Luis Rubio
The end of one more electoral cycle will not be like all others in the past. With this election the country is fast approaching a moment of unravelling not due to the result itself, but instead because the process, the antecedents and the imponderables evidenced along the way stripped the political system of its guise and revealed the fragility that the country is currently experiencing due to the risks of and taken by a sole individual and, above all else, the impossibility of further pursuing that course. Those who are newly elected do not recognize that fragileness, but they will soon experience it.
AMLO is unrepeatable because of his characteristics and his circumstance, as well as because of Mexico’s present moment. As soon as the next government assumes office the shortfalls will come to light: the absence of structures, institutions and rules of the game, as well as the counterpart of these: the tendency toward violence or to other means, legal or illegal, for advancing particular interests and objectives. In a word, the country is about to enter a new political era, one only negligibly promising.
This is not the first time that the country finds itself faced with a challenge of this nature, but the solutions employed in the past are no longer possible. Now, at the twilight of the López Obrador administration, the country must begin to deal with the consequences of the fragility of the institutional structures erected in recent decades, as well as the intentional destruction engaged in by the outgoing government.
Throughout the 20th century, the formal structure of the Mexican political system did not correspond to the reality of the power characterizing: the judicial and legislative branches existed, but the dominance of the executive was legendary. However, that dominance was tempered by the existence of the official party (the PRI), whose institutional structure favored substitution of the elites as well as continuity of power. The famous British maxim “The king is dead, long live the king!” was reproduced (almost) naturally in the Mexican system, permitting the transition of power, but also the existence of limits. That structure of political control and institutionality as it pertained to the party of the PRI came to be degraded little by little (not intentionally, but with poor leaderships), until nearing extinction, presumably to be replaced by a never fully consolidated democratic system.
Therefore, there are important questions that only time will allow us to elucidate, commencing with the power of the departing president. The weakness of Institutions, not a new issue, will now become paramount and a matter of primordial transcendence. The absence of institutions and game rules throws open a veritable cornucopia of possibilities in terms of political degradation and the potential emergence of real or “de facto” powers throughout Mexico’s territory, regional as well as national, criminal and political. A new era of caudillismo is not inconceivable, similar to that present at the end of revolutionary period, but in the digital era, right now in the XXI century.
Beyond the election itself, the politico-structural legacy of the government that is about to end will be much more transcendent and relevant that it might appear, but not necessarily in a benign way. The president taking his leave is exceptional, for his history and his characteristics, while the winner of the election will have to find her own manner of facing the challenges -her own and those of the country- that she must confront. Like no one else in the entire post-revolutionary epoch, she will have to deal with the enormous feat of building at least a minimal of scaffolding in order to be able to govern, given that the previously existing structures -those conceived since President Plutarco Elías Calles and those forged for an age of democracy during the last decades- have given their all, were destroyed or are inoperative when not counterproductive.
The governance of Morena, a structureless entity that only its founder had the capacity to articulate and control, will comprise a major challenge, and that is if the outgoing president does not try to utilize the party to hinder her. The country that aspired to replace the rule of men with the rule of institutions runs the risk of falling apart into fragments under the shadow of caudillos, leaders and organized crime, all in the midst of an economy living and functioning exclusively thanks to a free trade agreement with our complex neighbor to the North.
The era that starts in 2024 entails remarkable opportunities, but also unusually large risks, both internal and external. The country has lived through five years as if residing within a bubble, connected to the rest of the world and feigning to be independent and that it can isolate itself all at no cost. The next president will find out very quickly that the viability of the growth engine of the Mexican economy is at risk and that accountability due to the omissions and acts contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Free Trade Agreement will not be long in coming. It will be at that moment when Mexicans will know what the new president is made of to face those challenges.
AMLO was a little like the PRI, a factor of cohesion and control, but ephemeral for obvious reasons. Now the weaknesses of before and the new ones will become evident, those that the outgoing president left bare and those that he destroyed. Complex times are afoot.
@lrubiof