Luis Rubio – Americas Quarterly – November 14, 2019

Mexico
What to Make of AMLO After His Most Turbulent Weeks as President

  How Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador has defied expectations – and not necessarily for the better.

MEXICO CITY – Two things appeared certain when Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico last July.

First, that he would abandon the paradigm of free markets and democratic transition that began to take shape in the country in the 1980s. And second, that he would have little problem implementing his policy agenda, as he had been able to do as mayor of Mexico City.

After nearly 12 months in office, AMLO’s distaste for liberal economics and the institutional trappings of democracy has been largely borne out. But surprisingly, he has achieved very little progress in pushing his agenda, and has even failed to appease many supporters. Rather than advance by pursuing a carefully crafted strategy, López Obrador continues to open ever more fronts on both domestic and international issues. Security, energy and the offer of political asylum to Bolivia’s deposed former President Evo Morales are just the latest examples. By now it is clear that López Obrador’s presidency will be tumultuous, to say the least.

There is an internal dichotomy in AMLO that has been apparent since his days as mayor. The AMLO who is committed to a regressive agenda coexists alongside a more responsible self, one who will not kill the hen that lays the golden eggs (as seen in his push to secure a new NAFTA deal).

But where AMLO has been a surprise is the actual conduct of his government. He essentially took over the country the day he won the election and has kept a relentless pace ever since. He holds a daily press conference that informs little and mostly serves to speak to his base. Instead of the practicable plan for government he stuck to in Mexico City, as president AMLO has continued to act as a candidate: dogmatic, unapproachable and lacking a plan beyond concentrating power in his own person.

Hardly a day goes by in which López Obrador does not launch an attack on something or someone (the media, the armed forces, the rating agencies, business, opinion leaders, institutions), in the process alienating ever more figures who could otherwise have played a role in supporting his agenda.

The political benefits of his actions may be clear, but the tangible result has been a lack of private investment (which began in 2016 with Trump’s election and continued once AMLO’s successful bid to the presidency became apparent) and an economy inching towards recession. On top of this, the president’s new approach to security (labeled “hugs, not bullets”) has shown serious limitations in at least two recent cases (Culiacán and the murder of the LeBron family). For the first time since he won the presidency, AMLO’s approval has begun to erode: while still high, above the 53% he enjoyed in July 2018, it no longer looks so immovable.

Back to the past

The paradigm shift that Mexico began to undergo in the 1980s, from a government-centered political and economic system to an open trading and democratic regime, was not supported by all the players in that system. Many laggards, particularly on the left of the then-ruling PRI party, rejected liberalizing moves first promoted by former President Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988), on the grounds that they would put Mexico’s nationalist-revolutionary tradition at risk. Much of that contingent abandoned the PRI in 1987, when Carlos Salinas’ candidacy was announced, and went on to join forces with the Mexican Socialist Party (PSM) to create the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1989.

Over time, the two contingents inside the PRD proved incompatible, largely because the former kept on looking through the rear-view mirror, while the traditional left that comprised the core of the former PSM evolved in the direction of a modern social democratic party. López Obrador represents the old leftist wing of the PRI that split away from PRD in 2011 and became Morena, the movement that made it possible for him to win the presidency in 2018.

Critics rightly point out that the paradigm of free markets and democratic politics never truly materialized. While Mexico did privatize hundreds of companies, deregulated many sectors of the economy and liberalized imports and exports, not all sectors were liberalized and some big players in the economy (notably PEMEX and CFE) retained enormous sway in key decision-making processes. Even today, competition in several sectors of the economy remains limited, thus diminishing the potential benefits that a truly open market economic regime could have brought about.

Similarly, political competition remains tightly controlled, and access by wholly new actors is virtually impossible. Despite an extremely professional, competent and proven electoral authority, the left (first the PRD and more recently Morena) has refused to legitimize the system in general. Despite having won the election (and so overwhelmingly), AMLO and his allies act as if some imagined powers that be had finally relented and granted them victory, and not as if they won an open, legitimate and democratic contest.

This inability to recognize that it’s time to govern has been costly. López Obrador has frozen new energy auctions, decapitated most of the (theoretically autonomous) regulatory agencies, allocated contracts of all sorts without transparency, subordinated the legislature and the judiciary, cut successful and popular programs such as a network of privately-organized children’s day care centers, and shifted major components of the budget to fund pet projects (like pensions for the elderly and unemployed youngsters), whose true aim is to create and nurture an electoral clientele for himself. The one thing he has not attacked – in fact, he has been a key factor in advancing it – is the new NAFTA.

Rather than recognizing the need to rethink some of his policies or, at the very least, a better way to advance them, López Obrador keeps relentlessly down his chosen path. He knows he can count on a legal framework that has been deeply reformed to grant the government vast discretionary powers to jail bureaucrats, businessmen and labor representatives, without realizing that the flip side of that coin is that such powers constitute an absolute disincentive to cooperate, invest or save.

Thus, a solitary president pushes on. Where to? That’s the key question: Will AMLO move ahead regardless of the consequences, with the risk of provoking a crisis? Or, once (not if) he runs up against a wall, will he realize the risks he’s running and, finally, start looking for ways to advance more assuredly?

Sometime in 2020, Mexicans, and the world, are likely to know how far AMLO is willing to push.

https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/what-make-amlo-after-his-most-turbulent-weeks-president

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rubio is chairman of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. He writes a weekly column in newspaper Reforma, and is the author and editor of dozens of books. His most recent book, Unmasked: López Obrador and The End of Make-Believe, was published in July 2019 by the Wilson Center.

Luis Rubio

The cartoon depicts Herman Munster, the abnormal fictional personage of the T.V. series of a half century ago, seated kindly next to a little girl who tells him: “I thought you were a monster, but you’re tender and sensitive,” to which Herman responds, “The thing is that I’m only campaigning for votes.”

Whatever went on before the election of 2018 ended there; now, AMLO is responsible for whatever comes next: a circumstance that is not always benign, for there’s where biases hit the pavement.

No single matter affects the citizenry in such a direct and brutal manner and with such consequences in the long run as security. Families and companies are forced to live with permanent insecurity because the government has been unable to act successfully. A family that has undergone the abduction of a loved one continues to experience it throughout their existence, and this affects their decisions on savings, consumption and behavior. Insecurity acquires political connotations because those responsible for guaranteeing it have failed, and that’s true at the federal, state and municipal level and involves all political parties across the board.

Enterprises and institutions suffer from insecurity in many ways. Part is the result of what those who make them up endure: How can a university investigator in their laboratory, or an employee at a store counter, concentrate on their work if they do not know where their daughter is? Commercial enterprises with a presence on the street experience insecurity especially in the form of extortion and they know that the authority is corrupt or inexistent.

The big companies devote themselves to prevention, assigning immense resources to contracting police officers, guards, security walls, patrol cars that follow delivery trucks and such. It would be infinitely more productive to devote all of those resources to novel productive investments that generate more growth, jobs and opportunities.

Insecurity destroys the most essential part of the human being because, as Umberto Eco wrote, it “kills the possibility of being able to hope.” No country can prosper under a regime of insecurity such as that which has been our fate to live through.

One of the factors that defines the State is the monopoly of force, but the inverse of this is likewise defining: tax collection. This concerns two sides of the same coin: the one responsible for security is also in charge of collecting the funds allocated for defraying expenses for the operation of the government. In both cases, this is about a monopoly, in that if this does not exist because organized crime charges taxes in the form of extorsion, the State ceases to fulfill its raison d’etre.

The Mexican government long ago lost the monopoly of force, thus it does not control the entire territory, it does not impede the bands of thieves from stealing, killing, extorting and kidnapping in all quarters and does not satisfy condition number one of the governmental function: citizen peace and security. The president rejects the scheme that prevailed to combat crime, but his plan is clearly insufficient. To begin with, it concentrates on attempting to hinder organized criminals from recruiting unemployed youths but does not address the essence of security: a functioning government that protects the citizenry, which entails police forces and the judiciary from the bottom up. This cannot be created in one moment, but it will never come about if it’s not started immediately.

A businessman explained his perspective of the problem clearly and directly: the Tax Authority is bent to collect taxes, intimidate the taxpayers and erect obstacles, by means of interminable bureaucratic procedures, to the functioning of economic activity. However, the businessman went on, no one worries about the new “tax” collectors: not those who send out citations but rather those who burn down stores or factories when protection money is not paid. From the taxpayer’s perspective, both are the same: the two collect taxes and extort the taxpayer, whether the latter is a professional, the owner of a company or a simple employee. Whoever does not pay the taxes will have to deal with the Finance Ministry or, in recent years, with the mafias of extortionists who are infinitely more persuasive, besides being lethal.

It’s clear that the issue of security did not start with the Lopez Obrador administration, but the events of Culiacan and the murder of the LeBaron family attest to the fact that its strategy does not match up to the challenge. But, given that the previous strategy was not a paragon of virtue, what’s serious is the government’s rejection to carrying out an honest diagnosis of the true nature of the problem.

I have no doubt but that the main failure of the last decade in this matter has been one of focus and of concept. The essence of security is simple: a) above anything else, the objective is to protect the population, not to confront the criminals; b) security starts from below, on every block and in every neighborhood, and cannot be imposed from the heights of Olympus; c) the federal forces, including the Army, should become central components of the process, but their function is to support the development of local capacities, not to make these forces permanently responsible for security; and d) there is no greater problem nor one accompanied by more wear and tear in terms of a government’s legitimacy than security. If you doubt this, ask Peña.

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Luis Rubio

Just when it seemed that, with the AMLO government, many of the worst vices of the old Mexican political system would be eradicated by an administration that says it represents a new regime, the daily comings and goings reveal the contrary, recreating as they do the worst practices of old. This recognition came to me from my reading of a book that is extraordinary and terrifying at the same time: Midnight in Chernobyl,* the story of the explosion of the eponymous nuclear reactor that not only killed an infinity of people, but that also was determinant in the end of the Soviet system. Reading it reminded me of a Mexico that never left, but that has now returned with renewed vigor.

First noteworthy in the history of Chernobyl is the sensation of moral authority. The bureaucracy, from the Secretary General of the Communist Party to the most unpretentious inspector and, in this case, including the nuclear scientists, know everything there is to know, thus requiring no additional knowledge or information. Self-sufficiency,  and its twin, arrogance, dictates every decision, ignoring the reality, the measurements, the complaints of those involved or the most tangible evidence. This reminds me of the parents of the unfortunate children with cancer waiting for their medicine at the Federico Gómez Hospital.

A second element is the lack of innovation. Scientists design a type of reactor and reproduce it systematically for all regions of the country. Once a design is reached, this is the one that will be at the service of everyone, without mechanisms for improving it or, even, surpassing it. Instead of having diverse designs competing to raise efficiency, make headway in safety and reduce costs, the vision of officialdom, always tunnel, leads to its perpetuation. In this manner, not only is systemic improvement, inherent in open systems, Western style, rendered impossible, but also when, as in this case, the danger of the design is evidenced, all the rest become vulnerable. That was the way of the Mexican Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) with its thermoelectric plants: once a design acceptable to its bureaucracy came into being, the plants were all the same. Innovation arrived with the opening of the sector. If the Mexico of today were to work like the USSR of those times, the entire economy would be in tatters, or worse, as the president recently proposed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxXLhYoVqxk

The management of information is equally revealing. Gorbachov’s government, purportedly aiming to liberalize information (Glasnost), and desirous of ingratiating itself with the rest of the world, did not know how to respond. Its natural instinct was to close its eyes and to report nothing, in spite of the interminable appeals of those who did understand that the menace closing in on the population should command priority over anything else. Instead of being reported, the data were stored, the government responded with lies, half-truths and flagrantly fake news. It was not until the radiation began to extend to other latitudes, above all to Sweden and Germany, that it became inevitable to issue reports, though in dribs and drabs. Even so, extremely long days passed before the decision was made to evacuate the population, probably causing many more unnecessary deaths. Even today in Mexico the governmental instinct is not to report or to report badly, as illustrated by the mishandling of information on Culiacan or on economic growth, the rating agencies and the pretension that development is possible without growth. The duping of the population.

Maniqueism in the manner of resolving –or forcibly concluding- sensitive issues was noteworthy in the management that characterized the Soviet government. Rather than determining what had happened and what the response should be, who were the good ones and who the bad was decided beforehand, depending on their propinquity to the Nomenklatura, the Soviet elite, or to what was functional for covering over the situation. Those ending up as responsible for the catastrophe were not those who caused the carnage but instead those not among the darlings of the hierarchy. Some were fired, others rewarded, some jailed, but those decisions were made prior to any trial taking place. What defined the result was proximity to power. Today it is obvious how the president decides to save his friends and their businesses and attack or vilify his enemies, independently of considerations such as the much-discussed austerity or, especially, the truth.

The great absent component, in the once Soviet Union and in today’s Mexico, is the citizenry. Zero respect for its preferences, concerns or legitimate claims. Not only lack of respect, but categorical contempt, even when it involves situations in which there are affected individuals who fear neither God nor man, like the radiated people of Chernobyl or the burned people of Tlahuelilpan. The feminist demonstration a few months back is the best example of a society that clamors without discrediting but that instead of applause garners thoroughgoing disqualification. Like in the old times.

Fortunately, Mexico is not enduring the agony that put Chernobyl on the map, but the way of acting, reacting and seeing the world of the current administration and of the establishment in general is not very distinct from that of the Soviet government then. A change of regime should imply a real democracy, for all, not only for the cronies because, well, that would not be very different from business as usual.

*Adam Higginbotham, Simon & Schuster

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Things are not going well for the government and not even the daily morning “press conference” – or all its sarcastic rhetoric- can hide it. The economic situation deteriorates systematically and there is no reason to expect it to improve under current conditions. The events of Culiacan show not only a tragic setting, but a setback on already exacerbated levels, if not uncontrollable, of violence. Corruption is not diminishing because its causes are not being attacked, while those close to the government remain untouched, despite their flagrant corruption. Regardless of the evidence, the president is still bent on pursuing a path that, while still bearing some political fruits, runs counter to advancing his own agenda.

The evidence is overwhelming. The economy is not growing and, in the absence of productive investment, a contraction may well be in the offing, all while the country’s main engine of growth, exports, remains strong. That is to say, the cause of the poor economic performance is internal and it is evidenced by the growing trade surplus, product not of an exceptional increase of exports, but by the contraction of imports, especially those that are key indicators of future growth: machinery and equipment.

It is not necessary to talk much of security when, in the same week that the government announced, without any evidence, that Mexico is facing a “turning point,” the most violent moment so far in the current presidential term took place: a brutal defeat not only for the security project that the president has been celebrating so hard, but for the whole society that, suddenly, saw itself in the mirror of Culiacan. The president does not want to see that a bad strategy (or, more exactly, lack of strategy and intelligence) will have inexorable consequences: Could it be another type of turning point?

Corruption continues as usual: every day there is more evidence that as soon as they arrived at the government, the members of Morena, as it happened to the PAN before, they began to behave like their predecessors, ending up being indistinguishable. At the local level, this is everyday life. At the federal level, the way in which social programs are being managed without operating rules; direct allocation of contracts, public works and acquisitions without open and transparent tender processes; and the permissiveness with which illegality and the informal economy are being promoted in communities such as La Ventosa, Las Margaritas and the rest of the country, all due to obvious political-electoral conveniences, are evidence of flagrant corruption in the heart of the ruling project.

The big question is what is the government for. If a government does not care for security and safety of the population and does not create conditions for the economy to grow and the people to prosper, its very existence becomes irrelevant. In both areas -security and growth-, the results to date are negative. Worse when one looks at what the government has been doing in its first year, the “honeymoon” period, in which the president has had all the latitude to build the scaffolding of a new development project that yields benefits throughout the rest of its term. More than advancing investment projects with great multiplier effect and developing the political and legal structures to solve the security problems that seriously afflict the country, or to eliminate the causes of corruption, it has dedicated all its efforts to frighten the actors that are key to maintaining social peace and accelerating investment, and has built a white elephant in the form of the National Guard which, as evidenced in Culiacan, is not endowed with the vision and conditions to achieve its mission.

We have a government guided more by hatred and resentment than by a willingness to read the reality of the country and today’s world. Anchored in the idyllic era of the sixties that, as much as it may try, can never be recreated, the government has wasted crucial months on an agenda that will not impact on better conditions for the development of the country nor will it solve the themes that, at less rhetorically, are the essence of its agenda -corruption, growth, poverty and inequality- those that, I concur, are the central issues of Mexico. The problem is that, to effectively advance an agenda, there must be the willingness to undertake a comprehensive and dispassionate diagnosis of the current circumstances. But this government is anything but dispassionate and has no disposition to see the whole: its politico-ideological imperatives blind it.

Robert Hanlon, author of a book on Murphy’s famous law, says “never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.” I wonder if what we have experienced in this last year does not prove otherwise: it is easy to attribute to incompetence what is the product of malice. The government project is based on a series of premises that have proven to be wrong, one by one. If one adds to that the extremely diverse agendas that emanate from the various contingents of the ruling party Morena, the end result is a strategy that is incompatible with the country’s progress.

I don’t know if it’s incompetence or malice, but what I’m sure of is that there is deep ignorance and unwillingness to learn and recognize when things go wrong. It is not difficult to understand why Mexico is in a hole; but what is incomprehensible is that the government keeps digging.

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@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Mexico carried out innumerable reforms –economic as well as political- along the last four decades and, however, the results were insufficient or, at least, very unequal. Some sectors and regions of the country grew and benefited, others stagnated and have been unable to emerge from their lethargy. But even where advances have been notable, other factors, such as insecurity and poor educative performance, hindered better results. In this, Mexico lies in pronounced contrast to other nations that embarked on a reformative route during the same decades but that, with all their avatars, achieved greater benefits. The question is why.

Every country has its particular characteristics, history, culture and conditions. Some reside within a geopolitical context that imposes urgency on them and reduced latitude in what they can do, with Taiwan coming to mind, a nation on which enormous pressure by the Asian dragon hangs, leading it to subordinate small interests to its most fundamental viability. Other nations underwent abrupt breaks with their past due, for example, to a dictatorship, as in the case of Spain, Chile and Korea, which opened the opportunity for change, while simultaneously generating immense social pressure to attain this. In Colombia, the recovery of the nation as a workable entity after the era of the narco mafias –a process lasting decades- obligated the general transformation of its country.

The common denominator of all these nations is that they split from the past. Some did so because of the existence of great leadership, others because the circumstances caused it to happen or because the society did not permit deviations and because it             possessed the strength to accomplish it. Some came upon moorings that left no option other than to follow a path, as was the case of Spain and Portugal in the face of the magnet then represented by the European Community. All, however, have procured an integral transformation, everything within the natural and logical restrictions  that every nation faces, bringing to mind the famous phrase of Otto Von Bismarck that laws and sausages entail a similar manufacturing process and what results is not the most perfect, but what is possible.

Mexico has been a prodigious reformer in some ambits and very poor in others. The reason is a twice-fold and explains part of the reason why the electorate acted as it did in 2018. To begin with, the country has not undergone a change of regime since the post-revolutionary government in the last century’s decade of the twenties. Although of course there have been all kinds of changes and alterations in the manner of governing -and in that of electing- the rulers, the essence of the regime continues to be the same. The two PAN-party governments failed to carry out substantive modifications in that structure and the present government finds itself running toward the revitalization of the old centralist and unipersonal system.

In this context, it is clear that the reforms that Mexico undertook –many of these highly ambitious and transcendent- took place under circumstances very distinct from those of the nations mentioned in the previous paragraphs and of other, similar countries. In Mexico the reforms were promoted by its own regime and its main vector was that of transforming economic activity in order to recuperate high rates of economic growth and the benefits to be derived from them. But the objective of the regime was not, could not be, its dismantlement, as occurred in countries in which there had been a real and definitive rupture, essentially thanks to the end of a dictatorship.

Adolfo Suárez, and later Felipe González, broke with the Francoist regime and devoted themselves to building one that was new, democratic and representative, with a modern economy. Its objective was an integral economic as well as a political reform and, while as time went by they experienced crises and recessions diverse in type, their compass was keen and they persisted along the path, as happened in other reformative nations.

In Mexico, the objective was to reactivate the economy, whenever this did not affect the nodal interests close to the heart of the regime. This produced peculiar situations that distinguished the process with respect to other latitudes; in the economy, for instance, privatizations were conceived as means to generate income for the government, not as vehicles to provoke a sudden rise of productivity in the economy. In the same manner, some sectors were liberalized –chiefly industry- but protection was preserved for services (banks, insurance, communications), inciting arduous competition for Mexican industrialists without there being competitive services to assist them. In some cases, markedly in the south of the country, the government not only tolerated (and more now), but has also protected the pernicious unions such as the CNTE (one of the dissident groups within the Teachers’ Union), closing the door to the development of pupils who require another form of education to get ahead in this hypercompetitive world. They also deepened impediments to the installment of new, highly productive investments in the region.

The persistent backwardness, the regional inequality or the electoral result of 2018 should come as a surprise to no one.

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Luis Rubio

As related by Herodotus, Xerxes, the Persian king of kings, conceived of the invasion of Greece as a ruler who believed he could do whatever he wanted simply because he was, well, the king. He turned a deaf ear to his counselors who warned him of the approaching dangers and dismissed whoever was opposed to his plans. Sure of his vision, he proceeded full steam ahead, only to be defeated not by a superior force, but by the simple reality.

President López Obrador is certain of his project, but he is beginning to encounter contradictions in his own vision as well as in those emanating from the complex, conflicting and incensed coalition that he mustered to win the presidency.

The contradictions can be appreciated in the manner in which the famous morning reveille calls have evolved and in the way these have not changed much. The decisions emerging from the government or, better expressed, from some part of the government, clash with the votes arising from the legislature and the altercations among factions within the Morena Party, are frequently much deeper and more pronounced than those typifying other segments of the society. In this assortment resides the explanation of what advances and what backtracks in the daily reality.

In his morning wake-up talks, the President has attempted to eliminate certain qualifiers -such as the terms conservatives and sissies (fifi)– from his daily rhetoric, at least in what concerns businesspersons. On the other hand, his government offered an apology to members of the guerrilla forces that buffeted the country in the seventies, oblivious to those who were abducted and assassinated by these same guerrillas; on the same day, the President attacked the promoters of injunctions against the Santa Lucía airport, treating them like traitors to the nation, despite that their only crime has been to employ absolutely legitimate, legal instruments to dispute an administrative decision. When changes in language or disqualifiers are limited to one group in the society and not to others, one cannot but suppose that the new trend is merely tactical.

The tensions and contradictions came into being with the government itself: prior to the elections, López Obrador made a motion to re-think his opposition to the new airport in Texcoco, only to cancel it outright at the first opportunity. The national development plan illustrated, better than anything else, the absurdities of an administration that could not even agree on the content of a document that, with respect to any practical outcome, is mere rhetoric. But, beyond the discourse, the decisions emanating from Congress speak harshly and portray a panorama that transcends what’s published: what the Executive branch and the Congress are in the course of constructing is the scaffolding of a system of authoritarian control about  which not even the most reviled presidents of the old system could have dreamed.

How then to attempt, given this context, to attract the private investment that the President himself has declared on multiple occasions to be key to the achievement of his project? In recent months, AMLO has gone out of his way to get closer to the most emblematic businesspeople of the country: he invited them to the Presidential Informe (the yearly presidential address to the nation), he has attended dinners or suppers at their homes and has made a show of being able to get them up before dawn to be present at his early-bird addresses. Many have interpreted this as pragmatism, but it is also possible that it is about the same message that he wanted to convey the day –and in the manner of- on which he announced the end of the Texcoco airport: with the book written by former Spanish President Felipe González entitled Who Is in Command Here? Is this pragmatism or the consummate exercise of power?

The tensions within the Morena contingent are not small nor are they irrelevant. There is some of everything in there, in the ideological as well as in the political sense: PRDists and PRists, PANists and entrepreneurs, guerrillas, activists, land invaders and unionists, people experienced in the art of governing and others devoted to change via the revolutionary route. Perhaps the keenest breaking point lies in the line that separates those who, due to their previous experience, understand that there are limits to what it is possible to do and those who wish to proceed with their agendas at any price.

Above all, one of the common denominators is a deep resentment about everything: with the past, with the business community, with the Americans, with the freedoms that characterize the country at present, with the institutions, with those who think differently (also applicable to inside Morena), with the corruption of others, with anything hinting of independence or autonomy, with freedom of the press and any type of opposition, whether partisan, judicial or activist. The thread that joins this all is profoundly authoritarian and vengeful.

Some weeks ago several recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize were in Mexico. Two of these stand out in the way that they are in contrast with the government of AMLO:  Frederik de Klerk was the President of South Africa who dismantled the Apartheid regime that had spawned him because he understood that the world had changed. The same is true for Juan Manuel Santos, the former president of Colombia, who made peace with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the FARC). Both went on to liberalize, conciliate and promote a general reconciliation in order to build a better future. The opposite of vengeance, authoritarianism and resentment. Much to learn from them.

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Luis Rubio

Coins have two sides and, at this moment in time, that of the government does not tally. On the one hand, the budget assumes a sensitively higher growth rate next year compared to that of the year coming to an end. To achieve this feat, the government itself recognizes that a higher growth rate can only be attained with private investment. But, on the other hand, the legislature power lives to approve laws that not only discourage investment, but that also annihilate it. The question is whether the two sides of the government (given that the president’s party has full control of Congress) communicate between themselves and understand the implications of their differences.

The inherent approach to the budget is exceedingly sensible: the collection of taxes can be raised, this accomplishing the expenditure goals proposed by the government were the oil production platform elevated and were the economy to grow at ca. 2%.  Many have disparaged these two premises as naive but, from the viewpoint of the Mexican Ministry of Finance, they are achievable if and when the conditions are auspicious: at the end of the day, those numbers have been achieved in former years and there is no structural reason to think that this could not happen again.

However, the actions of the Legislature have been constructing a scaffold that is a direct attempt against the possibility of the growth of investment: three laws have been passed that are not only against investment, but also place on the defensive the entire tax-paying population. The Extinction of Domain law entails such lax and wide-ranging definitions of what can be taken over by the government that it can be applicable to virtually any person. The change in Article 19 of the Mexican Constitution grants such vast powers to the authority that there is no limit to what it can come to do, independently of whether its motivations are legitimate or political. Finally, the recent legislation in terms of fiscal matters places up against the wall literally any citizen, not only those entrepreneurs who acquire fake invoices. Of course the business of the so-called invoice mongers must be eradicated, but the law that came into being positions any tax payer on the threshold of prison.

Little by little, the scaffolding has been erected of a formidable tool that, in the hands of a vengeful governor or authority or one with an agenda, can affect the whole of the population. In its most minimal expression, it can intimidate any individual, involved in any activity. There are two possible explanations for this: one, that there lurks a Machiavellian plan behind these initiatives, oriented toward controlling the totality of the citizenry. The other, that each bill responds to the demands of distinct groups found within the Morena constituency, prompted to a greater degree by a revanchist spirit, probably against big business. I tend to think that the latter is more probable, but the question is irrelevant: what has been built is a lethal instrument for individuals, businesses and in general, for investment. The same could occur with savings on the passing of the bill that has been sent to Congress concerning matters of the individual retirement accounts (afores) and the only thing that could impede this is the clairvoyance with which the opposition in the Senate has conducted itself.

The question is whether this is about a unified government that proposes the revamping of the manner in which the country functions in order to succeed in better distributing incomes and to eradicate corruption and impunity or whether what we are seeing represents opposing views, either partially or totally, that on accumulating, produce a budding authoritarian state. Were it the former, the objective is one that cannot be accomplished because it would only succeed in paralyzing the economy, therefore the country. Were it the latter, the good proposals presented in the budget would be annulled by those favoring intimidation and threats to certainty and viability in the country’s long term.

Those driving the consolidation of an authoritarian government with all of the instruments and means to intimidate and control the population outright, from the most prominent businessman to the most modest peasant, evidently assume that the government can impose its will and that the population, all of it, has no alternative.

The reality is very distinct, as proven by two examples: on the one hand, it’s been quite obvious, for decades now, that the humblest Mexicans migrate to find the job and developmental opportunities that the politicians and bureaucrats have traditionally denied them. Migrants vote with their feet and, along the way, whether interpreted thus or not, they have de facto censured and failed a whole system of government.

For their part, the companies –medium and large- have been growing and expanding the length and breadth of the earth as a natural process of evolution, identical to that characterizing the rest of the planet. In the same way that an Audi or Toyota plant is installed in Mexico, Mexican companies grow and are set up in Germany or Japan. If there had been a much larger domestic market, their foreign expansion surely would have been less. The fact that the economy has grown so little, in average, comprises another piece of evidence substantiating the poor governmental performance throughout various decades.

The problem for the government is that it appears to believe that greater control will produce a better result. The evidence has been witness to precisely the flip side of the coin: without a strong source of trust in government, not even the peasants will save or invest.

www.cidac.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

In 2018 two contrasting, but equally representative and valid, Mexicos manifested themselves: that of an angry and resentful population that wanted to change its reality, although not in possession of a clear course, and the other, which wanted to have access to a modern education, successful global insertion and a true capacity for raising productivity in a context of the Rule of Law and transparent rules of the game. The former cohort voted en masse for AMLO and expects prompt results. The latter perceived improvements throughout recent decades but is not satisfied. They voted differently, but they confront -we confront- the same challenges.

The electoral results at the regional level of Election Day 2018 are very revealing: voter abstention was relatively high in regions where things had improved substantially, while it was very low in zones where there had not been growth. That is, people are not satisfied with the pace of the advance, but everyone wants progress, everyone wants improvement. The paradox, in itself demonstrative, is that those who have benefited (as in the states of Aguascalientes, Querétaro and, in general, in Mexico’s North and East) are unsatisfied with the improvement not being faster, while those who have not benefited at all demand being included in the benefits.  No one wants to go backward: what they insist on is going more rapidly, but with better distribution of the benefits.

It is not two visions for the country, it is two contrasting realities after decades of partial reforms, insufficient and, in many cases biased. The reforms initiated in the eighties were unavoidable because the model of development that had been so successful in the post-WWII era stopped working and, on attempts to maximize it along the seventies, the collapse was caused of governmental finances in 1982, and then many years of economic crises and almost hyperinflation. It is not true that the country found itself in a nirvana at the beginning of the eighties: rather, it was a mirage, the product of an instant of high oil prices and the great availability of foreign debt, both, as Lopez Velarde would have said, underwritten by the devil.

The problem of the reforms was not the imperious need for them, but instead the criterion that ushered them in: reforms were made not to alter the status quo, but to make it viable. The objective was to reactivate the economy after years of incessant crises, in order to maintain the old political system intact. Under this premise, it is not by chance that many political, union and business bosses preserved their privileges, making progress impossible for vast regions of the country, sectors of the economy and parts of society. It is also not surprising that the indexes of poverty and marginalization were maintained or that corruption persisted.

One must bear in mind that the reforms were driven by the technocrats and limited by the politicians, whose interplay produced inevitable contrasts and contradictions. What is ironic about AMLO’s proposals is that he has excluded those who would have been his best allies in satisfying the claims of all Mexicans: similarly for those who feel dissatisfied despite it having gone reasonably well for them as for those who are dissatisfied because their lot has not improved in the least. Perhaps this explains the enormous contrast between the approval that the person of the president basks in and the meager support afforded his initiatives. In colloquial terms, no Mexican would wish to continue living by a thread depending on old technologies (as shown in an extraordinary video where AMLO proposes to preserve donkey-driven old mills) when they aspire to live like those appearing on television. The solution does not lie in going backward, but in making haste forward under the assumption of inclusion and social mobility. That is where AMLO could indeed transform Mexico.

If the scenario is so evident, why are there no massive marches in favor of a better education, clear-cut and reliable rules and an end to extortion and impunity? Without doubt, a great part of the explanation can be found in the reality of the country’s fiefdoms: whatever the sphere within which each Mexican moves, there is always a local mafia-like boss or special interest that holds that ability to move in check. Some of these are quite obvious, such as the mafias of organized crime and those of education, like the National Confederation of Education Workers (CNTE), but others are more subtle: clientelist donations in which the president delights have the effect of mollifying in place of resolving problems; the manipulation exercised by the electronic media, which closes, rather than opens up, opportunities to those living furthest from the possibilities of development that today’s world offers, and exacts; and, no less important, the fedupness engendered by decades of promises and evidence of corruption. People are not foolish and do understand, but their possibilities of acting are scarce in the absence of propitious conditions or the presence of oppressive leaders.

The electoral result of 2018 was the product of insufficient reforms that left the majority of the population dissatisfied. It is time to shoulder responsibilities and build a new future. Would that the president were willing to be at the helm of this.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The law says it, therefore it must be true. Cicero would have said: Lex dixit, verita est. Under this benchmark, if the law prohibits it, it does not exist: there are no abductions, there are no thefts, there are no homicides, there is no domestic violence. All because it is prohibited by law.

At least that is what Mexican legislators tell the citizenry repeatedly: the bulletins emerging from Congress are always the same:  “we have now legislated, thus the problem has already disappeared.” Except that, everybody knows, nothing changed, except what is published in the Government’s Gazette: thousands of pages of new legislation that changes nothing in the reality: the abductions and the thefts and the corruption all continue. The only thing missing is that some legislator or the President would decree that there was happiness. With that, Mexico’s problems would be history.

The politicians, and especially when they are candidates, bend over backward vowing that they will resolve all of the problems: some because they are the personification of the good, others because it would bring the Rule of Law in daily life. For those who live in the earthly world, in which problems do not resolve themselves nor with more laws and useless directives, pledges of legality are vague, reiterated and false.

Legality has become a rhetorical myth: everyone promises it, but no one defines it. For those shysters in government, if it is written in the law, it is legal and, therefore, Mexicans live under the Rule of Law, which has led to the practice of modifying the law so that what the government wants can be done. What all these politicians do not understand –equally those in the small, distant demarcations and those who feel that they are superior- is that the essence of legality lies in that the authority cannot change the law at will. That is, legality is impossible as long as someone has the power to change it without proper counterweights.  ­

The Rule of Law consists of three very simple things: first, that citizens have their rights (legal, political and property) perfectly defined; second, that all citizens know the law beforehand; and third, that those responsible for making the law complied with do so in a manner in accord with the rights of the citizens. That is, legality implies that both parts -the citizenry and the government- exist in a world of clear, known and predictable rules that cannot be modified in willful and capricious fashion, but by following a procedure in which there is the prevalence of checks and balances whose core characteristic would be respect for the rights of the citizenry.

This definition, although succinct, establishes the crux of the platform that regulates the conduct of a society.  When that framework is in place and respected and compliance is enforced, the Rule of Law prevails. When the rules are unknown, changing or ignorant of citizens’ rights, legality is non-existent.

It is in this context that the problematic that the Rule of Law faces in the country should be analyzed. The natural propensity of Mexican politicians and attorneys (and, more recently, the OECD) is to propose more laws instead of attending to the underlying problem. That basic problem is very simple and in this lies the dilemma: legality in Mexico does not exist because those endowed with political power have the capacity to ignore the law, violate it, modify it to their liking or apply it, or not, as they please. That is, the problem of legality in Mexico resides in the enormous power concentrated in the government and the so-called political class –and, increasingly, in one person- and that allows it to remain distant and immune from the population

There are two components of the currently prevalent “Rule of the Unlawful”, as Gabriel Zaid defined it: one component is the huge, excessive latitude and discretion -which ends up being arbitrary- that is granted to the authorities by all of the laws and regulations, from the police officer at the crosswalk to the President of the Republic. Governmental officials in Mexico decide who lives and who dies (or who has to pay a bribe) because the law de facto concedes this faculty to them. This is not something that materializes by error: this is the manner by which the political system is nurtured and preserved, the way that kickbacks, corruption and impunity are paid off.

The only way to build a regime of legality is by removing the extreme powers that the political class holds, and that can only come about through the individual members own volition –or by through effective leadership that recognizes that therein lies the key source of impunity and corruption-or by a revolution. There’s no other possibility.

At the risk of repeating an example that is unexcelled, the government of the 1980-90s understood that the absence of the Rule of Law rendered it impossible to attract private investment, without which economic growth is impossible. Thus, the raison d’être of the North American Free Trade Agreement was precisely that: a space of legality where there are clear and known rules and an authority that makes them be followed. That regime was adopted because the government at the time was willing to accept “hard” rules in exchange for investment.

If we Mexicans want a regime of legality, we will have to do the same for the whole country, for the entire population, for all citizens. Therein is the revolution that Mexico is lacking.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof