Fernández Backs Valdés

Jorge Fernández Menéndez wrote a column ridiculing efforts to force Cisen chief Guillermo Valdés to resign. (For background from Gancho, click here, here, here, and here.) He writes:

The complaint from the Permanent Commission of Congress to request the resignation of Guillermo Valdés from Cisen, with the argument that “they’ve lost confidence in him,” is incomprehensible. First, because the job doesn’t depend on the confidence of a group of legislators, and second, and much more important, because they haven’t shown one piece of proof of the reasons that caused the perredistas and priístas to lose confidence in the official.

I don’t know, but it seems the only one who can really know if Valdés does good work or not is his direct boss, President Calderón, but it’s absurd to request the removal of an official arguing that he has “spied” on the legislators, only to later say that in reality the service of a firm was contracted with the idea of constructing a profile of the members of Congress. And worse still when you consider that the problem isn’t that the firm was hired, but rather that it was a relatively newly formed firm. What was the espionage, what was spied, since when can the State not hire a firm to carry out a profile of the legislators?

I plead American on this one; I hear about intelligence agencies spying on opposition politicians, and I think Watergate, and I assume heads will roll. In any event, Fernández’s argument is disingenuous. The profiling itself isn’t what has everyone up in arms; the secrecy is the problem. If it was all about an innocent profile of congressmen, then why all the subterfuge? And why the stonewalling after the fact?

Fernández also weighs in on the document that Manlio Fabio Beltrones revealed last week, which suggested that someone had spied on him:

Manlio Fabio Beltrones is one of the most powerful and experienced politicians in the country, above all in the areas of governance and security. And Manlio knows perfectly well that these “files” are not only absolutely false but also that they circulate, about him and whomever else in the national spotlight, among everyone in the political and journalistic scene. And they’re worthless: in mi files I received, over the years, innumerable “documents” of those characteristics that, simply, can’t be taken seriously. One time I had in my possession a file of myself in which it even described where I lived, with the small detail that the direction given was not mine, I lived far from there, and, obviously, the description wasn’t my house.

That’s interesting, fascinating even, but it’s not common knowledge, so if that’s all there is to it, why haven’t Calderón and the rest been more forthcoming? If we are to believe that this is being blown out of proportion, first we need an honest explanation from the men who are allegedly behind it. Gentlemen?