Luis Rubio

The great success of capitalism   has been the generation of wealth and prosperity for billions of global inhabitants and at the heart of that system of economic organization lies a crucial concept:  the separation of political power from wealth. Although capitalism and democracy, with all their tensions, advanced by means of distinct conduits over time, their convergence has been the highest transformer of the history of the world.

The tension between capitalism and democracy is natural and inevitable, but it diminishes or increases according to the circumstances. In concept, the distinction between them is logical: capitalism is a system of organization that makes possible the participation of economic agents in the process of the creation of the goods and services that the population demands. For its part, democracy, at least in its modern version, is exercised through popular representatives who are elected   and who procure the satisfaction of their voters and simultaneously advance the interests of their country.

Democracy and capitalism complement each other and function by way of a critical  linchpin: the Rule of Law, which institutes the rules of the game,  the limits to action, respectively, of the government and of the private citizens. In a perfect world, the tension between the two ambits -the political and the economic- generates opportunities for growth and development. In like fashion, during moments of difficulties or of divergence between both spaces, crisis situations are produced.

Those moments of crisis bring about excesses and abuses that are propitious circumstances for the establishment of tyrannical governments.

At his arrival to the presidency, López Obrador insisted on his conviction that economic decisions should subordinate themselves to the political power. The President was correct, except that his remark ignored that crucial linchpin: the nodal function of the law, and everything underlying it in terms of the protection of the rights of the citizens, for the country to be able to work.  In contrast with the central principle of prosperity, which separates power from wealth (while considering both equal), the presidential approach derives from the principle of subordination. Instead of clear, transparent and general rules, the government seeks special arrangements for each case, as happened with Tesla and Constellation Brands. No one should be surprised by the lethargy that the country is experiencing because of that way of governing.

The use of the verb subordinate is revealing because it implies submission, subjugation and humiliation. That is, the objective is not that of procuring the best balance between the economy and politics, but instead the control of one over the other. This is not a new problem in Mexico’s history: from the end of the revolutionary joust, the country has undergone permanent ups and downs, typically marked by moments of crisis that obligate the correction of the previously earmarked course. That pendular nature of functioning  of Mexican politics over time has cost enormous opportunities for development and  generated an interminable propensity toward thinking in the short term.

The politicians, impeded from attending to the citizens because that is not fruitful for them in any way, bend over backward to be at the service of the powerful one at the palace because therein lies the opportunity for their next job. Despite there evidently being great professional politicians in the country, none of them devote themselves to building a career founded on specialization, as occurs in the world’s successful democracies. That lack of specialization facilitates presidential control above all the political world, in that it makes impossible the consolidation of effective and permanent counterweights, a key factor for economic progress.

On their part, the entrepreneurs see themselves as obliged to think in terms of presidential cycles because they never know what occurrence will guide the next owner of the presidential ball. Historically, the economy followed a six-year cycle because everything depended on the mood of the governor-in-turn.

The North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) introduced a new dynamic into the Mexican economy in that it created sort or a watertight compartment that favored long-term investments on establishing clear and guaranteed game rules by an internationally recognized regime. Beyond the (huge) errors that hindered the conversion of the entire country into NAFTA territory, it is not by chance that the only part of the economy that continues to prosper is the one associated with that legal regime, today much more vulnerable than at the moment of NAFTA’s conception due to its renegotiation into the Mexico–United States–Canada Agreement (USMCA).

NAFTA’s chief political achievement was precisely that it made possible, for the first time since the Revolution, the separation between power and the generation of wealth. The greatest cost that AMLO (with the help of Trump) will have infringed upon the country consists of his having brought back to daily life, political control and the subordination of the productive sector. Rather than extending NAFTA’s “reign” to generalize the separation between the political power and the entrepreneurial world, he rolled the country back to its worst moments and vices.

At the dawning of the presidential succession, it is time to begin to reflect on the costs of a paleolithic administration in the era of informatics and what that implies for the magnitude of the correction that will have to take place if a generalized collapse is to be avoided.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/aq-podcast-luis-rubio-on-why-mexicos-amlo-is-more-vulnerable-than-you-think/

Podcast

AQ Podcast: Luis Rubio on Why Mexico’s AMLO Is More Vulnerable Than You Think

MARCH 1, 2023

Despite AMLO’s popularity, judicial and political challenges may hamper his electoral plans for 2024, argues a leading analyst.

More than 100,000 Mexicans protested last weekend against President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposed changes to the country’s electoral institute. The marches highlight the leader’s relative vulnerability, despite his enduring approval ratings above 60%. Indeed, while the path may seem open for AMLO, as the president is known, to overhaul the country’s electoral institute and bring to power a candidate of his choosing in the 2024 elections, there are judicial and political obstacles to AMLO’s plans, argues this week’s guest. In this episode, Luis Rubio, chairman of the think tank México Evalúa, discusses AMLO’s current situation and the consequences for Mexico’s economy, 2024 presidential elections, and its relationship with the United States.

Subscribe to The Americas Quarterly Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google and other platforms

Guests:

Luis Rubio is Chairman of think tank México Evalúa

Brian Winter is the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly

Any opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of Americas Quarterly or its publishers.

Luis Rubio

How strange is the course of action of the government in legislative matters. Despite being able to count on wide-ranging majorities in both chambers, Morena party adherents tend to blunder due to the lack of clarity of the bills dispatched by the Executive Branch. No one can doubt the despotic and frequently arbitrary nature of the procedures of that party, for whose members the search for votes on the part of other parties and even broad consensus is anathema. But none of that explains the inconstancy, if not fickleness, of the initiatives that they demand to be processed.

I explain myself: the prominent characteristic of the world of international relations   is the ambiguity of the rules, because in the absence of a world government, the capacity does not exist to obligate the nations to comply, a circumstance that confers wide latitude to the nations with the greatest power. That explains the frequent instability evidenced by diverse regions and the propensity for conflict that is connatural in that ambit of human relations.

Something similar takes place with governments that do not have strong institutions, in that there too the law of the strongest tends to prevail: a presidency without counterweights, organized crime or all the individuals and special interests who de facto enjoy broad impunity.

Although the rules of the international world may be ambiguous and impossible to comply with, they do indeed exist and may be found duly codified because governments have an interest in order being preserved and in the avoidance of unjustified war-like conflagrations. These also have a place at the national level, where the combination of formal and informal rules constitutes a framework for internal political life. Of course, the more informal the rules, the less predictable and more prone they are to create uncertainty.  And therein lies the relevant issue for Mexico.

Mexico is a country given to codifying rules in natural fashion, as if their mere presence would guarantee coexistence and progress. An old maxim says that the Stone Age did not end because stones were likely to run out: the same can be said of the selfsame Mexican proclivity for passing laws, reforming them and never abiding by them. What is rarely considered is the cost of having so many laws, regulations and procedures, many of these contradictory, which are ignored when convenient for the president-in-turn. Worse yet is when those laws are modified to justify actions that the Executive Branch had already decided to undertake anyway.

But none of that explains the peculiar way that diverse legislations have been advanced in the current government. Typical of Mexican administrations is how they commence with a plethora of initiatives that they later attempt to convert into changes at the level of reality. That has not been the path of the present government, whose legal bills appear to spring forth more from occurrences or, even more archetypally, from the sudden recognition that not all is going the government’s way, in which case new instruments are required not for the general good, but instead for a concrete and specific purpose. As if a series of circumstances, actions and decisions would change the surrounding reality, obliging the modification of the regulatory framework.

That is my hypothesis regarding the origin of the modifications embarked upon against the electoral institutions. It is well known that the President blames the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) for his defeat in 2006 and that, henceforth, he has harbored grudges that manifest themselves in the legislation that is now before the Senate. However, this circumstance has been valid since December of 2018, the moment at which a negotiation would have been more propitious with respect to that which could and should be modified. A reform against the current and without the least interest in building a consensus in that regard reveals other concerns: one, the most probable of these, is the growing dearth of certainty in terms of a clean win in 2024. Another possibility, one which I heard from Niall Ferguson on another topic, is that “authoritarians are always afraid of their own populations.” Thus, it is not impossible that, however much the President bandies about his popularity, in his heart of hearts he has misgivings about the loyalty of the voters on the day his successor is elected. Both factors would justify in the collective mind of Morena any modification that ensures a triumph, independently of what the voters might prefer, or the opposition is able to articulate.

In this manner, the President is mired in the quest for legislating the victory of the Morena candidate in 2024, a version that is more advanced (but also more primitive) of the traditional PRIist finger jerk. Why waste time in elections well organized by professional functionaries when the only thing that matters is for the Morena precandidates to be campaigning around (currently prohibited by law) unhindered, so that whomever the President designates would win outright and become the new Tlatoani, Nahuatl for ruler, like in the old times?

From this perspective, it makes all the sense in the world not only to weaken the electoral institutions, but also to eliminate them entirely. And now that they’re at it, they could proceed with eliminating the Supreme Court and the legislature. After all, one person can do it all.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push —in just the right place— it can be tipped.” This is the way that Malcolm Gladwell explains how things change, frequently and suddenly and without warning or without antecedents suggesting that a change was to be found within the realm of possibilities. As the 2024 presidential elections in Mexico approaches, it is natural to extrapolate the present moment to conclude that what appears obvious or inevitable today will be the reality in that moment. Notwithstanding this, history shows that the very process of succession alters reality, creating circumstances that modify the panorama. Worse yet when the lashing out against the sources of certainty that remain is incessant.

Many things in our world change suddenly. Some are the product of an alteration of specific circumstances (such as a bombing immediately before an election), others result from the gradual accumulation of factors, none of them significant or far-reaching by themselves, but altogether devastating. The revelation of a corruption case changes the image of who is involved, just as an irrelevant leadership suddenly acquires cosmic dimensions. Nobody anticipated the collapse of the USSR or the French Revolution.

For several decades successive Mexican governments dedicated themselves to building sources of certitude. That was how the regulatory commissions were born (competition, telecommunications, energy, etc.), the electoral institutions, the “new” Supreme Court and some others that, with greater or lesser impact, had as their purpose conferring certainty on the electorate, the economic agents, and on the citizenry in general. However, during the last four years Mexicans have been witness to a systemic attack on all those institutions, first in the undermining of their credibility and afterward in procuring their elimination, neutralization or submission.

The great question is whether it is possible to carry out all those changes without there being any consequence. To date the response to this seems clear-cut, in that private investment, especially foreign, has grown systematically, in good measure thanks to the existence of The Mexico—United States—Canada Agreement, USMCA, and to the U.S.–China conflict. Aside from some manifestations and complaints, Mexico has followed its course of deterioration but without confronting any serious crises. There is no better evidence of the latter than the Mexican peso–U.S. dollar exchange rate, which not only has not undergone a severe alteration, but instead has tended to strengthen.

In this context, it is natural to think that it is possible, and even reasonable to extrapolate the present moment to conclude that the 2024 presidential election has already been decided and whomever the President decides to nominate as his candidate will win without any discussion. I have not the least doubt that were the election to be held next Sunday, that would be the outcome. The problem with that scenario is two-fold: first, the election will take place in just over fifteen months and, if history teaches us anything at all, the probability of things staying constant is low. But the greatest problem entailed in that logic, and the reason for thinking that the encounter will be much more complex is the manner of acting of the President himself, who with his fight against the National Electoral Institute (INE) demonstrates that he entertains no certainty that the result will be in his favor, which is what moves him to do away with the INE to ensure  control of the process, all with Stalin’s logic: what’s important is who counts the votes.

My impression is that it is possible to carry out many modifications without any apparent consequence, until all of a sudden one of those results is excessive and everything changes. There is an old saying in Mexican politics: “nothing changes here, until it changes.”

Various commentators have been arguing that the change proposed for the electoral institutions can be the tipping point, perhaps a breaking point, which reshapes the entire political scenario. This would constitute the equivalent of doing away with the underpinnings of the status quo. One might think that one pin more or one pin less does not change the panorama, until one of those pins causes a dramatic reaction that no one foretold specifically, but that ended changing everything: the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Of greater import, once the process is unleashed, nothing can stop it. If not, ask ex-President López Portillo.

In the seventies, everything seemed to be going along nicely, until the interest rates shot up and, with that, the Mexican economy collapsed like a house of cards, in fact bankrupting the Mexican economy and giving rise to a decade of recession and (nearly) hyperinflation. I do not suggest that this would be the probable chain of events in this moment, but it is paramount not to lose perspective. Beyond what people could say or even think, what humans value is certainty, like that provided by the INE voter identification card. The moment at which the population -and its diverse subsegments- begins to perceive that things could change people’s attitudes might be instantaneously revamped.

Mexico is found at an exceedingly delicate moment in which day upon day the few factors of certainty that persist are put at risk. No one knows what can set off a change, but the attempt to test the limits is systematic, incessant and irredeemable.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The great success of President   López Obrador is not to be found in an exceptional strategy or ability, but instead in his having discovered an amorphous and untapped electorate that did not feel represented. His mastery for communicating with that part of the population has equipped him with enormous impetus, much of that the product of the nonexistence of discernible alternatives in current national political formations. That is, his success has been twice driven by the incapacity of the political parties to understand the new realities that characterize the citizenry and to adapt to them. Therein lies the success of AMLO, but also the opportunities for the opposition.

The argument is very simple: the country has undergone immense changes over the last decades; the electorate was transformed; the context -both internal and external- is another; the citizenry comprises a new reality, previously practically nonexistent; and the transmission of information, ideas and dogmas is now instantaneous. Each of these elements has built a new political reality that does not dovetail with the traditional paradigms lying at the heart of the national political entities and institutions. In a word, the country changed, but the politicians, especially the political parties, live on in a remote past that has nothing to do with the Mexico of today.

That maladjustment explains the incoherence among the stances of the political parties -all of them, including Morena- and the national electorate. Suffice to observe the atrophied, clumsy, corrupt and petty leaderships that typify these entelechies dubbed “political parties”. The fluidity of the electorate finds no dwelling place in the mind or game plan of the parties, thence their incapacity to motivate or attract voters.

In this context an astute politician arrived on the scene who identified an electorate that does not respond to traditional party brands, which is resentful of the prevailing corruption and that is (or was, at least in 2018) made up of an extraordinarily diverse fringe of persons regarding their origin or social and economic position. The connection of AMLO with his electorate takes place at his party’s perimeter. López Obrador, like Trump (in another context), chanced upon a new electorate and capitalizes on it each morning, apparently even defying the laws of gravity.

The political parties enjoy a privileged situation because the law elevates them and protects them. The law grants certainty of permanence, funds and stability on the three largest parties, and generates opportunities of association for the small ones for them to partake from those same benefits. That is, the entire politico-legal structure that kindles the political parties is designed to preserve the status quo of decades ago and all the incentives that arise therein rekindle the maladjustment distinguishing Mexican politics.

If anyone doubts the latter,  they have only to look at the way that the reelection of legislators or municipal presidents operates: rather than this functioning to draw near the deputies, senators and municipal presidents and oblige them to respond to the demands of the citizenry, that is, for them to represent the latter, reelection fortifies and secures the power of the party leaderships because it is the latter that decide who can register to run for reelection. The inexorable conclusion is that the authors of the electoral statutes -those that have afforded Mexicans certainty, stability and less political violence- have also made it possible for the emergence of a political phenomenon such as López Obrador. Instead of that legal framework favoring a natural evolution of the political system, its effect was that of paralyzing said system, anchoring it to a distant past, heightening citizen anger and indignation. Paradoxically it now ends up that AMLO wants to alter the very scheme that fortifies him, but that’s another story for another day.

The problem of the political parties are their misdeeds, many of these historic, especially those of the PRI, because they form, like corruption, an inherent component of their former times and nature. The passing of the PAN through power was no more commendable, because in addition to its being sparsely effective as a governing party, it ended up falling into many of the same corrupt practices. Morena will soon come across to face the same dilemmas because, beyond the person of the president, it is not distinct from the others.  But the worse part is not the existence of those transgressions, but the inability of the opposition political parties to grasp the causes of the citizens’ ire or of AMLO’s success.

The strengths that the law confers on party leaderships end up being colossal weaknesses, as recent PRI conduct illustrates. The question is when will the parties and their leaders break free from that partisan dead weight, both the historic as well as the contemporary. That liberation must be the product not only of an elemental congruence with today’s Mexico or of a false morality, but one deriving from cold political calculation: because being associated with corruption, the narco, predatory unionism or a conception of the world long ago surpassed entails ever growing diminishing returns.

In as much as the 2024 mother of all electoral battles is closing in, the question is not about AMLO, who will pass on in history in one way or another. The question is whether the opposition will be capable of reforming itself to be able to ally itself, because without that it will continue to dig the hole of its own extinction. And with it, that of the country.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The engine of political liberalization -and of the incipient Mexican democracy- was the succession of electoral reforms that, from the year 1964, but above all in 1996, was experienced by Mexican society. Each of those reforms responded to its own circumstances, but that of 1996 was crucial because it was the product of an open negotiation between the diverse forces and political parties, smoothing the way for transparent, fair and duly protected competition, in an institutional sense, for accession to power. In true  Mexican style, Mexicans took a great step forward and subsequently did not follow through.

During these decades the country underwent two contradictory processes. On the one hand, the economy was modernized and transformed, creating an exceptional platform of growth in some regions and sectors, but also a series of enormous backlogs and obstacles for the rest. On the other hand, in unison with competitive elections, politics withstood increasing degradation due to the on-going violence and insecurity, the impunity with which public and private actors conducted themselves without the slightest compunction, and with the corruption that corrodes all things. The bases were established for political competition and economic functionality, but the institutional structures were not built that would bestow permanence and viability on those two great achievements.

Democracy flourishes when society assumes itself as citizenry, capable of rendering their rights valid, which is only possible through solid, vital and functional institutions. Although various institutions were developed, two indicators reveal that the result is not commendable. On the one hand, the violence and insecurity demonstrate that an adequate security and justice system was not engendered to match the prevailing state of affairs. On the other hand, nothing better illustrates the deficit that the facility with which the current government has destroyed that entire scaffolding with which it was hoped that Mexico would accede to modernity and civilization.

Democracy is more than elections: it has to do with citizen rights, justice, freedom of expression, checks and balances for the exercise of power and the limits of potential abuse on the part of the rulers. In fact, in the words of the great XX century philosopher, Karl Popper, democracy consists of the certainty that those that rule will not abuse the citizens. And Popper speaks of countries with functional governments, of which Mexico is plainly not a good example.

In Mexico democracy stayed stuck in place on the first rung of the ladder. In 1997, in the first federal election after the 1996 reform, the opposition won the majority of the Congressional seats, followed by the victory of Fox in 2000. Two outstanding successes in a country that had been characterized by political stability but not due to citizen participation. However, nothing, except access to power, changed in Mexican politics. Truth be told, politics continued to deteriorate in parallel with the rise of organized crime, the absence of justice and the increasingly visible corruption. Now with AMLO attacking the National Electoral Institute (INE) it is not even evident that access to power through competition is guaranteed.

AMLO was a response of society to an unsustainable reality, but his strategy of returning to the centralization of power is a poor solution and in the last instance, futile, with regard to a fundamental problem: how is the country going to be governed. This is the main challenge with an eye cocked on the future but that is not the matter on which the public discussion is concentrated. The unique evident issue is that the control of a sole individual is not only unviable, but extraordinarily pernicious and dangerous.

The political forms and discourse changed, but not the reality.   Counterweights were claimed, but the presidents -each with the greatness or smalless of their vision and capacity- persisted in exercising power at will. They carried out ambitious reforms during the previous administration, but neglected to legitimize these through public dialogue, just as AMLO had done in his topics of priority. The point is that the country is not being governed and the climate of uncertainty is increasing and more and more risky, placing in doubt the economy’s viability and the functionality of the politics. Months away from the beginning of the formal process of presidential succession, it is less and less clear that the elections of 2024 will be clean and recognized.

The electoral processes barely comprise the first step in the edification of a successful and functional democracy, economically as well as politically. Mexico stayed stuck on that first step, and has now remained in limbo because of the contradictory electoral reforms being imposed in steam-roller fashion, not unlike those of the distant and nearby past. The grand question, with sights trained on the future, is how is Mexico going to emerge from the hole in which the government will have left the country.

The country is at present very divided, the government modifies practices that had been key for political stability and incurs ever more elevated risks in the political ambit, especially that of the succession. For those who blindly support the President, these are not relevant themes, but for those of us brooding about the building of a successful country, one less violent and with greater equity, there is no matter more transcendental.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Perhaps the best paradox of Mexican politics today lies in that the main promoter of the opposition is the president himself, while it applies itself to wasting every opportunity it encounters. Lost in thought and in their own labyrinths, the political parties and their pathetic leaderships appear to lack the capacity to position themselves in the moment -and in the opportunity- in which the government as well as the citizenry have placed them.

The leaders of the opposition seem to ratify the saying of the great actor John Quinton: “Politicians are people who, when they see the light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.” Those of the opposition are even more confused because they believe that they have nothing to lose, even when the president eagerly devotes himself each morning to setting out a silver platter in front of them. Much more transcendental is the pressure from the citizenry, a factor previously inexistent in Mexican politics, but today a potential opportunity.

Two months ago, this very citizenry went out to march in protest. Beyond the numbers of each march, the political fact is undeniable, so much so that the president dedicated entire weeks, before and after, to the matter of the citizenry coming out to march in defense of the National Electoral Institute (INE). There is nothing like an emboldened citizenry that finds a concrete and tangible cause to defend; much more so when the perceptions of the marchers clash in so frontal a manner with the everyday political rhetoric.

But the fact of the citizens’ march does not entail, in itself, political transcendence. Marches are citizen manifestations that make the participants bolder and pressure the authorities, but they do not translate, automatically, into votes, and even less so in such an inflexible electoral system that renders difficult (in fact, it entails a disincentive for) the birth or death of political parties. In a word, for a march to transcend it is indispensable for the existing political parties to activate and mobilize the expressions, fears, protests and aspirations of the citizenry and the civil society in general to convert them into political action and, at its time, into votes.

The march brought together a segment of the citizenry, made available a stronghold for the civil society and breached a big hole (especially in Mexico City) to the governing party and to the appearance of absolute control to which the president pretends, but it does not constitute a factor likely to gain political agency in the light of the 2024 elections. Even in the specific objective of the march -that is the INE- the citizenry was barely able of staving off Morena’s getting its way  in that and in other legislative affairs.

For that it is the political parties that hold all the cards and therein lies the great incognito of the electoral politics of the moment, and that is where the opposition lies. The opposition today, with the possible exception of the Movimiento Ciudadano, lingers as no more than a memory. Of course, in all political formations there are exceptional individuals with a surplus of abilities, but the parties themselves are virtual entelechies dominated by lugubrious leaderships without any ambition other than their own, already small, when not vile.

Such an inflexible electoral system allows for the perpetuation of the parties as well as of the leaderships, which incorporates an enormous degree of uncertainty concerning the capacity of those parties and leaderships to become vehicles susceptible of channeling the preferences of the citizenry.  In order to entertain the possibility of winning an election in 2024, the opposition will have to find not only an ideal candidate for that purpose, but also articulate a program that attracts the citizenry, stealing the control of the narrative from the president and creating conditions for all of the opposition parties to unite among themselves into the transformer force that the country requires, and that the citizenry demands.

The challenge is evidently huge, but there are three elements that will foreseeably assist in the process. The first is the president, whose bullheadedness will continue to alienate the citizenry, thus strengthening the   opportunities of the opposition, as it did with the march. The second is that Mexico is entering the period of succession, the most complex political process in any nation, in which the vulnerabilities, contradictions and insufficiencies of the government and of the political system in general exacerbate.  Along the way, all these factors are going to heighten and multiply precisely because of the nature of the president, of his party and of the level of conflict that both have imposed on the country. Finally, the third element will be the civil society’s entities, which today comprise the true source of organization, proposals, criticisms and studies that, de facto, have been putting in evidence the abuse of power.

What are lacking are opposition parties, at present lost in space and without exerting much influence but with all the elements to become the overwhelming might that the moment requires. On his deathbed, Voltaire said that “this is not the time to make new enemies.” The parties that today wander aimlessly along like the walking dead have in their hands the possibility, and the responsibility, to do the contrary.

That is, the opportunity is there.  The question is whether the opposition, pathetic today, could make it theirs.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The discussion in which the country should be engaging is what comes after this government. Some propose that by returning to before 2018 everything would be resolved; others propose a clean slate to start over.  Wherever one finds oneself between these extremes, in 2024 the country will find itself under the utmost of precarious conditions.

The first certainty is that there is nowhere to which to return. The majority of the citizenry voted to disapprove of what existed after giving an additional opportunity to the PAN (2006) and one more to the PRI (2012). AMLO won in 2018 because people were fed up with promises without satisfactory results for all. No one can doubt that during the past decades exceedingly favorable things were achieved that seemed impossible only some years before, but it would be equally absurd to fail to recognize that the results were not always benign and that in the interim, too many resentments had accumulated. To deny these basic circumstances would be to trigger yet another absurdity.

A second certainty is that the future does not pertain to anyone in particular, starting with the president and his acolytes. The future cannot be generated by a small group, however powerful, whatever its ideology or social position. Thus, the future belongs to the citizenry in its entirety. It is individual actions that, on their amalgamation, produce the society being built. The way is made by walking.

Finally, a third certainty is that the stability, functionality, growth and development of a society and its economy require stout moorings that create circumstances that satisfy at least two criteria: one is to protect the rights of the citizenry and its interests. That is, that engender institutional mechanisms of access and participation in decision making and that establish procedures that solve disputes through methods that are known and available to all, unlike the present methods that negate justice to the majority. In a word, all of society should feel itself to be an integral component of the social fabric, and not, as demonstrated by AMLO, a society divided, a good part of which is alienated from the advances and successes that have indeed been achieved by parts of the society and the economy. The other criterion is that the distribution mechanisms of wealth should be transparent, technically developed and subject to audit, so that the Treasury is not utilized for personal promotions nor for diverting public resources for the enrichment of those found (temporarily) in power.

Mexico’s problem is not “technical”, that is, it does not rest on having the best legislation for the this or the most adequate strategy for that. All those factors are obviously necessary, but also obtainable. The problems of Mexico do not arise from the lack of laws or lawyers and legislators capable of redacting and improving them; the same can be said for competent professionals to administer the public treasure, justice or the strategies of public policy that would be susceptible to redressing the problems or edifying new realities.

Throughout the last century, Mexicans have witnessed the presence of exceptionally endowed functionaries and visionaries in parallel with others who were embarrassing, incompetent and destructive.  The problem is not one of capacities, but instead of the absence of limits. Therefore, the challenge lies in the citizenry obligating the politicians to act within the earmarked institutional frameworks. And that is a political challenge, one of power.

Going back or changing is not the choice facing the Mexican citizenry. Its true dilemma lies in breaking the bonds imposed by a political structure that confers excessive power on a single individual, to the degree that his mere gift of gab can dismantle institutions, cancel highly transcendent (and costly) projects, or initiate economic as well as criminal processes against whomever they please. Four years into these misdoings have made it evident that the institutional constructions of the past decades were pure and simply a facade not (necessarily) because their authors thought so, but rather because they never understood, and thus did not calculate, the reality of the power that the presidency consolidates. Or, in benevolent terms, because they assumed that no one would come to wreak havoc on it all as their raison d’etre.

The issue is not new: it arose from the constitutional reforms undertaken in 1933, whose objective was to strengthen the presidency by eliminating the Supreme Court and the legislature as effective counterweights. Along the way, the “system,” which had conferred so many years of stability to the country, consequently turned into an impediment to the natural development of the citizenry, with all that implies: an educational system dedicated to control instead of to development; an economy with excessively dominant entities, beginning with those of the State; and a judiciary subordinate to the executive. In sum, a too powerful presidency with great capacity of positive action, but with a similar propensity toward destruction.

The coming challenge will be much greater than any that any Mexican currently alive has known.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

How times change! At this stage of the previous presidential term, the political discussion was concentrated on the weakness of the presidency after the end of the PRI era, when the debate was concerned about the excessive power of the presidency. Twenty years later those worries were focused on the feeble presidency. Without there having been a radical change in the legal or constitutional structures, today the debate is once again about the concentration of power. Now that the crucial year of candidate nomination begins, it is critical to elucidate what has changed.

The evidence is robust: change has not been of a structural nature but is instead one of individuals. Former president Peña Nieto practically retired from politics, leaving the (paltry) political task to be executed by his ministers or operators. The result was a government quite ineffective in governing, even while it affected weighty legislative changes.

On his part, López Obrador concentrates nearly exclusively on the political duty-at-hand, dedicating himself to narrating the events of the day in such a compelling manner that he dominates the domestic panorama. He complements that central assignment with frequent visits to the most remote spots in the country, where his entire activity and focus is concentrated on aggrandizing his popularity and securing power alliances. Nothing to do with governing.

The two governments evidence contrasts and similarities that are worthwhile highlighting. They are similar in their devotion to the past, but acutely different in their priorities. The contradiction at the interior of the Peña government was always flagrant: the old presidency cannot be recreated while headway it is advancing reforms whose essence is decentralization, as was the case of communications and energy. In the end the reformer part won, but the political work which so transcendental changes -in ideological and historical terms- demanded, failed. The easiness with which López Obrador has been veered the helm in the opposite direction is clear testimony to that.

The contradiction within the AMLO government is no less great, but it is of a different nature. The president has been markedly successful in dismantling many of the entities, institutions and mechanisms that characterized his predecessors, but the economic and social performance has been, to say the least, (nearly) catastrophic. For a government whose narrative exalts key issues such as poverty, corruption and inequality, his administration is wending its way as fast as it can toward substantially increasing all those indicators. The question today, at the beginning of the government’s penultimate year, is what will be the consequences of this way of managing (or lack thereof) and how distinct will the end be from that of his predecessor.

What is apparent is that the great difference between both administrations has been the person of the president: one reserved and the other hyperactive; the former committed to working in private, the latter foisting himself upon all the forums and excluding, disqualifying or intimidating everything he perceives as an obstacle to the consecration of his (al)mighty presidency.

Last October, President Xi Jinping achieved a milestone that might look similar in terms of consolidating himself as the most powerful leader in China in at least half a century; but the differences are notable: in China, the structure that the president developed, within a consolidated legal and political edifice, is imposing, which renders him so much more powerful and, potentially impregnable.

The case of Mexico is very distinct. The same context   produced a president in Peña Nieto who ended up being weak and the other, López-Obrador, whom, to date, has been extraordinarily strong. Given that the difference is one of individuals in the presidency and of their capacity to act, the question is, how will the next president -male or female- be. What seems obvious is that neither of the two models is repeatable: the first because no one would wish to consciously imitate it, and the second because the conditions that made it possible are unique, exclusive to the person and his history. Much more importantly, how many years can a country endure the systematic deterioration of its economy, security, public services and in the relations between the government and society? And without being governed?

President López Obrador has concentrated exclusively on his popularity and power. To attain this, he has procured the preservation of poverty, containing (or impeding) the growth of the economy, and has permitted insecurity to flourish. He might well had been following the script that, from the XVI century, was penned by Étienne de la Boétie: “It has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration.”

Whosoever succeeds President López Obrador will not count on the elements that would allow them to recreate their predecessor. Rather, the new president would have to correct the course to confront the fiscal, political, economic and social problems, not to mention the international ones, which will comprise the legacy of the current administration.

The candidates who are decided on this year should be clear in this regard because the citizenry, currently overwhelmed by a fallacious narrative, but one that is highly effective, will clamor for accountability at the first light.

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof