In his film Annie Hall, Woody Allen attempts to explain irrational relationships with a joke: “This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘My brother’s crazy, he thinks he’s a chicken.’ The doctor says, ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?’ and the guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.'” This type of reasoning serves to illustrate the absurdities of our political structure at present. Regrettably, this is not merely the theme of an anecdote: the costs are disproportionate.
The legislative process is a good example of the peculiarities of our system and the absurdities that characterize it. Legislative bills can arise from the executive or from the legislative chambers themselves, but the overwhelming majority continues to originate at the presidential house. What has indeed changed with respect to the old PRI system is that now, legislators modify the bills substantially, discard them frequently and, on occasion, respond to them with one of their own. One day, a certain legislator commented to me that the true political control of the country resided in the capacity of the president to reform the Constitution. Up to a few years ago, that was not more than a minor accomplishment.
Not only has the power of the legislature changed. Currently, the president sends bills in wholesale fashion, many of them contradictory among themselves. While it is easy to imagine a president of times past waiting by the telephone for his informants to confirm that his desires had been satisfied, today the president dispatches initiatives and devotes himself to the remainder of his functions, because if he did not, he wouldn’t do anything else. In the same manner, legislators process bills on themes about which they know nothing, allow themselves to be carried away by special interests (in the practical or ideological sense, or both), and often assume extreme positions because there is nothing that limits or controls them. Additionally, the nature of our legislative process begets instantaneous experts, legislators inured to the process, and unmentionable pacts, all this with no consequences for those involved: no one cares whether the effect of the law passed is good or bad, because the only sure thing in this system is that those who acted are never responsible, nor will they continue to hold their post long enough for them to even blush.
The same occurs from the other side of the field: businesspeople, unions, governors, secretaries and undersecretaries, intellectuals, and NGOs dedicate themselves to pressuring, influencing, and intimidating functionaries and legislators into modifying a determined bill, impeding its advance, or forcing the process to serve its particular beliefs or interests. The legislative process has become a great political and media lobby that operates as a free-for-all, one in which the sole referent is the ability to exert pressure. It is yet another perspective, perhaps less conventional, of the “de facto powers”, in which what matters is to get what one wants, whatever the cost. No sanction is imposed for extremism.
Of course, a democratic process entails the active participation of all members of society, and this should be welcome. However, what we are witnessing is a system that lacks the most minimal component of accountability, which is always opaque, and whose participants take pleasure in a terrifying impunity. Perhaps most revealing for me has been observing the mirror effect that this creates: those with decision-making responsibility (government officials and legislators, but currently, especially legislators) lend themselves to pressure and blackmail because they themselves possess no other referent than that of their own personal, group or party interests. Those on the other side, who represent a certain interest, have no reason at all to moderate their language, vacillate in their demands, or delimit their instruments of pressure: anything goes. There are de facto powers on both sides of the table.
With it all, there is apparent nostalgia for the old system, a factor revealing in itself of the type of impact that the alternation of parties in government has had. Many yearn for the old times when decisions were made (yes, in effect, decisions were made, and they were those that the commander-in-chief wanted and negotiated, but, judging by results in terms of development, good decisions were the exception). But what is really impressive is how instead of democratizing, power simply fragmented: at present, we have figures in the government, in the legislature, and in society who act as the president did formerly: as unaccountable powers that can get away with anything. They all feel themselves to be the masters, and all want arbitrary power that renders no accounts. Further than the personal benefits that can be derived from this, the decisions of these individuals affect lives and property, but have no negative consequences for the actors themselves. Democracy without responsibility.
Alternation of parties in the presidency has had an enormous impact in reducing the concentration of power, but it has not changed the forms of exercising it nor has it democratized. The benefit of decentralization of power is evident to me, and this gain is laudable in itself. However, the type of transition on which the country embarked virtually guaranteed disorderly and careless political development processes. The old counterweight mechanisms of before (vividly perceivable in the relationship between the then-presidency and the union bosses, where there was capacity, although often extra-institutional, to curb the worst excesses) were dismantled, and we ended up with a country dominated by de facto powers without the most miniscule counterweight. The good news is that the disputes materialize within the legislative context, symbol that institutional processes are respected; the bad news is that the laws are always flexible and adaptable, thus not affecting anyone with the power and ability to act. We win in terms of institutionality being accepted, but we lose because it is not worth much.
Of course, the great absentee in this film is the citizen. No one, beginning with their supposed representatives, work for those who are, at least in theory, the raison d’être of the country. In this context, it is not difficult to understand why things are the way they are, why other countries achieve high growth rates, why other nations enjoy an environment of safety and justice, and we do not. These forsaken citizens remind me of the Cantinflas film in which, without knowing how, Cantinflas ends up sitting at a table of powerful people who are all unknown to him: suddenly he asks himself, “And what am I doing here?”