All of the surveys put it in first place. With over two years remaining until the presidential contest, surveys are, to a great extent, irrelevant, but the symbolism is clear, and what underlies the growth of the PRI in terms of popular preferences even more so. It is obvious that we should be preparing ourselves for the return of the PRI to power. What is not as obvious is that the PRIistas are ready.
A little while ago, I read an interesting story about Einstein that is applicable to the PRI. On one occasion, his students protested about the grades they were given on his examinations. Their protest was that the problems that they were called upon to solve were exactly the same as those in the exam of the year before. Well, yes, responded Einstein. The questions are identical. However, what you have to understand is that the answers have changed. Apocryphal or not, this story serves as a metaphor for the reality with which the return of the PRI could be accompanied.
The answers have changed, but it is not obvious that the PRIistas have understood this. If the PRI returns, it would be nothing more than a caricature of its former self, but its objective is to restore what existed before, beginning with the old-style presidency. The PRI that has escalated in the surveys is not different from the PRI of yesteryear, reformed and transformed: it has not been required to do anything more than wait for the lack of a vocation for government to quash their historical opposition.
What no one can deny is that today’s reality is not the same as that when the PRI was in power, and for this reason, the answers can not be the same. The relevant question at present should be: How should a modern country be constructed under the present circumstances? But the most prominent PRIistas in the contest are not asking themselves this: evidence shows them to be much more concerned with restoring their capacity for the imposition of former times than with developing novel and creative forms of governing with a vision of the future.
The defeat of the PRI in 2000 changed the reality of power because it decentralized it and was swiftly taken captive of by the governors, legislative leaders, and the “de facto powers”, which took on a life of their own at the fringes of, and beyond, the PRI. It will not be possible to restore the way it was before. As Lech Walesa declared shortly before the defeat that his party suffered at the hands of the old Polish Communist Party, it is not the same making fish soup from an aquarium as making an aquarium from fish soup. With all the advantages that it possesses, the PRI that would reappear would be structurally distinct from what it was.
The structure of power changed, but the country has not found an effective way to govern itself. Surely part of this has to do with the personal abilities of those responsible for driving the fate of the country, but a great deal is the result of the real dislocations that have taken place. The country has a poor governmental structure and lacks an effective system of checks and balances that plainly defines the spaces of action of each of the branches of government (thus, so many attempts at political reform directed toward biasing the rules in favor of one or another). An internecine struggle is taking place between those who desire perfection and those who want all of the benefits for themselves, ignoring the experience of multiple countries, which demonstrates that a country triumphs when the best possible arrangement that makes it work –rather than a perfect one- is achieved.
Unfortunately, none of the political forces, or the political potentates, is thinking or operating under this logic. All want the presidency, and many are skewing everything to maintain their coteries of power in case they do not win. No one is developing a long-term view that constructs and sets the bases for a distinct country. The latter is particularly true of the PRI. More worried about returning to power than envisaging what to do afterward, they have sought to strengthen their territorial structure, but also to “correct” the “errors” of democracy, undermining and marking off the autonomous entities (such as the electoral institute and tribunal, and Transparency), and promoting political reforms to match.
The country of today is no longer that of the era of PRI dreams in which all was internal negotiation and in which everyone, including the losers, came out winners. The Mexico of today is a very decentralized country in which the logic of the producers is that of their clients and markets, that of the governors is to feed their fiefdoms (and their wallets), and that of the run-of-the-mill Mexican, to attempt to survive. It is paradoxical that the PRIistas are so content with their conceivable return to the presidency with only 38% of the electoral preferences. What this tells me is that 62% of the population is not equally happy. The era of overwhelming majorities disappeared from the political map some time ago, and it is not probable that these will return, no matter how many stratagems are devised.
Surely there is no guarantee that the PRI will come into power again. Rather than a plan to return to, arrive at, or stay in power, respectively, for each of the large contending parties, what Mexico requires is a strategy of development that recognizes such a complex political reality. The pendulum moves because the population is fed up, but this, in turn, comes and goes.
The current reality is complex for two reasons: one, because the power is, in effect, decentralized, and those who hold it have distinct perceptions of the reality. For PRIistas, Mexico always was democratic, for PANistas democracy arrived in 2000, and for PRDistas, it has yet to arrive. Having a legislative majority does not resolve these differences, nor does it diminish the incentive to boycott and undermine the president. The other source of complexity comprises our possessing a dreadful institutional structure, and there is no reason to think that this would be any other way: cases such as that of Spain –where all the political forces came to an agreement to work together towards the transformation of the country- do not come about frequently. Therefore, instead of envisioning what will not come to pass, it would be much more productive to observe the few successful countries that have achieved a process of consolidation despite the absence of initial consensus.
India and Brazil are two good examples. We have been blinded for years to their changes, due to the attractiveness that the elegant solutions illustrated by Spain and Chile appear to be to us. But the success of these other countries should alert us to what really allowed them to emerge from their plight: leadership, and clarity of course. This powerful combination has come about in both cases: parties and presidents or prime ministers come and go, but both India and Brazil have experienced more than fifteen years with a sole development strategy each. Our failure does not lie in the impossibility of constructing a functional democracy, but rather in ignoring that what is important is that the economy advances to concede space to everything else. Whoever wins.