The Case of Ex-Presidents
Helio Flores, September 15, 2020:
The scream: Let former presidents be sentenced!
Mario Vargas Llosa once wrote a story on ex-presidents, the forgotten has-beens, whom no one has any use for. The ex-presidents spend their days looking at the immovable sea. They are as void of life as they can possibly be while still being alive.
But are they, though? Vargas Llosa gave them a Chekhovian air of unlived life, in this case of life already spent, but the ex-presidents we know of lately continue to be noisy.
There is a halo of cacophony surrounding them. They are whining and crying about their right to power trying to gain in corpus to make it impossible for anyone to think otherwise. They define their right as something that cannot be disputed.
Bonil, September 30, 2020:
10 years afterwards:
If you want to find me.... Find me! I am here
Leaving office is leaving the bubble of immunity where fraud, corruption and amassing personal wealth seems to be free. Outside of it is the time to pay up. One of the most glaring examples right now is the former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, who ran off to Belgium when leaving office. Lately he has attempted to secure another term in office, this time as vice president in 2021, but the Ecuadorian National Court of Justice has denied him the right to do so. Instead the court asked Interpol to secure his arrest for bribery.
Bonil lets Correa take up the entire picture plane, as noisy as ever and as ever making it all about his rights and his being misunderstood. If his demeanour rings any bells regarding a soon to be evicted ex-president, Trump was already a look-alike-Correa when he took up office. Bonil dresses the Correan noise in orange that however much he protests the prison garb is his true colour.
In Mexico the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is proposing a referendum whether five - 5 - of his predecessors shall be charged for corruption and concentration of wealth. The Mexican supreme court shall decide if the referendum can take place, but Helio Flores let the Mexican voice speak up on the day of the proposal with the whole of their being. Not noisy, just unequivocally. Let justice be done.
The call comes from both sides. One side is a call for responsibility, the other is a whining. The people are as always the grown ups in the room.
The cartoons shown are courtesy of Helio Flores and Bonil and must not be reproduced without their permission.
