Mexico highly regarded for its fight against corruption: foreign minister

Mexico is well-regarded around the world thanks to the leadership of President López Obrador and the federal government’s fight against corruption, Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Monday.

Speaking to Mexican diplomats at a meeting in Mexico City, Ebrard said that Mexico is respected “in all domains from the [United Nations] Security Council to all [other] multilateral spaces because it has moral authority and political prestige.”

“To a large degree that is due to who leads [the country] – President López Obrador — and the transformation he is championing. It must be said because it’s a fact,” he said.

“… We have a president who respects and values Mexico’s foreign policy,” Ebrard added.

“Mexico has weight [in the world] today, and we’re getting results … because the government has moral prestige. It has moral and political authority,” he said.

The foreign minister said that Chile’s president-elect Gabriel Boric and leaders of other Latin American countries had told him as much late last week. Ebrard met with Boric in Santiago last Thursday before attending a meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Buenos Aires on Friday.

“They [Latin American leaders] respect Mexico’s fight against corruption and for justice,” the foreign minister told ambassadors, consuls and other government officials who joined the annual diplomatic gathering.

He also said that Mexico – currently a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council – has engaged in international issues under López Obrador’s leadership, and proved critics wrong in the process.

“… It was said we were going to be inward-looking, it was said we were going to have conflict with the United States. It was predicted we weren’t going to have a significant international presence,” Ebrard said.

Among the international issues the Mexican government has spoken out about are migration flows in North America, the United States trade embargo on Cuba, global poverty, inequality in access to COVID-19 vaccines, arms trafficking, and violence in the Middle East.

A priority in 2022 and beyond, Ebrard said, will be to support multilateral diplomatic frameworks at at time when there are “significant geopolitical tensions” in the world.

“… This is the task of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [SRE] during these [upcoming] months and years; we have to navigate a geopolitical reality that is increasingly difficult and intense,” he said.

The foreign minister, a former Mexico City mayor who has his own presidential ambitions, said that the defense of human rights and addressing migration issues will also be priorities for the SRE.

“[López Obrador] has asked us to defend human rights, but not just in discourse. … The investigation and dedication there has been in the Ayotzinapa [missing students] case and other [human rights] cases shows the Mexican government’s true concern for and prioritization of this issue,” Ebrard said.

“… Promoting options [to stem] migration phenomenons, especially in our dialogue with the United States … [is another priority],” he said.

However, the highest priority for the federal government as a whole, Ebrard stressed, is to reduce violence. To that end, SRE action is required to reduce the smuggling of weapons into Mexico, he said.

With reports from Milenio