Regime Change? | Luis Rubio

Luis Rubio

Mexico is not experiencing a change of regime, but rather the reaffirmation of the old one. Consciously or not, the electorate accepted Lopez Obrador’s call and voted massively in favor of the reconstruction of the old regime. It was an epic exercise in mobilization, manipulation, leadership and persuasion that had nothing to do with the real world, but with the reality, at least momentarily, of the daily life of the population. Now the President elect will have to deal with the consequences.

The vote was real: the population voted massively in favor of the party in government and, especially, in favor of the President, who continues to enjoy high popularity ratings and intends to determine the future of the country for the following decades. His electoral strategy, perhaps the only thing that attracted his attention outside of the three infrastructure projects (whose future is uncertain), was successful and his decision to achieve a qualified majority, at any cost, bore fruit. All of which only served to show that the Mexico of the 21st century is increasingly looking very much like the Mexico of the 20th century politically. In other words, as an old Mexican saying would have it, the same cat, but rolled upside down…

At the beginning of President López Obrador’s government, his acolytes insisted that Mexico was experiencing a change of regime. They affirmed this based on the notion that “finally” they were being recognized for a victory that, in their interpretation, they had long deserved. Mexico was reaching democracy, they said, because they had won. Everything else was mere pantomime.

However, as time went on, the President undermined one after another of the institutions, practices and traditions that had characterized the hoped-for democratic transition that took place from the nineties onwards. The supposed new regime increasingly began to look more like the old post-revolutionary system than a consolidated democracy.

Looking back, it is clear that the democratic transition that formally began with the series of electoral reforms beginning in the 1970s, but especially that of 1996, liberalized Mexican politics and, by creating a level playing field, facilitated the defeat of the PRI in 2000, opening a new era for the country. In all the series of negotiations and movements that took place, various institutions were created aimed at formalizing national politics, establishing counterweights to presidential power and, in a word, granting citizens predictability regarding government decisions.

The record of this project is mixed. Some of these institutions turned out to be extraordinarily solid and recognized, others ended up being less effective or more prone to being captured by powerful interests. More than anything, all this assembly was not enough to transform the economy, raise growth rates and consolidate a democratic regime that effectively broke with the old post-revolutionary model. This context allowed President López Obrador to launch an attack to destroy institutions and strengthen himself as President, the most important change that the country has experienced in recent years: from a strong presidency Mexico ended up with a weak State and a hyper-powerful President. In this way, the attempt at a regime change towards democracy that was attempted to be built in the past three decades ends up returning to the most primitive model of Mexican presidentialism in the post-revolutionary era. As in the story by Hans Christian Andersen, López Obrador made it clear that the king was naked, and that the entire institutional built-up was so weak that it could not withstand the presidential onslaught. If it could not resist, it did not serve as a counterweight, thereby demonstrating that the old regime was still, and still is, as alive as ever.

But worse. The new-old regime that the President intends to bequeath to his successor is a weak structure with a powerful President, more reminiscent of the era of post-revolutionary caudillismo than of the most successful years of the PRI in the fifties and sixties. Worse, in that era both Mexico and the world were characterized by essentially inward-looking political and economic systems, where a strong presidency was viable. Today, in the 21st century, the era of digital interconnections, the ubiquity of information and the decentralization of decisions, the claim to control everything is simply absurd. Given the weakness of the government, it does not matter how powerful the leader is: it may violate the law and the rights of people, but it alone cannot make it possible to achieve prosperity.

And that is the challenge that President Sheinbaum will have to deal with: how to govern a country in which there is a person who left the ground mined, a party prone to fragmentation but enormously powerful and a citizenry grateful for the past but extraordinarily demanding of the satisfiers that were promised to them. All this without counterweights, which, if they existed, would limit the President, but also the pressure groups of Morena that will undoubtedly try to extort her.

There is no doubt that the country is experiencing the end of an era, above all of a dream, that of democracy, but not a change of regime. The old regime is still as alive as ever, but now with more capacity to abuse than to build and resolve.