and politicians, where former President Enrique Peña Nieto and former Treasury Secretary Luis Videgaray were the intellectual authors of the mechanism of corruption, remained in the anecdote of his inventions. However, López Obrador continued to use his original accusation to promote his electricity law, until fear made him back down.

The story does not begin or end with Odebrecht, but starts from the presidential campaign, when -according to López Obrador and Peña Nieto collaborators- they reached an agreement where the President would not get involved in the 2018 elections, and the candidate, in case if he won, he would not be criminally prosecuted. López Obrador has kept his word and Peña Nieto, to mitigate the pressure from his radical wing, accepted the advice sent through his lawyer Juan Collado, today in jail for different reasons, to go into self-exile to Spain and keep a low profile.

The stability and certainty about that pact was altered in March, when, coinciding with the revelation of the “gray house” where the eldest son of the President lived in Houston, two videos of his youngest son appeared on social networks, one in a bar from that same city, and the other dancing by the pool on the same property. The existence of videos of his children that would supposedly compromise his speech against corruption has been a topic present in the National Palace for more than four months, without being able to detect who or who has them in order to neutralize them.

The alerts were raised in March, when it emerged that political opponents of the President had in their possession videos that could damage the reputation of their children and their collaborators, which would also affect the speech and image of López Obrador. It is not known how many compromising videos exist, nor how many people or political groups have them. There is clarity about the videos of his brothers Pío and Martín, captured when they are receiving cash from operators of the then governor of Chiapas, Manuel Velasco. There is no idea, for example, of the video where the private secretary of the president, Alejandro Esquer, together with a group of collaborators, deposits cash in several banks on the same day, although at first they blamed the former legal adviser of the Presidency, Julio Scherer.

But what happened in March opened a door that, until now, no one had thought of: Peña Nieto. For unknown reasons, when it transpired that there were political groups opposed to López Obrador that had videos in his possession, the President asked them to communicate with Peña Nieto to reassure him. Contacts were made on at least two occasions, with the purpose, according to reports from collaborators of the President, of shielding his children and his closest collaborators. After those communications, there was a public signal. In the past week The universal published an official letter from the Attorney General’s Office on March 2 where it stated that “there is no investigation against Enrique Peña Nieto in the Odebrecht case.”

The fears were buried, but it will not be forever. In this space, the possible existence of a opposition research, which is a political campaign tactic invented in the United States that is used to damage the credibility and image of an adversary. The videos of the President’s brothers do not seem to fall into this strategy, but the videos of Esquer and that of López Obrador’s youngest son do.

The videos, which due to the information that emerged are in the possession of Peña Nieto, do not necessarily come from the opposition research, but of the espionage systems that he had at his disposal. All politicians in positions such as those held by presidents or important members of their cabinets can access this type of material, which would be used for different purposes, from serving as a defense for any action against them by their successors, even to destroy a ruler. The opposition research It has another methodology, and regularly performs data mining in all possible public and government sources, or it can also be the result of traps that are set to be recorded and used at the moment that is considered politically appropriate.

There is no information in the National Palace on how many videos of this nature may exist, nor who specifically could appear in the recordings. There is speculation about the deck of possible names, but no certainties. Due to the times of how the videos of Esquer and the President’s youngest son appeared, it can be argued that someone is managing the materials, whose dissemination depends on the situation, but, above all, on the moment that their owners consider they can cause more damage.

It doesn’t matter if what they project is true or not. The image prevails. The silent video of the marines in Cocula collecting garbage bags was translated as the alteration of the crime scene due to the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa normalistas. The one provided by Lozoya where officials appear in front of bags of money, was interpreted as bribes to approve the energy reform. It is very easy to play with the mind, and a video with images of his children or close collaborators in compromising situations would be devastating for López Obrador.

Note: This column will stop publishing until Monday, April 25.

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