Luis Rubio
Mexico’s main economic problem, says the PAN President, is its political system because it has impeded it from making the decisions and undertaking the reforms that the country requires. No one who has observed the way Mexico functions would object this appreciation that, not by chance, coincides with the disposition of the three political parties to come together in what is known as the Pact for Mexico, brokered by President Peña upon his inauguration in 2012. The Pact permitted many necessary changes, but the country’s real problem lies elsewhere, in the reality of the power.
The great question is whether the problem resides in that the existing procedures do not serve for the processing of decisions or conflicts (thus the Pact), or in that the existing institutions do not work because they are extremely weak and vulnerable. This dilemma is at the heart of the country’s apparent incapacity to construct long-term projects, to attract investments in projects and sectors entailing trans-six-year presidential terms, and that confer certainty on the population with regard to the functioning of the system of government, all of which are critical in view of the potential energy liberalization. The problem is one of recent decades because in the remote past the country was very distinct: closed, small population, little information and a self-contained economic structure.
Not by chance is Mexico confronting challenges in ambits as distinct as security, the composition of the regulatory organs (competition, telecommunications, transparency, energy, elections) and the secondary legislation regarding the constitutional reforms undertaken this past year. It’s not that things have gotten worse but that they haven’t been attended to in a consistent manner. Each of the reforms undertaken has its own merit and purpose, but each can only prosper to the extent that the reforms satisfy two generic criteria: one, that they guarantee trans-presidency continuity; and two, that they truly “attack” the heart of the problems in the respective sector or activity. Neither of the two is evident.
The problem of continuity derives from the concentration of power: the concentration is so thoroughgoing and the capacity of the governor so great for modifying the correlation of forces that the natural inclination of every incoming president leads to ignoring what exists and to constructing something totally new. Some governments decentralize, other centralize; one administration proposes a determined police model, the next one reinvents it. The point is that there is no continuity, a factor at the core of the country’s institutional weakness.
In plain terms, the degree to which a government can modify the content of the institutions at will is the extent to which the institution is incapable of fulfilling its mandate. Perhaps there is no better test of the latter than the fact that the members of the commissions charged with key processes such as elections, transparency and regulation (competition and telecommunications) are changed periodically but not when it’s their turn: these changes have the effect of sapping the institutions because they evidence the nonexistence of real autonomy. Insofar as neither the society nor the members of these entities are certain of their permanence, they will act with incredulity or with rejection, corruption or accommodation.
Over the past few months an enormous number of entities were created with supposed constitutional autonomy, a term that still remains to be accurately defined. I understand that the objective of those advancing this notion responded to the urgency of strengthening the State’s capacity, distinct from that of the government, in such important and sensitive areas. The question is what will be sufficiently distinct on this occasion to justify the certainty to which the reformers aspire. In other words, how are they going to guarantee the permanence of the trustees (or their equivalent) and ensure the independence of their decisions? It’s not a simple issue to resolve given the propensity to modify the institutions and their boards, including the lack of respect toward these, both the product of the reality of power.
At the heart of this problem lies the plain and simple fact that things happen, in this case the capacity to modify alleged autonomous institutions, because those bringing about the modification have the power to do so. No two ways about it.
In general terms, in countries in which “the leap was taken” toward institutionalization comprised a product of the vision of one person (or of a small cadre) who recognized the cost of the absence of solid institutions, prone to granting permanence and reliability to their own projects. That is, the move towards institutionalization was due as much to convenience as to conviction. Case after case, from the Ottoman Empire to the end of the last Chinese dynasty and passing through numberless examples (such as Korea, Taiwan and Chile) and, in recent decades, some Eastern European nations, institutionalization has been a product of the vision and willingness of the governor to utilize his vast power in order to delimit it. Institutionalization does not occur because it is decreed in the Constitution but rather when the governor himself accepts that the future requires putting a rein on his own power in order to submit it to processes not depending on a sole individual. When that happens, the country segues to another level of civilization.
Mexico’s great challenge does not lie in the definition of procedures (although that’s indispensable), but in the decision of the government to constrain its own power for the sake of endowing its project with permanence and, as a result, laying the foundations for a sustained development. That’s impossible with the status quo.
@lrubiof