President López Obrador on Monday rejected claims that he has links to organized crime, asserting that his government – unlike its predecessors – doesn’t allow officials to collude with criminals.

Investigative journalist Anabel Hernández and veteran politician Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, among others, have recently claimed that López Obrador and the ruling Morena party are in cahoots with organized crime. The president on Monday didn’t specifically refer to those claims but rather to an unspecified study that linked him to organized crime.

“I was looking at a study the other day … [that said] I had links to organized crime,” he told reporters at his morning press conference. “They can’t prove anything because we have principles, we have ideals and what I consider most important in my life is honesty,” López Obrador said.

He recycled one of his favorite analogies, comparing the process of eliminating government corruption to sweeping a staircase from top to bottom. “And we’re making progress bit by bit, but we still have two years and two or three months left [in government], so we’re going to continue cleaning,” López Obrador said.

Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez, who presented a security report at Monday’s press conference, is not the same as Genaro García Luna, he said, referring to former president Felipe Calderón’s allegedly corrupt security minister, who is awaiting trial in the United States.

“The important thing is that collusion is not allowed, authority mustn’t associate with crime, the line has to be well marked, authority is one thing, [organized] crime is another,” López Obrador said. The president subsequently claimed that his adversaries make up claims that there is collusion between his government and organized crime “to attack us.”

He also said that social media users and the “experts of conservatism, the [opposition party] spokespeople” parroted the claim in the study linking him to organized crime. “… It’s possible that this is managed from abroad,” AMLO added.

The president has previously claimed that Mexico was a narco-state during the administration of Calderón, who was in office from 2006 to 2012.

Former Michoacán governor Silvano Aureoles made a similar claim about Morena after the ruling party won elections in several Pacific coast states last year.

“What a coincidence that they won big in … the Pacific corridor. Who let them?” he said in an interview with the Financial Times last July. “It’s terribly dangerous that Morena is becoming a narco party and the president is looking the other way when the most important issue for people is security. … Morena has become the instrument of organized crime,” Aureoles said.

Mexico News Daily