Luis Rubio

As the saying goes, after an intemperate night before comes the morning after. A less amiable way to observe the current government is to recall Louis XV when he stated that “Après moi le déluge.” In effect, soon will conclude the most destructive Mexican government of the last century leaving more than deficits in its wake. The most powerful and electorally legitimate president since vote counting began in earnest did nothing but polarize the population, confront the political parties and threaten those who dissented with him, all while enjoying the reforms that his predecessors put into practice in response to the predicaments exhibited by the economy. These are two sides of the same coin: the politics of permanent battle, and the gradual maturation of the economy.   The question is whether the next president will view this legacy as an opportunity or as a curse.

The manner in which the outgoing president conducts himself reminds me of Gonzalo N. Santos, that eminent Mexican political linguist, when he explained how he proceeded with one of his enemies: “in agreement with a group of card sharks… I sent Carrillo to them to get him drunk, all of these individuals masquerading as his party acolytes… when he was completely inebriated, I arrived with a photographer, commanded Carrillo to remove his clothing, and they photographed him in all forms and positions imaginable. Therein died Carrillo’s candidacy because I menaced him with exposing the candidate in the nude in the Electoral College.” An important part of the citizenry was virtually intoxicated during these past few years, the so-called “hard vote,” enticing them into believing that nirvana was just around the corner. In contrast with Santos, AMLO was not as blunt in his ways: instead of getting his adherents drunk, he dedicated himself to procuring their electoral choice with public funds, but the result is the same, except that he left the country mortgaged to the hilt. Now comes the hangover.

This government will come to an end and the undertow from it will ensue, as always happens. What the president manipulates every day in his morning press conferences and discards and rules out as irrelevant will materialize on the horizon as immanent reality, demanding specific responses instead of irresponsible evasions. Today’s chaos -stubborn chaos that has positioned the citizenry to hope for something better- will turn into uncontainable demands. The pressures, passions and resentments that are self-contained at present will acquire such a volume that the new government will be obliged to respond decisively, beginning with the language and the appearances.

It seems clear that the new government will take shape from a dominant party and from a new president with enormous opportunities, but with the sword of Damocles at the ready due to the reforms that, evidently conceived without considering the consequences, the Morena party is disposed to approve without further ado. This month of September will be crucial because it will determine whether such an extraordinary result will evolve into an opportunity or into the beginning of an accelerated decomposition.

Conceptually, the incoming president has three options: persevere in the objectives, strategies and tactics of the departing government; develop her own program, distinct from the existing one, but one earmarked for a radical turn; or procure a broad and inclusive call for change that truly transforms the country or that, at least, sets the bases for a complete transformation.

While practically no government assumes office without much fanfare announcing great projects, the outgoing government will have bequeathed a panorama in economic (above all fiscal) as well as politically, one that is scarcely promising. Of course, the election embodied a devastating result for the opposition, but the future depends on the active participation of the whole of society, something that the government soon to take its leave achieved, perhaps due more to inertia than to a successful convocation of the people, but in good measure to the existence of the free trade arrangement of North America, constituting as it does the main source of economic growth at present.

Independently of the rhetoric, from the panorama left by the AMLO administration more of the same is conceivably possible, but not with good potential. Additionally, the differences in personality between the incoming and the outgoing presidents augur poor viability for blind continuity, even if well informed. A radical turn, for which many leaderships of the Morena constellation advocate, would imply an economically suicidal strategy because, although popular at the outset, it would have the effect of annulling the foundations of the successful component of the economy. It would be much more intelligent to put together a great national agreement that calls for balanced economic growth in social as well as regional terms, sustained on the principal growth engine of the economy (exports) and on nearshoring.

The neuralgic point is that there is, as some dream of, nowhere to return to, but it also not possible to   persevere in a model of government dedicated to the citizenry not progressing; that kills and extorts millions of persons; and one that pretends that the country can be successful with only cash transfers.

Six years of negligibly productive polarization, leaving huge costs and damages in its wake that little by little will rise to the surface. It’s time to come together to build, the opportunity that the entire citizenry is surely waiting for, independently of how it has voted. It would be criminal to let the opportunity go by.

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Luis Rubio

“If it does not make sense, it sounds metallic” goes a popular refrain. In Mexico the governments change but not the practices nor the customs.  Corruption could be an evil, a cultural factor or a characteristic, but never a crime. Many are accused of corruption, but never for the corruption itself, but instead as an excuse for some political violation of another order or because it is an effective way of eliminating contenders, enemies or rivals.  The President frequently stated that he would not cover-up for anyone, but that ceased to be valid when those presumed to be involved began to be close to him. The issue here is that corruption cannot be eradicated with speeches or wishes, but instead with a correct diagnosis that later translates into consistent actions.  

Corruption is inherent in the Mexican way of being and being governed. There’s no getting away from that fundamental principle. Everything in the national life, especially in the public ambit, is designed -or at least highly inclined- toward corruption because the laws and rules reward impunity. Although the phenomenon is as old as the country itself, it has worsened due to democratization. Luis Carlos Ugalde* wrote that the pyramidal corruption of the era of authoritarian presidentialism has been “democratizing itself” on becoming incorporated into all levels of government, political parties and branches of government. What was formerly concentrated, and an instrument of political cohesion, has become a mechanism of political control in the hands of a growing number of actors. Worse yet, its ubiquitousness has generated widespread repudiation in society, anger that has become hate.

Campaigning politicians tend to adopt a priggish, moralizing tone in matters of corruption: they vow a heavy hand, all-out combat, and severe measures to eradicate it. The proposal that the then-Morena-party candidate published during her campaign rejects the scheme of citizenry-led effort that characterized the so-called “national anticorruption system,” to be replaced by the strengthening of the judicial instances, that is, more of the old same. The proposal sounds like the diagnoses that led to the creation of the Ministry of the Comptroller’s Office back in the eighties that, like all of the previous efforts, increased bureaucratic requirements and made life ever more complicated for public functionaries, but did not touch corrupt practices in the slightest.

It’s one or the other: either the diverse proposals to combat corruption do not understand the phenomenon, or they constitute nothing more than a rhetorical resource employed to emerge from the situation. The innumerable proposals -the honest ones as well as the merely rhetorical ones- for combatting corruption entail an evident punitive bias: corruption must be penalized and the best way to accomplish that is with sanctions, though these rarely materialize. Some proposals (and politicians) prefer a more powerful authority, others recognize that, given the strong deficit of trust, greater transparency is required. But none of these proposals acknowledge the problem of origin: Mexican laws and regulations make corruption possible, they in fact promote it.

Fortunately, there are examples of that it is possible to diminish or eradicate corruption: when the spaces of arbitrariness and impunity are eliminated, corruption is no longer possible or inevitable. That is what occurred at the end of the eighties in the former SECOFI (today the Secretariat of Economy) where a change in the rules modified the entire nature of the Secretariat dedicated to trade and industry. Historically one of the spaces of greatest corruption in the government, the SECOFI bureaucracy lived from the exploitation of its discretionary powers in the awarding of permits for investment, importing, exporting and other similar permissions. With the liberalization of the economy (that, essentially, consisted of the substitution of the permit requirements with tariffs or rigid rules), nearly the whole industry of corruption in that Secretariat disappeared. The thousands of bureaucrats devoted to paper-shuffling (or impeding papers being shuffled) stopped being necessary and the personnel was reduced to less than 10% of what it was. In that world, corruption simply vanished. With the elimination of the need to obtain permits from the Secretariat and the establishment of clear and transparent rules for the obtaining of those still required, corruption virtually evaporated.

 There is no science in this: Mexican bureaucratic practices and the extreme use of discretion conferred on the authority by the laws and regulations are a permanent source of corruption. When a governmental functionary is endowed with ample faculties to contract, permit or render a project possible, grant a permit or authorize a work, the tendency to become corrupt is immense. If the son of a functionary can de facto decide who will be in charge of a public work, the probability of corruption flourishing is infinite. The phenomenon is not new and it affects all politicians and all political parties. Although the outgoing government denies this, the old saying that goes, “Don’t give me anything; just put me where it is” is as valid today as it always was in the past. And it would get worse should the judicial reform be approved.

If someone really means to change the panorama, they should start with the issue at hand: the excessive discretional powers that lead to absolute impunity.

*Nexos, February 2015

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Luis Rubio

Opportunities are opportunities when they are taken advantage of and summarily assumed, because contrariwise they simply are not. At the same time, no governmental or national action constitutes a panacea. Nearshoring is a great potential opportunity if Mexicans know how to take advantage of it and convert it into an instrument for the accelerated development of the economy. But it will only materialize if we come to understand what it implies and accept the whole package as such.

Throughout all the months that the so-called “category 2” was the norm for Mexico on the part of the U.S. civil aviation authorities, the real issues that differentiated the perceptions of the authorities across the border were not practical (whether about  runways or peripheral airport boundary walls,  security procedures or flight controllers) but instead cultural. Mexican authorities in the matter did not perceive any need to accept the de facto jurisdiction that implied “category 1.” Not until it was understood that the complete package had to be accepted did the wheels begin to turn, which ended up reestablishing a functional relation between the aviation authorities of both nations.  

The matter repeats itself in all ambits, each with its own characteristics and relevant actors. The U.S. constitutes a great opportunity for Mexico’s development because of its dynamism, size and wealth, as exhibited by the extraordinary engine of the Mexican economy that exports have become from the first Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) more than three decades ago. The neighborhood in which geography has situated Mexico constitutes an enormous opportunity, one that is at present magnified by the China—U.S. conflict, the latter conferring primacy on Mexico with respect to attracting investments, provided Mexico realizes how to take advantage of it: it will not materialize on its own.

Although there has been important growth in the installation of new plants in diverse points of the country, above all in the north, the truth is that the numbers are very small. The government has boasted about the growth of foreign investment, but the overwhelming majority of that growth has been the reinvestment of profits, not new investments. The question is what has been lacking.

The challenge resides in a basic option:   accept the nature of the correlation of power between the two nations or pretend that Mexico can be successful on its own. In the case of nearshoring, the relevant actors are not governmental but business: those who would invest are hundreds or thousands of enterprises of diverse sizes that would be seeking the opportunity to improve their productivity, guarantee the quality of their products and count on the certainty that the entire process, from the investment to the delivery of the goods to the final consumer, is going to be perfect. This involves factors as simple as or as complex as: security, physical infrastructure (industrial parks, highways, border crossings), the availability of electricity (and many potential investors now demand clean energies), amply trained personnel (which implies an educational sector oriented toward the integral development of the people, not one devoted to their ideological evangelization) and transparent and reliable rules of the game  (that is, judicial mechanisms for conflict resolution and making contracts be complied with). Above all, no differentiation between national and foreign investment, in that both assume risk in the same way.

Judging by the patterns of migration (from south to north), the expectations of those with relatives in the U.S., the remittances, the investments and the financial flows, the citizenry is not confused: the relationship with Mexico’s neighbor to the north is seen by all as an opportunity. Nearshoring raises that possibility in dramatic fashion due to the total and potential volume that it entails. If in addition the government dedicates itself in eliminating obstacles to investment and to the creation of an industry of Mexican suppliers committed to offering parts, components, services and so on, to the new investors, the circle could be virtuous and would involve millions of Mexicans who today do not perceive for themselves any opportunity at all. The point is that this concerns a prodigious potential opportunity, but only if we know how to seize it. And to seize it would imply a complete transformation of the manner in which the government perceives economic activity, foreign investment and the creative potential of millions of Mexicans who could end up being prosperous entrepreneurs.

I began by saying that nearshoring is not a panacea, but instead a mere opportunity if we know how to take advantage of the circumstance. Well-conceived, it could be a great opportunity to improve the access of many Mexicans, currently excluded, to the formal economy, open opportunities for new entrepreneurs who frequently find much better terrain for prospering in Chicago or in Los Angeles than they can in their own country. That is, this is an opportunity that ties in with the criteria of equity and fighting poverty and inequality, which comprise the essential thrust of the next administration.

Leonard Cohen seemed to be thinking about Mexico and nearshoring when he coined his famous phrase, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” The challenge is to convert the crack and the light because that’s where the transformative opportunity slips in.  

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Luis Rubio

A banner hanging from a building during the recent presidential race defined the challenge of Mexico in pithy fashion: “democracy with defects or dictatorship without rights: you decide.” Although democracy is a term frequently employed in Mexican political rhetoric, AMLO, the outgoing president, converted the term into an insubstantial turn of phrase that does not enjoy popular consensus. The upcoming government would do well to find a definition that embraces the entire population.

In its most elementary definition, democracy not only consists of electoral processes that determine who will govern, but also respect for the opposition, in the broadest sense of the term. However, the two things highlighted most often in the recent manner of conducting politics break with that central principle: the disqualification of the opposition, which it considers illegitimate; and the intimidation of the individuals whom the president considers adversaries, a concept that would include, potentially, everyone. That is, for the outgoing president the only thing that is in any way relevant is the monopoly of power that by definition excludes all the others, including, of course, his own voters. 

The reforms proposed by AMLO last February 5 clearly outline the spirit that animates them. Everything in those bills reflects a purpose of control, and the concentration of power in a sole person. Beyond the vindictive and small-minded character embodying the proposals, especially the one on the judiciary, the pertinent question is what is important: development or control. Dr. Sheinbaum has been particularly meticulous in separating those two elements, rendering a panorama of uncertainty as well as one of opportunity for this coming September.     

Together, the proposed reforms aim at sanctifying in the constitution elements as central to democracy as the suppression of the opposition in the legislature (by eliminating proportional representation); elimination of the Supreme Court of Justice as a counterweight (with the proposal that its members be elected rather than proposed by the executive and then ratified by the Senate); transfer of control of the electoral processes to the government with the elimination of the National Electoral Institute (INE) and the Electoral Tribunal; elimination of legal protection such as habeas corpus (amparo in Spanish); and the expansion of imprisonment without due process of law, which would confer vast arbitrary powers on the authority. The proposed bills thus constitute an implacable scaffold for the conformation of a constitutional dictatorship.

The question now is where the next government’s team finds itself in all this. Its electoral strategy privileged the figure and proposals of the president, leaving it to the citizenry to interpret where the former presidential candidate stands. One hypothesis is that, in effect, she approves the notion of the “second phase” of the president’s “fourth transformation; the other hypothesis is she is her own person and, thus, that she will give shape to her governmental vision as she advances in taking control of the government. Of course, the difference is critical, because, in the former case, the country would find itself at the edge of the abyss. In the latter, there would exist the opportunity to restore civility in the public arena, opening the door to a civilized interaction of the presidency with the Congress, the Supreme Court and the citizenry at large. In addition, as the saying goes, the drunk is not the same as the bartender: one thing is the electoral race, and another, quite distinct, is governing, the situation in which the winner now finds herself.

Given the result of the election, the opportunity is immense, but it would imply abandoning the attempt to structure a constitutional dictatorship. Such is the size of the quandary -and the inherent risks- that the next president and the country face.

Bill Hicks, a cantankerous British comedian, dreamt about the creation of a political party for “people who hate people.” The problem was that he did not achieve getting them all together in one room: the egotists defeated the central principle. For some reason, every time I heard of or saw the irate morning TV presidential rants I thought of Hicks. I ask myself whether Claudia Sheinbaum understands the enormous damage that the president generated with his intimidating diatribes; more to the point, I ask myself whether she understands that the role of the government is not to attack or destroy but rather to create, conciliate and lead.

It is evident that many Mexicans not only appreciate the president soon to take his leave, but also, they are loyal and believe in, at least until now, the veracity of his invectives and his supposed achievements in economic and social matters, in those of poverty and corruption. It is likely that the oft-resorted-to recourse to “other data” will end up discrediting the alleged accomplishments as reality begins to sink in. For the President-Elect the dilemma is how to preserve her base and, at the same time, bring the rest of the citizenry on board, which would inevitably entail distancing herself from the manner of conducting public affairs of the outgoing government, beginning with the rhetoric and its excesses.

Once without the personage dominating the outlook, the true question is what is it that the next president herself wishes to achieve and whether that is feasible. “A king, said Bruce Springsteen, “ain’t satisfied ’til he rules everything.” To impede that is the reason why the great thinkers of the 18^th century, such as Montesquieu and Madison, posed the separation of powers, thus contributing to the creation of the most developed and successful societies of the world. Isn’t that what is desirable?

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Luis Rubio

In The Name of The Rose, Umberto Eco employs an anecdote to evoke an obvious fact. He says: “In the Middle Ages, cathedrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a Second World War movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.” Equally evident was the presidential strategy to win the recent election: pay and subsidize almost half the population.

The strategy was public, open and systematically explained and repeated: no one can claim surprise; the president utilized resources that had been budgeted and earmarked for health and education, infrastructure and the maintenance of governmental installations, but were instead allocated to subsidize his clienteles in a permanent manner, creating a support base that was decidedly and brutally reflected on election day.

As the 19^th century philosopher Frederic Bastiat explained it, there are two sides to each coin: what is seen and what is not seen. And what is not seen is what is truly transcendent.

The visible part was the cash transfers. Millions of families were the beneficiaries of the clientelist strategy. The concept was not new: election after election throughout the 20^th century was characterized by a transactional strategy of the exchange of benefits for votes. The innovation that López Obrador incorporated was that of eliminating the transactional nature of the exchange by making the transfers permanent. Now an enormous portion of the public budget is dedicated to a subsidy which reaches, according to official figures, 45% of families.

There are two sides to every transaction: at the end of the day, this comprises an exchange. In the PRI era, the exchange was circumstantial, related to the upcoming election; the voters played the game by voting for whoever gave or promised them benefits, but they continued being, to employ a professional sports term, free agents. What changed in this election, resulting in brutal effectiveness, was the systematicity of the “support”, as the president denominates it, as it converted the “free agents” into permanent clienteles. Without doubt brilliant as a political strategy, but the relevant question is, what does this tell us about the Mexican reality?  

In a country in which everything is difficult, in which there are obstacles for anything and everything, the Obradorist subsidy resulted in being a decisive factor for the loyalties of these families. In fact, no one can doubt that the central objective of the government throughout the outgoing administration was to build those clientelist relationships to achieve the result that came about last June 2. What can be (and should be) criticized is the contempt with which the government operated on not promoting -or eliminating obstacles to- economic development, as well as the flagrant violations of the Electoral Law, but the heart of the strategy consisted of facilitating the lives of millions of Mexicans. This is the true factor of success and against this milestone is what the incoming government as well as its future opponents will have to contend.

Life in Mexico is in truth hard: whoever want to open a business knows that they will have to deal with the Treasury Department (Hacienda), the municipal government, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and a morass of local and federal regulations. Complying with the regulations is complex and costly; even paying taxes is difficult for those without basic knowledge, and the educational system does not help. In fact, education in Mexico is conceived to preserve poverty and dependence, two historical factors that the outgoing government emphasized with its school textbooks dedicated to no one being able to prosper. This point is a crucial one: education does not contribute to the formation of persons apt to developing themselves to their best, but instead to their continuing to be shackled by poverty, while the government, which avowedly put the poor first, did nothing other than shore up the permanence of the poor in that category. Why progress if it is better to be dependent on the government: a purposeful vicious circle. 

For those who succeed in making it on their own, they will encounter themselves up against the crude reality of a government devoted to its clienteles or one that is flatly absent: rather than protection and security, extortionists appear who exact protection money, inspectors who demand their “fair share” and police officers not far behind. Insecurity, the element that demonstrates that the government is not committed to what matters to the citizen, is the reality in which the overwhelming majority of the population has to contend. Opening a bank account has become an almost impossible ordeal and access to an education conducive to a better standard of living is only available at great cost because it is solely offered by private schools and universities. It is not necessary to talk about the health sector, virtually inexistent throughout the long six-year presidential term that is finally coming to an end.

The wrongs that Mexicans experience are the result of a system of government that capitulates to the priorities of the president and not to the development of the population. Instead of resolving the problems that truly afflict Mexicans, the president opted for subsidizing families: Who would not accept their life being facilitated when that very life is already so complex, costly and unattractive?     

As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame) wrote, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

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Luis Rubio

No one can doubt that justice in Mexico is practically nonexistent. The average Mexican lives in a sea of ​​permanent abuse without having any recourse to protect their interests.   Most of the issues -contracts, services, defective products- that involve the average citizen are local, unlike the federal jurisdiction, which is the one that involves matters linked to the federal government and that, at the pinnacle of the structure, refer to the Supreme Court of Justice. The former affect 99% of Mexicans; the latter engage the remaining 1%. One would think -it would be common sense- that any reform to the justice system would focus on the problems faced by the 99%.

However, the bill that is being discussed and feared so much is not aimed at improving justice or at creating mechanisms to resolve conflicts or disputes that affect citizens, but rather to establish tight control over the members of the Supreme Court of Justice. In one word, the objective is strictly political, derived more from a spirit of revenge than from a constructive goal of solving real and tangible problems that afflict the population.

The challenge that the outgoing president’s project represents for the judiciary is but one component of the broader framework that integrates the set of constitutional amendments that, like poison, he is trying to inherit Dr. Sheinbaum. The repercussions of the proposed changes to the structure of the Supreme Court are multiple and with consequences in many more areas than its promoter probably imagines. However, in terms of political power, they go hand in hand with the proposed elimination of the members of Congress by proportional representation, the incorporation of the Electoral Institute (INE) and the Electoral Tribunal (TRIFE) into the federal government and the dismantling of the few remaining independent regulatory bodies, including Transparency and Access to Information (INAI).

The nodal point is that the proposed reforms are not a matter of laws but of power. Much of the discussion that has taken place in the media, periodicals and academic debates has revolved around the powers of the various entities and branches of the government, that is, their constitutional attributes. However, this approach seems misguided because the outgoing government has shown its unwillingness to abide by the laws or powers of the presidency, whether derived from the Constitution of other laws. For President López Obrador, what is relevant is not the law but the power that the presidency can wield without check, and his mantra throughout his term has been to increase those powers systematically, first de facto and now in the Constitution.

There is no doubt that the checks and balances that were created with the reform of the Supreme Court in 1994 and thereafter turned out to be weaker than their authors intended, perhaps largely because they were never explained and socialized among the population and, therefore, they did not acquire the legitimacy that is, in the end, the factor that determines the strength of an institution. It is no coincidence that the two most disputed institutions -by attackers and defenders alike- are the best known: the Supreme Court and the INE, where citizens are duly invested. Their legitimacy provides credibility and, consequently, their elimination would have enormous costs for the government and the country in general.

The current moment will end up being crucial, whatever the outcome. The notion that it is possible to recreate the old presidency at no cost is laughable. The size, diversity and dispersion of the population bears no resemblance to the idyllic era which the president seems to want to recreate (the 1970s); the structure of the economy in the globalized world has nothing to do with that of the period known as “stabilizing development” (1950s and 1960s) nor can the country return to that era; and Morena, in addition to not being a political party in shape, does not have the tentacles that the PRI of yesteryear had nor the control of social structures such as the Labor Congress, the peasants organizations (CNC) or the popular organizations (CNOP). Opium dreams can end up being extraordinarily expensive.

The big battle being played at this moment (the so-called “Plan C”) aims to recreate the authoritarian regime of yesteryear. But the “small” battle is the crucial one at this juncture because it is what will determine the possibility of the total control project being consolidated. This “small” battle has to do with the overrepresentation that Morena aspires to in the two legislative chambers, for which the certification of the election is the central factor. The president, a calculating politician, intends to control the process that leads to overrepresentation and, from there, to the qualified majority by his party through the judges of the electoral tribunal, whose current number, by the actions of the president himself, is insufficient to produce the certification of the June 2 election. It is not a conspiracy, but the attitude should deceive nobody.

The underlying point is what is crucial: how would these constitutional and political games affect the future president? One would think that after an overwhelming victory, the smoothest possible transition would be the logical goal, but the president seems bent to create the conditions for a potential Waterloo.

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Luis Rubio

Leaders inherit their circumstances, affirm Zelikow and Rice.* “Facing those circumstances between the years 1988 and 1992, some leaders chose, quite  deliberately, to transform the basic operating principles of whole societies. They chose to abolish countries and create new ones. They chose to roll back and substantially disarm the larger and most dangerous military confrontation in the world… But, like all human creations, their new system made trade-offs, flaws and set up new issues…” The authors refer at the end to the Soviet Union, but the concept is applicable to a good number of nations that, during the same years, focused on transforming themselves, the majority of these in integral fashion, as in the case of Korea, China, Spain, Portugal, Taiwan and many others, including Mexico: great transformer leadership, but with unanticipated consequences.  The judgements arrived at decades later are logical and politically relevant, but not always useful for correcting the sequelae of those unforeseen consequences.

One common characteristic, although with enormous differences in degree, in all the nations that opted to transform themselves was the authoritarianism that characterized them. In some cases, these were military regimes, in others authoritarian governments and in yet others systems devoted to the integral control of their populations and that came to be called totalitarian. The transformation undertaken by those leaderships, in some cases with great clarity, vision and sense of purpose, in others less so, threw open a vast window to the freedom of the people.    

“Imagine the hopes and fears of this generation [Gorbachev, Kohl, Mitterrand, Bush, Delors, Thatcher]. For the majority of these men and women, words   like ‘tyranny’, ‘freedom’, ‘war’ and ‘security’ were no empty extractions. They brought back very real traumas…” Something similar can be said about Adolfo Suárez, Felipe González, Carlos Salinas, Kim Dae-jung, Lee Teng-hui and Deng Xiaoping. Some of these leaders procured a strictly economic transformation, others understood that it was impossible to separate an economic liberalization from its consequent political liberalization (a concept that China continues to defy).

The transformations have been real and have changed the nature and circumstance of dozens of nations, in most cases for good. But the unanticipated consequences to which these authors refer are not lesser ones and have translated into factors of true contention: from the war among the nations comprising the former Yugoslavia to governments that, more recently, have tried to turn back the clock of history or that, simply, have constructed, strengthened or recreated authoritarian systems. AMLO’s morning press conferences are a perfect example of a unipersonal leadership dedicated to moving back the hands of time as if to return the genie to its bottle or the toothpaste to its tube. But, beyond the personal style of misruling of each reactionary leader, there are two things not at all in doubt: one is that, in effect, there were indeed unanticipated consequences, and these must be seen to; the other is that it makes a huge difference in how those consequences are in effect seen to.

The how of something is on occasion as much or more important than the what. For example, it is undeniable that the liberalization of the economies brought about a redefinition of the logistics of industrial production at the worldwide level and this, in turn, generated very differentiated impacts. On liberalizing their economies, the developed nations saw many jobs leave for countries that aspired to become industrialized. Korea, Taiwan and other nations embraced the opportunity and transformed themselves along the way. Mexico arrived a little late at the party and its attempt to transform itself was less ambitious, thus translating into lost opportunities of which China diligently took advantage, becoming the factory to the world. 

The key point is that it is fundamental to understand that governmental actions have consequences and that, therefore, the way in which the problems are attended to entail impacts that frequently do not appear evident beforehand. To what extent should the government act in a direct manner in the economic arena? What consequences involve an apparently unstoppable tendency to transfer all projects and institutions to the Army? Utilize the market for assigning resources or harass it? It does not matter what the government does or the ambit within which it acts, its deployment gives rise to effects that incentivize favorable or unfavorable actions. That is, although the country has few formal counterweights, the informal ones are overly effective and do not always yield the results that the leader anticipates or prefers.

Each one will have their preferences regarding the questions in the latter paragraph, but the important part is that what leaders desire or prefer is not always the result. That is why it is so important not to lose sight of the fact that the function of governing is much more delicate than is apparent.

As Orwell wrote, “the fact is that certain rules of conduct have to be observed if human society is to hold together at all.”

*To Build a Better World

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Luis Rubio

During her campaign, today’s President-Elect repeatedly stated that two contrasting models of the country and the government were at stake in the election. In effect: democracy and tyranny are two models in counterpoint that entail fundamental consequences for the citizenry and for the country’s future. Whatever way each citizen voted in past election, the question today is in which direction is the country headed.

At the heart of this question reside two central queries: First, should a government do whatever seems better to the president due to the mere fact of their being president and without any limitation? And second, does a majority vote imply absolute power for effecting a change of any sort that the governor determines?

If the answer to these questions is in the affirmative, then one is inexorably speaking of a dictatorship because there is no other way to define a government that wields all the power and that can do what it considers desirable or necessary with no limit whatsoever. That was how the outgoing government conducted itself in everything it was able: attacking the judiciary, undermining the autonomous organisms, disqualifying criticism, all signs of a tyrannical government.

If the response is negative, then Mexicans are addressing the possibility of a democracy in which winners as well as losers are considered legitimate citizens before the government, society and the political process. Mexican democracy is clearly imperfect and, in fact, highly primitive and deficient, but its essence comprises the coexistence of persons, groups and interests that think differently and that do not cease to be, and deserve being, respected and respectable because of that.

The point of this contrast is not theoretical but instead absolutely practical: no election can, in itself, define the destiny of a nation, whether or not a majority of the electorate has voted for the governor or even when the governor enjoys wide-reaching popularity. The whole point of civilization is that no one -winner or loser- wins or loses everything because there is always a tomorrow and the cards can invert themselves, with whoever won today ending up on the other side of the table.

Of course, the government’s agenda, the victor’s mandate as it is called in some nations, is the product of an election in which the content of that agenda was widely debated and that, on winning, constitutes a program of government. Despite the latter, in a democratic nation it is always indispensable to channel that agenda through the legislature so that that other branch of government representing the electorate as a whole openly and publicly process the resources necessary for the accomplishment of the governmental objectives.

Unless the next president has as her aim the total dismantling of the current structure of checks and balances (that does not for its being weak stop being crucial), that is, unless she is decided on constituting a dictatorship, the only way that the country could advance and prosper is to fortify and, in many senses create or recreate, institutions susceptible to functioning as a counterweight before the presidency. This would imply accepting, once again, that the formal and de facto objective of the government is to advance toward (or consolidate) free and duly administrated and processed elections; a consolidated Rule of Law (including an autonomous Supreme Court); full freedom of expression and association; and protection of the civil and human rights of the entire citizenry. In other words, a majority system of government limited by institutional counterweights, beginning with the constitution and respect for minorities. In this manner, the opposite of what Mexicans underwent during the outgoing presidency dedicated to institutional destruction.  

Amid the climate of polarization promoted by the departing president, the very notion of the presidency entertaining institutional limits was considered an outrage. In serious countries and in those with consolidated democracies, there is a frequent replacement of governments guided by contrasting objectives and philosophies, but, whether they like it or not, they accept the fact that there are limits to their potential excesses. Of course, in all democracies governments seek ways to advance their agendas, looking for any and every recourse, such as decrees, anti-constitutional laws and other mechanisms, but, at the end of the day, they accept the verdict of the courts and autonomous regulatory entities. The latter is what is crucial: no government is headed by The Sisters of Charity, but in all civilized nations there is a limit to what the government can do to affect citizens who have the same rights, whether they voted for the government or not.  

This last point is the essence of the matter that the next president must endeavor to elucidate: Is she going to attempt to strengthen the Mexican democracy or to accelerate the pace toward tyranny. That is, in a nutshell, the choice is clear.  The “popular sovereignty” must subject itself to the same rules and limitations as the rest of the electorate, because the true tessitura lies between democracy of and for all or the dictatorship of the majority.

Paul Johnson, the famed historian, defines this with great clarity: “democracies work best when the remit of politicians is reined in.”

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Luis Rubio

1982. Mexico finds itself in a difficult situation. The public finances have deteriorated due to the gambles that the outgoing government has taken throughout its administration, betting that at the end everything would translate into economic growth. While that was happening, the presidential election continued along its course in normal fashion. The month of July arrives and Miguel de la Madrid wins. The circumstances are not optimal, but the president-elect is a sensible individual, stable, exceedingly circumspect and armed with experience in public administration. Despite the complexity of the financial moment, the environment is promising because a government saturated with corruption and frivolity is about to come to an end, anticipating the advent of an austere and measured administration. But the first of September arrives, the day of the 1982 Presidential Address to the Nation. Instead of recognizing his last opportunity to tranquilize the population, the outgoing President, José López Portillo, opts for exacerbating the circumstances on announcing the expropriation of the banks, thus throwing open Pandora’s Box. With this action he divided the country and condemned his successor to having to deal with a nation in crisis, near hyperinflation and with constant deterioration. The new government, inaugurated three months later, was born destined to do battle with the dire consequences of its predecessor: rather than “manage an era of abundance” as previously foreseen, it ended up extinguishing fires. The action of the departing president changed the country, destroyed his image (never stopping being the “Dog”) and damned the country to a decade of ups and downs and continuous perils. 

Mark Twain, the great American writer and humorist, said that “history never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” Might it be that President Lopez Obrador, who is  taking his leave in 2024, would repeat the dirty trick of 1982, provoking a radical change of direction, above all after such a successful election?

President López Obrador finds himself before this tessitura: leave the country in a reasonable situation, saddled with the normal difficulties and challenges, but without an uncontainable critical situation so that his successor can begin her era in a promising manner, or risk its future   -his personal one, that of his successor and that of the country- for the sake of saving his image and his pride? 

The notification of the processing of the twenty legislative initiatives that he announced last February 5 constitutes a threat to his successor because it recasts the lay of the land and would create conditions rendering it impossible to govern. Who wins in such a scenario?

While it is evident that an administration does not terminate until the day that the president delivers the mandate to his successor, the (Mexican) political reality is that the government concludes on election day and what constitutes conducive behavior is for the outgoing president to contribute to ensuring an uncomplicated transition to magnify his successor’s probability of success. Particularly when the president has achieved the foremost milestone of his administration on being widely endorsed by the electorate in the form of the election of his candidate. Placing her at risk would be a supremely irresponsible act or, as the 18^th century statesman Talleyrand (supposedly) said, “more than a crime, it would be a mistake.” With less restraint than the diplomatic language of the Frenchman, the Hanlon Razor principle states “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

In effect, in terms of Mexican political logic, the citizenry currently finds itself in the process of transition in which the already de facto new administration is now commencing and the president ending his term of office must recognize that not only has his time as president concluded, but that, as spoken by the voters, the supreme judgement of all, his success is undeniable and any change in the path going forward would do nothing other than complicate  the panorama for his successor. Suffice to exemplify this with the date on which AMLO cancelled the Mexico City airport, months prior to his being formally sworn in as president. His cycle is coming to an end, and it is time for his successor to decide what is next and how to achieve it.

None of this has to do with the substantive part of the president’s legal proposals. The package of twenty reforms, eighteen of these constitutional, that the president proposed entail an extensive variety of matters, some of much greater transcendence than others. Given that the composition of the Congress that is finally confirmed will be the same in September as after the inauguration of Dr. Sheinbaum in October first, there is no reason for the precipitation that the president expected when he launched the process at the start of the year. A serious-minded country does not rush things, but instead processes them, debates them, socializes them and reconsiders them according to the circumstances. In addition, the small show of force that the financial markets put forth when the absence of the counterweights that produced the electoral result became clear should be pondered with enormous seriousness. The president flaunted, once and again, the solidity of the peso and it would be an act of superlative obstinacy and temerity to tempt fate in this manner. 

James Carville, Bill Clinton’s famous electoral advisor, said on one occasion that “I used to think that if there were reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” The risk of going ahead with the reforms package is superlative. And wholly absurd because it is unnecessary and above all, dangerous. 

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Luis Rubio

The end of one more electoral cycle will not be like all others in the past. With this election the country is fast approaching a moment of unravelling not due to the result itself, but instead because the process, the antecedents and the imponderables evidenced along the way stripped the political system of its guise and revealed the fragility that the country is currently experiencing due to the risks of and taken by a sole individual and, above all else, the impossibility of further pursuing that course. Those who are newly elected do not recognize that fragileness, but they will soon experience it.

AMLO is unrepeatable because of his characteristics and his circumstance, as well as because of Mexico’s present moment. As soon as the next government assumes office the shortfalls will come to light: the absence of structures, institutions and rules of the game, as well as the counterpart of these: the tendency toward violence or to other means, legal or illegal, for advancing particular interests and objectives. In a word, the country is about to enter a new political era, one only negligibly promising. 

This is not the first time that the country finds itself faced with a challenge of this nature, but the solutions employed in the past are no longer possible. Now, at the twilight of the López Obrador administration, the country must begin to deal with the consequences of the fragility of the institutional structures erected in recent decades, as well as the intentional destruction engaged in by the outgoing government.

Throughout the 20^th century, the formal structure of the Mexican political system did not correspond to the reality of the power characterizing: the judicial and legislative branches existed, but the dominance of the executive was legendary.  However, that dominance was tempered by the existence of the official party (the PRI), whose institutional structure favored substitution of the elites as well as continuity of power. The famous British maxim “The king is dead, long live the king!” was reproduced (almost) naturally in the Mexican system, permitting the transition of power, but also the existence of limits. That structure of political control and institutionality as it pertained to the party of the PRI came to be degraded little by little (not intentionally, but with poor leaderships), until nearing extinction, presumably to be replaced by a never fully consolidated democratic system.

Therefore, there are important questions that only time will allow us to elucidate, commencing with the power of the departing president. The weakness of Institutions, not a new issue, will now become paramount and a matter of primordial transcendence. The absence of institutions and game rules throws open a veritable cornucopia of possibilities in terms of political degradation and the potential emergence of real or “de facto” powers throughout Mexico’s territory, regional as well as national, criminal and political. A new era of caudillismo is not inconceivable, similar to that present at the end of revolutionary period, but in the digital era, right now in the XXI century.

Beyond the election itself, the politico-structural legacy of the government that is about to end will be much more transcendent and relevant that it might appear, but not necessarily in a benign way. The president taking his leave is exceptional, for his history and his characteristics, while the winner of the election will have to find her own manner of facing the challenges -her own and those of the country- that she must confront. Like no one else in the entire post-revolutionary epoch, she will have to deal with the enormous feat of building at least a minimal of scaffolding in order to be able to govern, given that the previously existing structures -those conceived since President Plutarco Elías Calles and those forged for an age of democracy during the last decades- have given their all, were destroyed or are inoperative when not counterproductive.

The governance of Morena, a structureless entity that only its founder had the capacity to articulate and control, will comprise a major challenge, and that is if the outgoing president does not try to utilize the party to hinder her. The country that aspired to replace the rule of men with the rule of institutions runs the risk of falling apart into fragments under the shadow of caudillos, leaders and organized crime, all in the midst of an economy living and functioning exclusively thanks to a free trade agreement with our complex neighbor to the North. 

The era that starts in 2024 entails remarkable opportunities, but also unusually large risks, both internal and external.  The country has lived through   five years as if residing within a bubble, connected to the rest of the world and feigning to be independent and that it can isolate itself all at no cost. The next president will find out very quickly that the viability of the growth engine of the Mexican economy is at risk and that accountability due to the omissions and acts contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Free Trade Agreement will not be long in coming. It will be at that moment when Mexicans will know what the new president is made of to face those challenges.  

AMLO was a little like the PRI, a factor of cohesion and control, but ephemeral for obvious reasons. Now the weaknesses of before and the new ones will become evident, those that the outgoing president left bare and those that he destroyed. Complex times are afoot.

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