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Reuters
CHIHUAHUA
Invoking Pancho Villa's revolutionary legacy and armed with a hard-hitting corruption investigation into the country's ruling party, the governor of border state Chihuahua is shaking up Mexico's presidential election, without being in the race.
Governor Javier Corral's national profile exploded in late December when his prosecutors arrested a senior figure in President Enrique Pena Nieto's party for his role in an alleged scheme to siphon $13 million of state funds for electoral campaigns.
The election financing irregularities his government is probing in Chihuahua, where five people have been jailed for political corruption under his predecessor, should now be investigated in other states, Corral told Reuters in an interview on Friday."We want a true revolution in this country,"the mustachioed governor said in his wood paneled office, hung with a large portrait of Villa, the legendary general of the Mexican revolution a century ago who lived and died in the state.
Villa put Chihuahua at the forefront of change in Mexico, something Corral said he wanted to repeat, this time with an unarmed revolution aimed at breaking what he called an"impunity pact"agreed by the political class.
