Toll of the government attack on Anaya

MEXICO - Report 12 Mar 2018 by Guillermo Valdes and Esteban Manteca

With three weeks to go before presidential candidates can resume campaigning the contest has shifted to prosecutorial offices and dueling scandals. No new significant information has emerged regarding allegations that Ricardo Anaya may have been engaged in a money-laundering scheme, although the Peña administration and PRI may rue the day they began to openly use the Office of the Attorney General (PGR) to try to derail the campaign of the PAN-led coalition's nominee.

If Anaya were to take the upper hand in this face-off with the authorities, it would solidify him as the most serious opponent of an unpopular government and the person most likely to avenge wrongs, while López Obrador would find himself in perhaps a more uncomfortable position given his recurring conciliatory overtures to the administration and talk about amnesties.

Ricardo Anaya has responded to this turn of events by warning that once in office he will aggressively prosecute officials engaged in acts of corruption, including President Peña Nieto, if he is found to have committed any offenses. In contrast, Andrés Manuel López Obrador found himself the recipient of praise from PRI nominee José Antonio Meade for responding to Anaya's tough talk by stressing the need for harmony.

So far evidence abounds that the PGR's actions against Anaya are part of an effort by the federal government to repeat the Fox government's 2005 strategy against López Obrador by selectively using the justice system to try to find any evidence pointing to possible misdeeds by an opposition politician, while failing to act on multiple corruption-related cases involving members of the current administration or governing party, such those involving Odebrecht, and the so called "Estafa Maestra" network of government officials, departments, universities and shell companies allegedly used to siphon off public funds.

If they fail to eliminate Anaya from the contest, either politically or by prosecutorial means, the government might sink José Antonio Meade's struggling candidacy.

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