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Mexico City mayor under fire for case of 12 who disappeared from a bar

MEXICO CITY, June 20 (UPI) -- Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera is catching flak from media and others over the disappearances last month of a dozen people from a bar.

Mancera has been fighting accusations that he mishandled the disappearances in the still-unresolved case, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

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Mancera is considered a potential presidential candidate for the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party.

A columnist posted on the website Sin Embargo that Mancera suffers from "political autism"

The mayor hasn't proved to be a "a distinct or distinguished head of government," a writer for Proceso newsmagazine said.

The Times said the disappearances, along with other recent violent acts, sparked a national debate about whether Mexico City is reverting to destabilizing drug-gang violence after several years of calm compared with other Mexican cities.

"I would like to believe, as an inhabitant of this city, that it is not, but I cannot rule it out," Juan Francisco Torres Landa, secretary of the civic group Mexico United Against Crime, told the Times.

As a mayoral candidate, Mancera claimed some credit for the falling city crime rate during his time as top prosecutor, including a 12.5 percent reduction from 2010 to 2011 under Marcelo Ebrard's mayoral administration. Mancera won the election and took office in December.

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However, the Times said, it would be difficult for Mancera to ensure a safe environment if organized crime groups have decided to terrorize the city.

The mayor has been pressuring his staff to solve the disappearance case, telling reporters "no one is guaranteed a place in my government if they don't get results."

The city prosecutor's office announced Tuesday the head of the missing persons bureau, Francisco Carlos Trujillo Fuentes, had stepped down.

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