Former Mexican congressman accuses AMLO of having ties with drug traffickers

The former president of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, accused President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday of having an alliance with drug traffickers. He also warned that this agreement is not inheritable because organized crime will no longer need it.

"The president is going to finish his term. The runway is already running out. He thinks he can inherit to the next government his association with criminals and that this gives him greater power, because in addition to having the authority and resources of the federal government, these are added to those of drug trafficking," he said at the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean (Copppal).

Muñoz Ledo also claimed that "two or three years ago," Mexico left its democratic transition process to begin an "authoritarian reversion" where "a new king of the jungle" is imposed: organized crime.

"He is no longer going to need the president's narco. That is the issue, it is a moral issue, a political analysis issue. He is going to forget, he is going to do without the president and there will be the danger that he will demand more from the new actors and that it will take time for the process to reach a different type of framework," he added.

In view of this reality, the former legislator warned that Mexico has been hit by "a bomb in the garden" because the drug trafficking industry is increasing the use of money to unimaginable dimensions.

"I think Mexico must reflect on a new constitutionality and a new social pact, a power pact, as my friend Alberto Aguilar Iñárritu called it many years ago. Because otherwise, I see no way out of the problems," he continued.

Muñoz Ledo's accusation is reckless and unfounded, says AMLO

On Friday, López Obrador described Porfirio Muñoz Ledo's accusation as commonplace, vulgar, unfounded, and reckless.

"I regret it, because Mr. Muñoz Ledo knows me very well and dares to maintain that the government has links with drug trafficking. It is an unfounded judgment," he said at a press conference.

The president also said that Muñoz Ledo had any evidence of his ties to organized crime, he should present it to the authorities.

If they have proof, let them present it, let them stop slandering. It is very unfortunate, vulgar, low, but don't think it worries me much either, first of all because I am at peace with my conscience and because it is completely false. I do not establish relations of complicity with anyone, that is why I can face the mafia of power, the criminals dedicated to violence, organized and white collar crime", he said.

Muñoz Ledo is a member of the Morena party, founded as a political movement in 2013 by the current Mexican president. In October 2020, the former legislator sought the national leadership of the party, although he lost the vote to the current leader, Mario Delgado.

Since then, the former presidential candidate has become one of the biggest critics of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

In March, after the President's proposal to reform the current National Electoral Institute (INE) was made public, Muñoz Ledo stated that this change could return the electoral institutions to their past situation.

"The one who knows nothing is my friend Andrés Manuel. There is a kind of historical paralysis, he wants to take the electoral institutions back to the time of [President Adolfo] Ruiz Cortines, when it was a single State system. The evolution of the electoral system has cost lives, it has cost efforts and it cannot be thrown overboard," he said at the time in an interview with Radio Fórmula.