PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

Porfirio Muñoz Ledo — a former Mexican ambassador to the United Nations, former federal deputy, former staunch supporter of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), founding member of the left-leading Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), former presidential wannabe and current ambassador to Cuba — said Thursday, June 2, that the AMLO administration is in bed with the country’s drug cartels.

During his participation in the plenary session of the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean (Coppal), Muñoz Ledo said bluntly that López Obrador is using his ties with organized crime to increase his political power and to boost federal resources.

“I call out the president with the following pragmatic argument: He is going to finish his term soon (his time is already running out), and he thinks that he can peddle his association with criminals to the next government, giving him even greater power,” Muñoz Ledo said.

“In addition to the authority and resources he has from the federal government, he had added assets from drug traffickers.”

Consequently, Muñoz Ledo said, AMLO and his leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party have become practically invincible.

“There is nothing that can oppose them,” he said.

Muñoz Ledo went on to remind López Obrador that “his collusion with drug trafficking is not inheritable.”

The former president of the Chamber of Deputies also pointed out that with each new government, the outgoing president becomes no longer necessary for drug trafficking, and the new head of state becomes more important for the cartels.

“Organized crime is no longer going to need the current president,” he said.

“That is the issue, a moral issue, a political analysis issue. The criminals will move on and forget about AMLO. And the danger exists that he will demand more from the incoming government and try to delay the election process.”

Muñoz Ledo also called on the Mexican people to “reflect on the need for a new power pact, because otherwise, there will be no way out of the country’s current problems.”

He predicted that with the end of AMLO’s six-year term in office, political loyalties will shift, leading to serious confrontations during the 2024 presidential election.

Just prior to Muñoz Ledo’s speech, former Energy Secretary Francisco Labastida, who served under the administration of Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid, told a reporter that there “are strong indications, although not solid proof, that the federal government is protecting the Sinaloa Cartel,” founded by notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, currently serving out a life sentence in the United States for a number of drug-related crimes.

Labastida, a former presidential candidate, recalled the four visits that López Obrador has made to Badiraguato, the cradle of Sinaloa Cartel, where the president famously kissed the hand of El Chapo’s mother, despite the fact that the town has only 5,000 inhabitants.

He said that Badiraguato, which is located in the so-called Golden Triangle, can only be accessed with the protection of drug traffickers.

“There are indications, but no proof, indications that clearly point to a very suspicious government protection of drug trafficking,” Labastida said.

Labastida also accused the centralist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of having helped López Obrador to obtain more votes in 2018 by operating against the second place candidate in the polls at that time, conservative National Action Party member Ricardo Anaya.

In Friday, June 3, AMLO brushed off the accusations made by both Muñoz Ledo and Labastida, saying that the former, who is 88 years old, was senile.

López Obrador called Muñoz Ledo’s allegations “vulgar” and “unfounded.”

Still, the president’s close ties with the Sinaloa Cartel are becoming more and more obvious as he does little to hide the association, made all the more obvious by his efforts to release convicted criminals from prison and refusal to take armed action against organized crime groups.