Chabat on Spying

Jorge Chabat has an interesting take on the almost-espionage scandal in Mexico:

Many of the methods and customs from the PRI's era persist. The form in which politics is done is the same. The politicians use double speak. They talk to Juan so that Pedro hears. They accuse and counter-accuse with out giving proof. But it doesn't matter. They know their game.

This seems to be what is happening with the "espionage" scandal of Senator Beltrones, which led the Permanent Commission of Congress to request the removal of the Cisen director for having "lost confidence." This also seems to explain the declarations of the director of the agency, Guillermo Valdés, who said that drug money could have infiltrated Congress. Curiously, in neither case is there any proof.

This is a bit like what Jorge Fernández Menéndez was saying last week, and Chabat is surely right. Some degree of this kind of linguistic shadow boxing is probably inevitable in any democracy, but the less of it the better. It's easy to see how Mexicans, hearing about governmental spying and drug money in Congress and having little hope of ever finding out what is really going on, would quickly become cynical.