Mexico Today –  March  24, 2021

Luis Rubio
*In solidarity with José Ramón Cossio

An old joke goes like this: a candidate offers constituents a choice of heaven or hell. The voter first visits heaven, finding everything calm and in order. Then he goes to hell, where he finds manicured gardens, tables full of mouthwatering dishes, delightful music, and an array of leisure activities which its inhabitants reveled in. Back with the candidate he says: “I can’t believe what I’m saying, but I’ll vote for hell.” As soon as he says that, the landscape changes radically. Hell becomes, well, hell: agony, pain, heaviness, suffering. What was once joy now turns out to be torment. “I don’t understand,” says the voter, “this is not what you showed me before.” “Well,” the politician responds, “that was the campaign; now you’ve already cast your vote.” Thus the evolution of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).

 Fifteen years ago, AMLO gave a memorable speech explaining his philosophy of how Mexican presidents should conduct themselves. He said this while criticizing then-president Vicente Fox: “a president cannot be a factional leader. Mexico’s president must act as a statesman, a head of state. He must not behave as head of a party, faction or group. The president must represent all Mexicans. The president must be an element of harmony and national unity. The president cannot use institutions in a factional way or to aid his friends or to destroy his adversaries.”

I wonder what happened to candidate AMLO who promised Nirvana, but delivered hell. In the vein of another old joke, the one that states that being a drunk is not the same as being a bartender, the Mexican president has gone in the opposite direction. When on campaign, AMLO promised respect for Mexican institutions. However once in office, he has thrown himself into dividing, polarizing, attacking, and even questioning Mexico’s relationship with the US, its neighbor to the north and the world’s most powerful country. Instead of evolving towards becoming responsible for owning the establishment -as the bartender in the joke would do- AMLO behaves like the archetype of the drunkard who has no qualms about disturbing the peace and wreaking destruction, as if he had no responsibility whatsoever.

AMLO’s defining phrases speak for themselves. In contrast with the notion he spoused years earlier (that Mexico’s president ¨must act as a statesman, a head of state”) he said at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic that “this crisis fits us like a glove to reinforce the purpose of our transformation.” While promising not to be a factious Mexican leader, AMLO wrote to the Supreme Court saying that “it would be regrettable…if we continue to allow abuse and arrogance, under the excuse of the rule of law.”

“It’s not only his interference with the judiciary,” says Verónica Ortiz. “but (AMLO’s) express intention that the country’s judges decide cases not based on the merits of an injunction but on who is filing them. Is AMLO’s behavior that of a statesman or a factious Mexican leader?

In the heat of political rallies -and his daily morning press conferences- inevitably led to gaffes and discursive excesses. But for AMLO these are not gaffes: his rhetoric is a strategy of confrontation and permanent disqualification. AMLO, who previously criticized his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto as a factious leader now uses the same tactic to divide. Manichaeism as a strategy and ripping into others as a system of government. The question to be asked is whether this method allows AMLO to move forward politicalluy or if he’s merely, at best, running in place.

If the pandemic has us taught anything, it is that the successful performance of a political leader in a health crisis is not at odds with his or her own popularity. Rather, it works in the opposite direction: those leaders who devoted themselves body and soul to fighting the health crisis without conflict of agendas are being highly rated. Those world leaders who ignored or politicized the health crisis are increasingly discredited. The president may boast of his high popularity numbers, but they’re nowhere near those that characterize German Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern or ttaiwanese Prime Minister Tsai Ing-wen.

The German Chancellor enters the last stage of her term in office with both the left and the right recognizing her successfully steering the country through turbulent times since 2005. This period of time has included challenges as complex as the wars in the Middle East, migration from Syria, Trump, and the pandemic. Instead of flinging insults, Merkel got to work and the results speak for themselves. How does AMLO measure up to that paragon?

Mexico is sliding in all indicators. Although it would be handy to blame the Covid-19 pandemic for the economic downturn, the reality is that the Mexican economy was already in a tailspin in 2019. The corruption of past administrations continues as unpunished as ever. Even more: today there are countless examples of corruption in the current AMLO administration that enjoy, and will surely end up in, the same impunity. The relationship with the US, key to the functioning of the Mexican economy, is on tenterhooks and the prospects for the next few years are anything but encouraging.

This is the Supreme Court’s time. Mexicans’ future and freedoms literally depend on the Court’s justices. As well as them demanding that president AMLO behave as befits a head of state.

* Luis Rubio is chairman of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI).  A Spanish version of this Op-Ed appeared first in Reforma’s newspaper print edition
Twitter: @lrubio

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Mexico Today – March 17, 2021

 The current moment in Mexico’s can be summed up in a tweet published last week: “President (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) prepared himself more thoroughly for (confronting the March 8) women’s march than for the (Covid-19) vaccine rollout”. López Obrador’s decision to build a formidable protective wall around Mexico’s National Palace ahead of the Mexican women’s protest revealed the true perceptions within, it revealed the fear that dwells there. For an administration 100-percent focused on winning Mexico’s upcoming midterm election, its reaction to the women’s protests was tantamount to a confession: the president’s popularity is high, but success is not guaranteed.

 President López Obrador stated that Mexican women “have every right to protest, but there are many infiltrated rabble-rousers”. His attempt to justify the construction of a wall around the National Palace was a colossal testament to his fear. Once again, the president proved that he doesn’t understand the gist of Mexico’s feminist movement nor is he willing to learn from it. The women’s protests showed that López Obrador reacts to things that are not under his control like a caged lion. He opted not to make the Mexican feminist movement his own and avoided adding it to the calls for change that characterized his coming to power in 2018. His reaction showed that the president feels threatened. The episode also showed a López Obrador reacting with fear, disdain, and an endless spouting off that exhibits his total disregard for feminist demands. His position offends and alienates even his very own party followers. Dogma first, Mexico’s problems later.

It’s not only that López Obrador shows a lack of empathy towards the feminist grievance in the abstract. Politicians around the world often over pride themselves on leading such effort however falsely. What surprises of the Mexican president is his obstinacy in denying the existence of rape, sexual abuse, and unequal opportunity. Enough already! Rather than seeing it as a legitimate grievance, López Obrador sees feminist protests as a personal affront, leading him to claim it as a provocation.

Is the Mexican president right to be so fearful of the upcoming midterm election?

The polls show two things: on the one hand, a high approval of president López Obrador among Mexicans; on the other, a very low rating for his administration and its policies. Although López Obrador’s high approval is real, it doesn’t differ much from that of most of his predecessors at this stage of the game, but two things stand out. First, on the negative side, the divide between the president’s persona and his administration is unusual. Historically, both generally run parallel, one explaining the other. The results of the 2020 local elections in the states of Coahuila and Hidalgo -where the opposition PRI party won handily- would suggest that López Obrador’s popularity does not translate into electoral support at the local level. This would justify his anxiety.

In another sense, however, the nature of this president’s popularity among Mexicans differs from that of his predecessors. These were commended for what they had achieved so far in their six-year term. López Obrador has forged a personal bond that transcends his administration and that resembles communication based more on faith than on earthly achievement. This connection, the result of an almost religious-tinged belief in López Obrador, makes pollsters’ work very difficult as it incorporates a variable impossible to measure. It’s not surprising that, in this context, the current polls predict an almost absolute victory for the governing MORENA party and its affiliate parties in June.

The pathetic performance of Mexico’s opposition parties in fielding candidates further strengthens the perception that the López Obrador administration doesn’t face a significant challenge in the upcoming midterm election. It would seem to be that the opposition has not only nominated poorly regarded candidates, but that it has alienated those who would have a greater chance of winning a Mexican congressional seat, mayorship or governorship.

In light of all this, it is not an idle question to wonder why so much restlessness on the part of president López Obrador’s team. Do they know something that the rest of us simple mortals do not? Perhaps the explanation lies in something as simple and straightforward as that the veneration that his supporters have for the president does not translate into electoral support. This would be even more true at the local level, where voters’ concerns are far removed from national issues. Moreover, López Obrador is showing the same kind of contempt for Mexican voters that he has shown to Mexican women by assuming that their vote for his MORENA party is guaranteed.

I haven’t the faintest idea who will win or by what margin the Mexican midterm election of June 6. However, I have no doubt that president López Obrador has reason to be concerned. As much as many Mexican people have unshakable faith in him, it is impossible that his administration’s terrible performance regarding the economy, the pandemic, the vaccine rollout, employment, the political environment, and now women, will not impact Mexican citizens’ votes.

More importantly, president López Obrador faces two potentially irrepressible forces. On one hand, weak opposition parties that have lost their bearings and may not satisfy Mexican voters. Mexicans would in turn adopt a much more pragmatic position during the upcoming midterm election favoring any option that penalizes the president and his MORENA party. The other force is the one that president López Obrador himself has unleashed with his very own reaction to the feminist protests. Mexico’s feminism could become the great unifier of grievances, anger, and unfulfilled expectations, among Mexican voters. However, the translation of the feminist movement into something that can alter the electoral scene it is not obvious.

López Obrador’s very own lack of understanding, disregarding, and attempt to belittle Mexican feminist protests is turning into a great rallying cry for many Mexican citizens. Perhaps, this could be president López Obrador’s costlier mistakes and governing dogmas.

* Luis Rubio is chairman of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI).  A Spanish version of this Op-Ed appeared first in Reforma’s newspaper print edition. Twitter: @lrubio

https://mexicotoday.com/2021/03/17/opinion-three-strikes-against-mexicos-president/

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Mexico Today –  March  10, 2021

Observers and scholars of Mexican transition to democracy hold two views. One maintains that the transition ended the day when fair and contested elections were held in the late 1990s, allowing a peaceful transfer of power in the year 2000. The other argues that the Mexican political system has not changed in nature despite the alternation of political parties in power. Beyond the details, perhaps the pertinent question is what should have been done differently to reach a better harbor? The answer would allow a more insightful diagnosis of Mexico’s current state and, perhaps, in an idyllic exercise of statesmanship, to start over.

My perception is that Mexico’s 1996 electoral reform was a great exercise in high politics. Then-president Ernesto Zedillo, the leaders of the Mexican political parties along with several task forces (especially those from academia) pushed to bring about the deal that enabled Mexico to hold free, fair, competitive, and professional elections at the federal level in 1997. Given Mexico’s past authoritarian history, no one can sell that achievement short.

Twenty-five years later, it seems to me that that there was more hope and joy than foresight and depth among those who made possible Mexico’s 1996 electoral reform. I say this with the perspective and arrogance afforded by the rear-view mirror. The 2000 presidential election was hailed inside and outside Mexico because it achieved a peaceful alternation of parties for the first time in 70 years. But the reality is that this applause was due more to the fact that the PRI, the long-ruling party, lost than to an actual transformation of the Mexican state. The key thing to understand is that the “politically correct candidate”, Vicente Fox of the PAN party, won the election. This allowed all those involved to congratulate themselves for the milestone of alternation in power. However, the events of the presidential contest in 2006 would prove that Mexico was far from democracy.

The hard and simple truth is that the real powers of Mexico’s old political system (not all within the PRI) wanted changes that would assist their own victory. However, these same powers balked at true openness or a comprehensive transformation of actual government structures. Certainly, Mexico’s electoral system was radically transformed becoming unusually structured by international standards. It was also an expensive electoral system because, as top elections chief José Woldenberg said, this was the price to pay for citizen mistrust. In the 1990s, we Mexicans ended up with an exceptionally powerful tool to ensure that the vote decided who would governs us. But as the current moment shows, what we did not achieve was a better result in the way we govern ourselves.

We Mexicans can be proud of having solved the problem of access to power thanks to the creation of what is now called the National Electoral Institute (INE). The current criticism leveled at INE is not only unfair but absurd because the problem that the 1996 reform sought to solve, along with ensuing electoral reforms, was fully achieved. What was not solved was the way in which we Mexicans should govern themselves, which involves addressing both the way the government works and the rights of the Mexican people.

The key players in Mexico’s landmark 1996 electoral reform were convinced that the issue hindering the transformation of country’s political system was the electoral system. Their expectations were that once the alternation of parties in the Mexican presidency had been achieved, the pieces would automatically fall into place, opening up new opportunities for political engagement. Nobody foresaw that the old Mexican political system had such powerful moorings and inertia that have managed to remain practically untouched even a quarter of a century later. One should add to all this the tragic fact Vicente Fox, the winner of the 2000 presidential election, had no idea of the responsibility deposited on his shoulders on that crucial year or the golden opportunity handed to him. In the end, Mexico’s powers that be and the system’s institutional inertia claimed victory. The combination of unfinished work along with ignorance and apathy allowed this to happen.

Truth be told, no one should have been surprised by the outcome, as it is very much part of Mexico’s DNA. When NAFTA trade deal was negotiated in the early 1990s, Mexico requested a 17 year phase-out period before opening three agricultural markets to imports: corn, beans, and powdered milk. Sixteen years later and with the opening of those three markets knocking at the door, Mexican agricultural producers began to say that such phase-out was no enough time. In the end, these producers were saved by the bell because agricultural prices rose just then, allowing for a smooth phase-out. But the example illustrates Mexican behavior: instead of anticipating and acting in a timely manner, Mexicans are always in haste when something has already gone awry. Mexico’s great unfinished business in politics is the comprehensive reform of the government. The Mexican government is opaque, inherently corrupt, unaccountable, and does not abide by any legal framework. The way in which the current Mexican president has been able to dismantle the institutional framework shows that it did not possess the strength and legitimacy that many assumed.

* Luis Rubio is chairman of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI).  A Spanish version of this Op-Ed appeared first in Reforma’s newspaper print edition.

 Twitter: @lrubio

https://mexicotoday.com/2021/03/10/opinion-starting-over/

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio
Mexico Today –  March 02 , 2021

 The U.S. establishment managed to turn the Covid-19 pandemic into yet another point of contention and polarization. The issue joins a myriad of divisive factors that over the last decade and a half produced three polar opposite administrations: Obama’s, Trump’s, and now Biden’s.

Where there is practically no disagreement, however, is regarding the United States’ relationship with China. There’s almost absolute unity on that issue, reaching obsessive levels. It is a rare issue indeed on which Americans are not divided. Donald Trump and Barack Obama remain controversial figures and Joe Biden is yet to be defined. There is division over everything: from life’s most intimate issues -like abortion and marriage- to geopolitical issues, such as Russia and Europe, to trade and migration. Even the most trivial matters end up being a matter of dispute, all of which explain the delay in acting against the coronavirus. It is an issue that impacted the appointment the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flagship U.S. institution in health matters. Today’s American society cannot agree on practically anything. Except China.

The dispute with China has many levels and facets, beginning with the trade war started by Trump but stemming from the loss of industrial jobs. Unlike Mexico, China used the plants that were installed on its soil to trigger an industrial transformation. From there all kinds of grievances, both real and imaginary, arise: the mandatory transfer of technology, the subsidies to state-owned enterprises, and the anti-foreign bias. Second, the U.S. blames the Chinese government for stealing technology, data, and secrets by hacking the internet. Third, and perhaps central to the perceived wrong, Americans feel betrayed –and worse, cheated- that China has not evolved in line with their expectations of it becoming a democracy. While China’s rulers surely never promised an evolution toward democracy in sync with its economic development, it was the West’s expectation when China became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001.

China’s impressive growth in recent decades unleashed all matter of fervor among fans and critics alike. Some see China as the harbinger of the future and extol its authoritarian government as the solution to the problems both of countries and the world: if instead of debating and discussing in a democratic context, dreams The New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman, the U.S. had a government like China’s, it could tackle its problems (and those of the world, like climate change) with alacrity and determination.

Others, like Minxin Pei, view the Chinese system as unsustainable, while George Magnus sees a very difficult future, particularly due to Xi Jinping’s unwillingness to face the nation’s quandaries head-on, now compounded by the repercussions of the coronavirus and domestic anger left in its wake. Obviously, no one knows what will happen, and bets are all over the place.

The sum of all these differences, misunderstandings, and clashes of expectations has led to a virtual consensus in the U.S. of China as a geopolitical threat. Countless publications debate the implications of the new reality, which essentially come down to two: those who anticipate a growing confrontation vs. those who consider appeasement possible.

Leading the former is Graham Allison, who put on the table the notion that the U.S. and China face what he calls a “Thucydides trap”, a confrontation generated when a declining power tries to prevent an emerging one from displacing it. The other side, forever led by Henry Kissinger, raises not only the possibility, but the need for cooperation. This side argues that the relationship with China has nothing to do with the former USSR due to the multiple interactions that exist, and therefore advances that it is perfectly compatible to work where there are common interests and compete where there are differences, categorically denying the Thucydides trap’s validity. Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean diplomat, sets forth the details of what the concrete content of such an arrangement might be. Mahbubani’s text is arrogant and not very analytical, but is a clear example of how a compromise could be reached.

Americans, Kissinger wrote years ago, play chess, where the goal is to kill the king as quickly as possible; the Chinese play weiqi, the nature of which is to patiently build positions to overwhelm the enemy, without ever directly confronting him. It is not obvious to me who will win this game, but two things are clear: first, the result will affect us and second, Americans have not been very strategic and deliberate in this fight.

It’s a pity that we Mexicans are so lost that we lack the ability to see the enormous opportunity that the U.S.-China war represents for us. Another one that is going to get away.

* Luis Rubio is chairman of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI).  A Spanish version of this Op-Ed appeared first in Reforma’s newspaper print edition. 

Twitter: @lrubio

https://mexicotoday.com/2021/03/02/opinion-by-the-book/

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Mexico Today – March 01,  2021

 Undoubtedly, each government forges its own history, some due to their achievements, others because of their dogmatism. If something characterizes the current Mexican government, it’s its absolute lack of ability (or willingness) to learn. Since it arrived in power in December 2018, the López Obrador administration’s script has been absolute and set in stone. Nothing can alter it even if conditions changes radically, as it ensued with the Covid-19 pandemic. The results of the government’s first year in office clearly displayed the price of the López Obrador administration’s stubbornness. While a good part of López Obrador’s presidential campaign in 2019 hinged on criticizing Mexico’s low growth rates (on average) and intolerable corruption, the first year achieved the milestone of decreasing the country’s growth rate to negative territory. And it also did nothing more than elevate and legitimize the corruption of its own cadres. The second year was full of pandemic-fueled setbacks, without the administration’s dogmas changing in any way.

 After a year of near-total paralysis, catastrophe looms in Mexico. You don’t have to be an expert to realize that, instead of strategy, the López Obrador administration harbored a hope: that the pandemic would resolve itself. Now, 12 months later, the Mexican government doesn’t even have a vaccination strategy. From the beginning of this unusual crisis, the López Obrador administrations’ only goal has been to help its political base for electoral purposes. Most Mexicans can go resort to their own devices (a more appropriate expression for the feeling exists). In a word, there never was, nor is there now, a health strategy. It took president López Obrador a year to learn precisely nothing.

Experts state that the risk of not advancing at a brisk rate with vaccination is twofold: on the one hand, Mexico could end up isolated from the world, a leper colony-type with whom nobody wants to interact, which could even affect exports, our main source of growth. On the other hand, as professor Ian Goldin of Oxford University says, “the longer this takes, the greater the risk of mutations which could render the vaccines impotent, as is already apparently happening in South Africa”. In other words, continuing to do nothing involves risking an unimaginable crisis both on the health and the economic fronts. A catastrophe.

Of course, not everything is the Mexican government’s fault. The entire world is dealing with the problem of vaccine shortages, compounded by detrimental responses toward defeating a virus whose core characteristic is its ubiquity, in that it strikes everyone and crosses borders no matter what walls some nations want to erect. The European Union recently imposed controls on vaccine exports, when some of the main laboratories (starting with Pfizer in Belgium) that manufacture them for the whole world are located in its territory.

All of this, however, does not excuse the Mexican government’s lack of foresight. Its disregard has been such that the only really existing plan is the one developed and financed by Carlos Slim for the AstraZeneca vaccine. Everything else has been casuistic, leaving the country helpless and dependent and at the mercy of what is, at least for now, a sellers’ market. While many governments in the world have suffered from the same inability to foresee and anticipate next steps, what sets ours apart is its absolute unwillingness to learn. Successful models are not a state secret: they are visible and many nations have tweaked their strategy when it has not proven effective. All except Mexico: the only important thing here is not to lose June’s midterm elections.

The Mexican government erred in the diagnosis, clung to an unsuccessful strategy, miscommunicated (or better deceived), did not foresee vaccine purchase, and still has the gall to state that “we are doing fine.”

The contradictions of the anti-Covid-19 “strategy” are ample. The López Obrador administration has made it clear that it has unspeakable goals, which are no less real, starting with the fact that its goal isn’t to solve the issue of the pandemic, but to preserve its majority in the Mexican Lower House of Congress intact. Other contradictions have stemmed from this prodigious unwillingness to learn: for example, the evidence to date does not confirm that this virus produces permanent immunity. That has not led to modifying what appears to be Mexico’s actual strategy from the beginning: achieve “herd immunity” without the vaccine, regardless of how much it denies it or might be a delusion. This would imply that the loss of life would continue to grow endlessly.

Then, when reality- in the form of 513,000 Covid-19 deaths- overtook López Obrador’s, the government embarked on a new adventure: “stick it to Uncle Sam”. The Chinese or Russian vaccines may end up being just as effective as the others, but circumstances suggest that the Mexican government decided to play geopolitics by mischievously buying vaccines from those who are challenging “our” power in the big leagues. Of course, there is nothing wrong with acting with sovereignty in mind, but this course of action stinks more of 1960s student radicalism than a well thought out plan for duly steering the country’s development going forward.

Waterloo marked Napoleon’s defeat and it changed the history of Europe. If we continue down the current government’s path, only the clumsiness of the opposition could prevent a similar outcome.

* Luis Rubio is chairman of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI).  A Spanish version of this Op-Ed appeared first in Reforma’s newspaper print edition.
Twitter: @lrubio

https://mexicotoday.com/2021/03/01/opinion-waterloo/

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio
Mexico Today – February 21,  2021 

 It has become commonplace to state, with deep conviction, that everything in Mexico’s recent past was bad and that the current López Obrador administration is therefore the country’s salvation. Although some Mexicans see this as mere political rhetoric, many others believe this is an absolute truth beyond question. However, the argument that everything in Mexico’s recent past was bad is rather peculiar. It was precisely during the now-decried recent past that Mexicans won the hardly-fought freedom of expression that they are now exercising. This idea is even more absurd when we know that the goal of the President Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration is actually to rebuild the authoritarian Mexico of yesteryear.

The idea that everything in Mexico’s past was bad is heard everywhere. It is repeated in legislators’ speeches, in presidential aides’ statements, in president López Obrador’s daily press conferences and as a mantra in social networks. For that group of believers in the president, the authoritarian Mexico that resulted from the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century never took place. Nor the multiple financial crises Mexico experienced. There was never a growing Mexican middle class. There were never any currency restrictions for the normal functioning of the Mexican economy. There were no competent Mexican administrations or successful companies. Mexico never had award-winning scientists, or Nobel Prizes. The world was born in 2018 with López Obrador’s victory in the presidential election of that year. Prior to that, chaos, like in the Bible.

If the world was born yesterday and everything in the past was chaos, Mexico’s future will inevitably be better. If Mexican citizens manage to believe this fact as an act of faith, they become mere pawns at the service of a manipulative leader. Therein must lie the origin of the so-called “fake news” phenomenon. A phenomenon where beliefs –not facts- matter, particularly so if the former become the new and indisputable dogma. The problem for Mexico is that many, too many, believe it and beliefs are not subject to debate or learning. This explains a lot of what transpires in Mexico’s public sphere, beginning with López Obrador’s morning press conferences and in the Mexican legislative arena. The issue here is about revealed truths, not matters subject to legitimate debate. Isn’t this a new Mexican authoritarianism?

The belief that there is nothing good or salvageable from Mexico’s recent past is objectively false. Not only because the opposite can be proven, but because most of those Mexicans who hold these views exhibit, in their own lives, enormous advancements and family progress. Of course, objectivity is irrelevant when dealing with beliefs. It is even worse when such beliefs ar so deeply ingrained.

Around 10 years ago, when Luis de la Calle and I published the book “Clasemediero” (that in Spanish means “A Member of the Middle Class”) we invited several Mexican political leaders to comment on it. One of them, a prominent member of the leftist PRD party at the time, began his remarks by saying (I quote from memory): “When I was invited to comment on this book I felt very uncomfortable. For me, in my college days, the term middle class was used in a derogatory manner to belittle someone who did not act as an underprivileged individual. However, when I began reading the book I realized that it was describing me.” The PRD politician then went on to say that he was born in a rural town, the son of peasants, but that thanks to a scholarship he had been able to study, attend college, and then live in a city apartment the likes of which his parents could never have imagined. The commentator discovered that that social mobility existed in Mexico and that he himself had experience it. He also discovered that Mexico had made such political headway that he could express himself freely thanks to changes that had taken place over the last 40 years.

As Aristotle wrote in his Rhetoric facts are only about the past and the present. The future is only about aspirations and interests –politics’ fundamental concern. The past is a matter of legitimate debate because there are concrete facts. Regarding the specific issue of whether a country has made progress, pinpointing if this has taken place or not is a simple task. For example, nobody can deny that there are some Mexican states (like Aguascalientes) that have 40 years recording annual rates of growth above 7 percent, a milestone by any measure. It is also objectively true that other Mexican states like Chiapas and Oaxaca have not changed much during the same period of time. These are two indisputable truths. To deny them would imply that Mexico should follow, or recreate, the great achievement of Mexico’s southern states instead of learning from the success of states lie Aguascalientes or Querétaro.

It’s easy to get lost in president López Obrador’s rhetoric that pursues two obvious goals. One, to preserve poverty because a country of poor people is a country of dependents and, therefore, of manipulable people. The recipe is not a new one and is always an effective tool for those leaders who want to remain in power. Two, the goal goes beyond simply creating a dependence on a leader, it pursues obtaining blind loyalty. President López Obrador’s great success is that he has a large number of followers who believe in these falsehoods. Reasoning is to no avail.

Mexico’s tragedy is that progress is not possible when the population treads blindly in the footsteps of a commander-in-chief whose objective is to perpetuate poverty. For this goal he requires believers and not citizens. He needs to focus on political clienteles and not in increasing the country’s productivity. The victims of this scheme -whether they recognize it or not- are those who believe instead of reason. Those Mexicans who are the “beneficiaries” of the dependency relationship that the López Obrador regime instigates.

* Luis Rubio is chairman of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI).  A Spanish version of this Op-Ed appeared first in Reforma’s newspaper print edition.
Twitter: @lrubiof

https://mexicotoday.com/2021/02/21/opinion-wicked-past/

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio
Mexico Today – February 21, 2021

  When I first visited Beijing in 1980 did not have the feel of a city, rather a big town. A few large and empty avenues led to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, the city’s political hub. Now and then, bicycles –that ubiquitous means of transporting people, moving, and distributing all kinds of goods- would whizz by. Around these ceremonial centers rose an endless collection of tenements in varying degrees of disrepair. When I returned in 1999, the sight left me speechless: a modern city, with skyscrapers, expressways, luxury stores, and traffic like any international megacity. While in Mexico we debated ourselves about what economic model to follow, the debt crisis and the role of government in development, China transformed itself. Here’s to an effective government.

In Mexico, politics has been confused with governing. While it is clear that politics determines each country’s priorities, executing them is a different matter. In serious countries, government is an element of continuity and stability. Public officials are permanent, mostly career civil servants, and abide by codes of conduct and transparency. Politicians for their part, who are elected b the people, determine which projects go ahead and which don’t. They establish the criteria that will guide decision-making during their terms. Cities in serious countries have a professional manager who reports to the mayor as departments or ministries do. Only Third World countries reinvent government every time a new administration moves in.

This is the subject of an exceptional new book, The Wake-Up Call, which seeks explain the differences between the countries that successfully dealt with the Covid-19 crisis and those that still to this day can’t grasp what is happening. The book’s premise is that Western countries have very effective systems of government that know how to function under normal circumstances and how to respond to critical situations. However, it argues that these systems of government became timeworn, became too big, and ended up beholden to countless private interests, both internal (like political groups and unions), and external (construction firms, service operators, environmentalists).

In contrast, Singapore become the prime example of an efficient, technically proficient, and effective government which has attained the highest level of per capita income in the world. Many countries, particularly in Asia, have opted to follow this governing model and have successfully built meritocratic bureaucracies. Singapur and other Asian countries have exceptionally well-trained personnel that is duly compensated. Hence the indisputable successes of South Korea, Taiwan and, of course China. To be sure, there are effective and competent governments in other regions as well like Germany and some Scandinavian nations. This group of countries is notable for the seriousness, competence, and technical expertise of its bureaucracies, which are never distracted by politics.

Most of these countries are full, working democracies. Some are hybrids, and others are autocracies.One thing makes them similar is the quality of their government staff. Nothing like Covid-19 to separate those countries that know what they’re doing from the rest. This virus is an unbeatable opportunity to understand the difference among countries because it affects all exactly in the same way. Each nation, however, responds in keeping with its socio-political characteristics.

Infrastructure is another similar example. Countries with competent governments have ultra-modern highways, high-speed trains and airports. Frankfurt, Beijing, Singapore, and Incheon are obvious examples. None of these states gets bogged down with the issue of education, like Mexico. In this group countries, bureaucracies continually learn and do not sallow themselves to be manipulated by incompetent politicians, although they strictly adhere to the priorities they set. The key point is that the effectiveness of a Mexican administration isn’t about its quality of democracy or autocracy, but about its own structures and means of organization and compensation.

Unlike Singapore, the Mexican government was not built to be effective. Rather it was seen as a means to advance the interests of the political class, which inlaid corruption as one of its missions. Despite this, the López Obrador government managed to confer on Mexico stability and conditions for its development for several decades after the revolution. All of this was lost in the populism of the 1970s and the incomplete (and sometimes ineffectual) reforms of the ensuing decades.

Instead of rectifying those errors, presidente López Obrador has devoted itself to replicating the 1970s. López Obrador’s governing style is based in searching for a single person making decisions, ideologically driven and with purely political objectives. The Covid-19 crisis could not have come at a more revealing moment: it exposed Mexico’s accumulated flaws and shortcomings. The Mexican government that on paper would have push the notion of regime change This is the time for major reforms to produce a professional and technically proficient government.

* Luis Rubio is chairman of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI).  A Spanish version of this Op-Ed appeared first in Reforma’s newspaper print edition.

Twitter: @lrubiof

https://mexicotoday.com/2021/02/21/opinion-the-key-point/

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Mexico today  – February 2,  2021

The paradox of power is old and well known: the greater power one has, the more its misuse is overlooked and, consequently, the greater the risk of it being abused. The Mexican economy grew for several decades in the 20th century due to the fact that government was the steward of political stability and for almost two decades maintained a healthy economic strategy befitting Mexico’s -and the world’s- circumstances at the time. When the Mexican government abandoned those principles in the 1970s, the economy collapsed. The contrast between those two moments explains the nature of the problem facing Mexico today and why the path chosen by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) will not prove more obliging than back then. Like López Obrador today, the Mexican administrations in the 1970s also implicitly attempted to carry on a “regime change”.

 Concentrating power is useful only if you know where you are going and why. It seems clear that by systematically eliminating checks and balances, president López Obrador intends to recreate the Mexico of the 20th century when things worked well. He does not realize that those conditions answered to a specific moment in history. López Obrador is not attempting to destroy independent government agencies regulating Mexico’s energy sector or access to public information merely for the sake of eliminating “unnecessary” checks and balances, but because he believes -like his predecessors of the 1960s- that he himself can be the steward of Mexico’s destiny. The problem is that López Obrador is behaving exactly like the Mexican presidents of the 1970s, minus fiscal deficit considerations. The lesson that López Obrador learned from the 1970s is not that the country’s political stability and economic certainty were obliterated, but that the Mexican administrations then overreached in fiscal matters. In a nutshell, López Obrador aims to recreate that 1970s era, but without financial excesses.

The outcome will be no different, except that the agony will be drawn-out. Political power in 1950s and 1960s Mexico was highly concentrated in the presidency. However, these in office back then knew that any breach to stability and certainty would translate into severe economic cost. Mexican presidents back then didn’t cater to their whims via rigged or sham referendums, as López Obrador is doing today, but rather negotiated their actions and decisions with actual powers in society, like anywhere else.

Power in Mexico during the 20th century was concentrated, but not arbitrary. That changed in the 1970s due to the sudden appearance of increasing resources in the hands of the executive. These resources came first as a product of the availability of foreign debt and, later, by the promise of huge resources that would be produced by the recently discovered oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Those two factors, debt and oil, changed Mexico because the presidents of that time felt they could do as they pleased without consequence. But the consequence was a decade of recession and almost hyperinflation in the 1980s. It also resulted in an enormous difficulty for the Mexican administrations of that decade to regain the confidence of citizens, investors and businessmen, without whom the economy (the Mexican and all the others ) cannot work. President López Obrador wants to recreate the part of that history that suits him, disregarding the attached cost. Today, the Covid-19 pandemic crisis has inexorably accelerated those costs.

This blindness has led president López Obrador to make decisions that stand to reason in his stunted vision of Mexico and the world, and to close himself off from today’s enormous challenges. It’s easy for López Obrador to think that he can disband independent government agencies such as the Federal Institute for Access to Public Information and Data Protection (INAI), the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) and others. However, dismantling each one of those institutions would be a step towards economic and political catastrophe. These independent government agencies were founded in recent years not because the previous Mexican Presidents liked them, but because they were the only way to confer certainty to citizens. Every time López Obrador destroys an independent agency he alienates a sector within Mexico’s economy or society and increases uncertainty. Mexico lives in the paradox of the certainty of uncertainty. Progress under such conditions is impossible.

Mexico faces formidable challenges, ones that a government should ponder and anticipate to avoid and overcome pitfalls. Worse, several of them will prove particularly demanding for an administration such as López Obrador’s guided by so many dogmas and prejudices. Energy is a case in point: the world is slowly weaning itself off oil. Meanwhile the Mexican government here expects that the state-owned oil company (PEMEX) to work magic.

Exports are by far the greatest engine of the Mexican economy and our main export are cars and automobile parts and components, an industry which is quickly abandoning fossil fuels. What does the López Obrador government foresees on this issue? Which leading energy, electrical, or automotive companies is it seeking to attract to invest in Mexico?

Going forward there are other questions the Mexican government should ponder. What does it see happening in U.S.-China trade relations? What is Mexico doing so that companies and industries having to leave China see the country as a feasible alternative option? And not least importantly: How does the López Obrador administration anticipates its relationship with the new Biden administration in the US? What geopolitical risks does it perceive? In short, does the López Obrador administration care about the future or -knowingly or unknowingly- is Louis XIV its sole role model?

* Luis Rubio is chairman of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI).  A Spanish version of this Op-Ed appeared first in Reforma’s newspaper print edition.

 Twitter: @lrubiof

https://mexicotoday.com/2021/02/02/opinion-government-and-power/

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio
Mexico today  – January 27,  2021 

“It’s  in the United States’ best national interest for Mexico to become a prosperous country,” Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor under President George H. W. Bush, told me when I interviewed him for a book on NAFTA’s 20-year anniversary. Back in 1992, the signing of the NAFTA treaty  was perceived in the U.S. as the dawn of a new era in the U.S.-Mexico relationship. NAFTA also entailed a moment of radical change in the way Americans perceived themselves. It was a moment of elation in which the entire establishment reveled. Now, Mexico finds itself once again in a new era, with a new U.S. president that has no margin for error.

Throughout the 20th century, Mexico chose to follow its own path, far from its northern neighbor, so much so that achieving U.S. recognition of the governments emanated from the Mexican civil war was itself an epic feat.

By the 1980s, the U.S. saw Mexico as an anomaly: a country that had not finished resolving its own problems and crises, and that kept its distance. Mexico, for its part, had experienced sudden shifts in its economic policy, fallen into increasingly acute financial and foreign exchange crises and spent years in recession and on the brink of hyperinflation, all due to excessive indebtedness in the 1970s. Rather than adapt to the changes that had taken over the productive world in Japan, the U.S. and Europe, Mexico exhibited a singular lack of clarity regarding the course it needed to follow to achieve its development objectives.

Sometime in the late 1980s, the Mexican government completed an in-depth review, acknowledging for the first time in decades that the financial and economic problem was a product of its responsibility (irresponsibility, in fact) and began to implement a series of reforms capable of transforming the country’s reality. One of those changes was in the relationship with the U.S.

The new Mexican approach crystalized in NAFTA —a mechanism to promote investor certainty— was perfectly aligned with the U.S. geopolitical logic. The problem was that what Mexico was willing to do in the following years did not meet U.S. expectations. Mexico did not see NAFTA as the beginning of a transformative era, but as the end of a process of pared-down reforms. With the end of the Cold War, Americans, for their part, moved on to other issues, largely forgetting about Mexico.

All this eventually led to a clash of perceptions. For Mexico, NAFTA was a lifesaver that allowed a return to economic growth, albeit one it did not fully exploit. In the U.S.’ view, Mexico squandered NAFTA as a lever for transformation, ending up mired in a sea of ​​corruption, human rights violations, and institutional weakness. The expected cross-border integration of education and services never came about. The U.S. disappointment that followed was no small thing, and lingers to this day.

Twenty-five years after NAFTA, Mexico has improved in countless ways and achieved a financial stability that stands in stark contrast to the chaos that preceded it. However, the country’s fundamental challenges -poverty, regional inequality, a dismal justice system, violence, and crime (much of it linked to the U.S. through drug trafficking) and, above all, an incompetent government- remain. In practice, NAFTA’s success allowed Mexico not to have to transform itself.

Mexico’s lethargy translated into growing U.S. desperation which led to developing projects aimed at forcing Mexico to carry out a complete overhaul of its institutions. That’s to say, the context of Joe Biden’s arrival to the White House is not favorable to the old Mexican political system that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been recreating for the past two years. A system that he is strengthening minute by minute. The accumulated U.S. disappointment will inevitably have practical expressions that do not fit well with the distancing and contempt shown by the current Mexican government toward Biden. The pretense that the depth of interconnection between the two countries can be ignored free of cost or consequences is absurd. Disregarding the shared U.S.-Mexico interests is even worse.

Today, there are two key factors in the North American region that will determine Mexico’s future.

The first factor are the tensions within American society itself, largely the result of technological change, economic globalization, and the information age. Although Mexico is not the cause of these changes, it is a key player in them, reason why Donald Trump made us a scapegoat. The end of the Trump era does not, however, entail the end of strains that already existed and that he capitalized on. In a rational world, this would lead Mexico to develop of a strategy of rapprochement, with the U.S. people and government, to try to ease these sources of conflict. The opposite of what President López Obrador is doing now.

The other key factor is the conflict between the U.S and China. Mexico has a great opportunity to attract much of the North American investment currently concentrated in China. However, that would require a strategy politically, economically, and radically unlike the one undertaken by the López Obrador administration. Inexplicably, Mexico faces once again the possibility of missing its next great development opportunity for the sake of following a series impoverishing 1970s economic dogmas.

* Luis Rubio is chairman of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI).  A Spanish version of this Op-Ed appeared first in Reforma’s newspaper print edition.
Twitter: @lrubiof

https://mexicotoday.com/2021/01/27/opinion-mexico-seen-from-the-us/

www.mexicoevalua.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio
Mexico Today – January 19, 2021

This will be a decisive year for Mexico. It provides a last chance both for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and for the Mexican opposition. The clash between the two forces will determine if Mexico continues adrift or finds its way out after a terrible performance by both in these past two years. President López Obrador’s own warped preconceptions and ahistorical prejudices won’t help matters.

The factors that will determine this year’s fate are very clear. What is not evident is the shape they will take, how the president reacts to them, and how much present circumstances are aggravated as things unfold.

The great imponderable overall will be the social consequences of the pandemic and vaccine politics. To date, López Obrador has appeared to be decidedly unruffled, assuming that his combination of transfers of money to his political clienteles and his cautious management of public finances will suffice to avert a major crisis. None of that, however, addresses the monumental issue of Mexican unemployment and corporate bankruptcies unleashed by the pandemic. The Mexican government is clearly not to blame for the pandemic but it’s also undoubtedly true that the responsibility for remedying its economic damage lies in its hands. This responsibility is magnified by what López Obrador’s government failed to do at the onset of the pandemic and for disdaining both the virus and the Mexican population. The dogged reality is about to set in.

A second crucial factor that will shape 2021 is a political one. López Obrador’s MORENA party coalition is a highly unstable entity since its inception, compounded by the agendas of dissimilar groups and the natural interests of the 2024 presidential candidate hopefuls. The MORENA coalition merged groups, forces, and interests of the most varied origin, ideology, and objectives, a necessary condition to win the Presidency two years ago. However, the internal rifts, the conflicts at play, and the sheer absence of institutionalization entail that managing this complex entity is virtually impossible, impinging already on its alignment of candidacies. Although everyone wants to win, the internal rifts between groups -many of them of radical origin- will inevitably gain strength little by little. They will consume a good part of the president’s time and energy in the foreseeable future, with potentially dire consequences.

Corruption will be a third crucial theme this year. Disgust with corruption in Mexico was perhaps the core factor that conferred López Obrador with winning legitimacy in 2018. However, his government action has done nothing to curb corruption, as illustrated by countless examples within the administration itself and across MORENA. The only obvious thing is that while Mexico’s ruling party changed, traditional practices remained. In addition, the onslaught against López Obrador’s predecessors will more likely lead to a day of reckoning when his own six-year term ends than to successful legal prosecutions. This realization will incrementally weigh heavily on the spirits of MORENA’s leaders, beginning with the president himself. In the absence of a strategy for eradicating corruption at its roots, the government will be as exposed in the future as its predecessors are now, if not more. Revenge won’t be pretty.

Fourth, and notwithstanding the substantial political headwinds mentioned above, the President’s popularity remains high, which could translate into a less damaging result at the polls than in mid-terms ever since votes are tallied well in Mexico, say around 1997. In every subsequent Mexican mid-term, the party in office lost ground, in some cases dramatically. All in all, it is impossible to see a repeat of the 2018 blowout both because of the natural erosion suffered by incumbent administrations not to mention the challenging economic conditions Mexico will probably face come June. Beyond López Obrador’s popularity, it is impossible to ignore that even in 2018 the parties supporting his candidacy did not come close to winning 50 percent of votes in legislative races. Even a small erosion in voters preferences could imply radical changes to the political landscape.

Finally, although everything in MORENA is about retaining power and preserving internal peace in order to win Congress, internal contradictions are so colossal that the great element of cohesion, López Obrador, will find himself under pressure from all sides. At such a moment of economic and social emergency, Mexico will suffer more polarization, conflict, and poor decisions instead of harmony and peace. None of this will help the López Obrador administration, let alone the country.

The past suggests that MORENA’s future will not be rosy when the midterm election happens June. Much will depend on what the López Obrador government and the Mexican opposition do, of course. The administration has the upper hand and the outlook would be less negative if it overcame its own counterproductive hang-ups, adopted more sensible economic policies in response to a calamitous crisis, and curbed its divisive rhetoric. Yet, the clock is ticking. For their part, if Mexico’s opposition parties nominated candidates to Congress likely to win with a credible and hopeful narrative (and if they refrained from cannibalizing each other as in the state of Puebla in 2019), the result would yield them opportunities for a better future after 2024.

https://mexicotoday.com/2021/01/19/opinion-here-we-go/

* Luis Rubio is chairman of México Evalúa-CIDAC and former chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI).  A Spanish version of this Op-Ed appeared first in Reforma’s newspaper print edition.

Twitter: @lrubiof