Blaming the Public

The LA Times ran a story last week asking where the Mexican public is in the nation's fight against organized crime:

In this drug offensive launched three years ago by President Felipe Calderon, more than 15,000 people have been killed. But that is not the only measure of the damage, or of the difficulty Calderon faces. The Mexican people have been reluctant allies in the struggle, key institutions of society have been silent or ineffectual, and democratic values that had been struggling to take root, such as independence of the press and the rule of law, have been eroded.

The article's worth a read, but I think the blame is a bit misplaced, at least in the sense that it blames people for not caring that organized crime runs wild in Mexico. I'd say people are scandalized by the violence, but there is really not a lot they can do alone. The public, however disgusted, is only as powerful as the government is responsive, and unfortunately the government hasn't been responsive (either because of corruption, incompetence, unwillingness, or, probably most of all, the sheer Herculean size of the task at hand) to the public outcry about security. But as to whether not the public stands with Calderón, if you believe the Pew surveys, it clearly does.

One area in which the Mexican public does indeed do itself a great deal of harm is in often assuming that all public officials are dirty. If the public did a better job distinguishing unsubstantiated rumors and political attacks from serious questions about an official's honesty, and then direct its electoral support accordingly, the political class in Mexico would be cleaner and more accountable. The article touches on this habit in reference to San Pedro's mayor Mauricio Fernández, who has been relatively open about his government's extralegal "cleaning" squads.