Attention corrupt public officials: be careful with your gait.
President López Obrador on Friday called on citizens to report corrupt officials to authorities, claiming that there are telltale signs to look out for, including the way fraudulent functionaries walk.
“A corrupt person is a braggart, arrogant, it stands out a mile, even the way they walk because they start to strut,” he told reporters at his morning news conference.
López Obrador said that another sign of corruption could be officials suddenly changing address. If people become aware that their bureaucrat neighbor is leaving their middle-class neighborhood for an affluent area such as Bosques de las Lomas or Santa Fe in Mexico City, they should notify the government, he said.
“Neighbors should advise us about these behaviors because wealth doesn’t hide,” he said.
Public life is becoming increasingly more public, and therefore if an official has embezzled government resources or “is going down the wrong path” it comes to light almost immediately, the president claimed.
López Obrador has made combating corruption a priority for his government, which replaced the corruption-plagued administration of former president Enrique Peña Nieto in December 2018.
He said earlier this month that corruption is now seen as “gross” thanks to the efforts of the federal government, while in September he declared that there is “zero corruption” in his administration as a result of his dedication to “sweeping away” what has developed over the past 30 years.
However, his remarks on Friday suggest that he believes that there are still some crooked and shady civil servants within his government. He suggested that was possible late last year.
After former president Felipe Calderón’s security secretary, Genaro García Luna, was arrested in the United States in December on charges that he accepted multi-million dollar bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel, López Obrador said that there would be an internal investigation to ensure that no members of García’s team were serving in his administration.
“If they passed through [the governments of] Calderón and Peña [Nieto] to us . . . they’re gone! We arrived here to change things and … corruption isn’t tolerated, not even in my family!” López Obrador said.
Source: Milenio (sp)
