What if the problem was not corruption, but who committed it?

What if the problem was never corruption itself, but the identity of the people committing it? Isabel Gamboa Barboza challenges voters who condemn dirty political practices in one group, then celebrate them when their preferred politicians adopt them.

She describes an increase in what she calls the moral corruption of voters: people who applaud old political abuses and attempts to damage institutions that sustain a still-democratic country. In her view, electoral loyalty has begun to outweigh principles.

The column’s central warning is blunt. Neither legitimate resentment nor even the most contemptible inequality can make injustice just, or corruption honest. People who celebrate their own side using public office for private advantage, she argues, should remember that changing the political camp does not change the nature of the act.