Yearly Archives: 2012

Polls were a leading figure in the past presidential election. However, instead of being an instrument of measurement and a source of trust in the results, they acquired an unusual and highly destructive transcendence. They ended up being means that manipulated the election and impeded conferring certainty on it. In the light of this, it […]

Alice in Wonderland, the novel by Lewis Carroll, was written by a professor who also wrote a book on symbolic logic. So it is not surprising that Alice encountered not only strange behavior in Wonderland, but also strange and illogical reasoning –of a sort too often found in the real world and of which a […]

I seemed to be seeing the past and the future galloping head to head without end. A recent visit to India made me realize the so very dramatic contrast between two social and political realities that lie behind contrasting economic results. India and Mexico show that it is not only economic policy that determines growth: […]

The budget, said Schumpeter, is “the state stripped of ideological pretensions”. True to this principle, in Mexico public budgets serve private interests. Only a new federal-fiscal pact would correct this. Today’s budgets are not like those in the past. Until the mid-nineties, the federal government decided how to collect and how to distribute and spend […]

“The Prince”, wrote Machiavelli, “ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable”. President Calderón is a decent, responsible, and serious person […]

“Be careful what you wish for”, goes the old adage, “because it may come true”. The electorate as well as the new president-elect should meditate in these terms. The victory of Enrique Peña-Nieto was impeccable and indisputable. Viewed in retrospect, this electoral contest was a new watershed, similar to 2000. Now comes the good part. […]

For Bismarck, the great German chancellor, politicians“never lie as much as before elections, during a war, and after a hunt”. The citizen’s task on an election day such as today is to elucidate among the poses, proposals, images and… lies. Anything goes in an election and the one that ends today was no exception. Now […]

“Sometimes in error, but never in doubt” is a characterization that could be easily applied to the PRI. The “Party of the Revolution” stabilized the country after the revolutionary era but never achieved overcoming its original sin, a system devoted fully and exclusively to the interests of the so-called revolutionary family:to control power and to […]

The moment has arrived for deciding whom to vote for. This is the moment when each citizen must translate his or her experience and responsibility into a vote. Each of the contenders has assets and liabilities and each of these entails a distinct vision of the future. I shall make use of this space to […]

In an episode of the T.V. series West Wing, the contender for the upcoming election is asked why he wanted to be president. The candidate mumblesand his response is anything but convincing. His advisers engage in a chuckle until it suddenly dawns on them that their chief, the president, doesn’t have any idea of why […]