Luis Rubio

Let other boast about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read
Jorge Luis Borges

Jonathan Tepperman, the editor of Foreign Policy, argues in The Fix, that there are unconventional solutions to the problems that confront countries and that everything depends on the way the crises that come to present themselves are taken advantage of or utilized. Among the examples that Tepperman presents is that of   Botswana when diamonds, its main wellspring of resources, dried up; the manner in which Singapore ended corruption; and the extraordinary reconciliation that Rwanda achieved after the ethnic massacres.

Carlos Elizondo writes, in Los de adelante corren mucho, that the inequality characterizing the Latin American region is not the product of chance but rather, the result of the contradictions typifying our political systems, because they permit arrangements “outside” the legal regimes, lead to the exchange of favors among the elite and, in general, sanction the establishment of their own oligarchies whose logic is not that of development but instead one for their own benefit. The book lays bare the way these societies operate and provides perspective to the enormous challenge entailed in procuring a more equilibrated and across-the-board development.

The technological advance appears unstoppable, now with the connection of all sorts of devices, vehicles, clothing, toys for all ages, and persons to the Internet. Pax Technica, a book by Philip Howard, contends that we are approaching the “algocracy”, the government of algorithms, instruments that have become the most powerful political tools ever created and that threaten to subvert all manner of authority and political organization, beginning with the Nation-State. This author’s vision is catastrophic, thus obliging the rethinking -and reevaluating- of the freedoms that, with all of the obstacles and avatars, we have come to enjoy.

The vote on Brexit and Trump has generated far-reaching debate worldwide on the value and attributes of democracy and its viability. In Democracy and Its Crises, A. C. Grayling analyzes the circumstances that impeded the democratic system from dealing with the social forces that democracy itself had created.

The best book I read this year, without a doubt, was When the World Seemed New: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War, by Jeffrey A. Engel. It is a political study of the foreign policy of the first President Bush, the years during which the Soviet Union collapsed, the first Gulf War, NAFTA, the unification of the two Germanies and the invasion of Panama, all of which came to shape what that President denominated “a new international order.” The work portrays a series of photographs that evidence the dilemmas and calculations that face decision makers at key moments of history, although they are unaware of this at that juncture. The book reflects the human fallibilities, the uncertainties and the complexity in the face of the unknown: Can Gorbachov be trusted or is this nothing more than a ruse? What is the Soviet Union’s real situation? This is a treatise on foreign policy –on the cusp between prudence and pluck- on when the whole world appeared to be at a new dawn. This volume complements that published by Bush himself and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed, two decades previously: a dispassionate perspective on what it is to govern. Both reveal in Bush a statesman perhaps less recognized precisely for his having been so solid, cautious and prudent, in dramatic contrast with the present occupant of that same office.

The Marshall Plan, designed to contribute to the recovery of devastated European nations (above all the losers) after the Second World War, has savored a prestige out of all proportion. It is rare to find a government that has not demanded a similar program to aid poor nations or those who underwent a civil war; in Mexico, this program is frequently invoked as an example to resolve the problems in the country’s South and Southeast. Benn Steil has just published a book in which he provides an explanation of the program in its historical context and its U.S. foreign policy dimension. The book explains that the character of the program was not one of aid, but a means to support local efforts and capacities in order for these countries to emerge from the hole in which they found themselves. Whoever reads this book will know that there are no easy or automatic solutions: development is not accomplished with hand-outs, but with great administrative and managerial capacity. It is no coincidence that Germany and Japan ended up being more successful than Greece.

Stephen Pinker, the author of The Better Angels, a book in which he demonstrated that humanity has experienced a constant improvement with the declining of violence through the centuries, has now published, in countercurrent, Enlightenment Now. Here Pinker presents the exceptional progress that distinguishes the human race, rejecting head-on the Populists who refuse advances and progress. What is fascinating about the book lies in the way it focuses on the propensity to take as a given that what has advanced will last and, within that context, the author’s defense of progress is relentless, in that he presents Populist movements as arrogant and fallacious.

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Luis Rubio

Mexico needs a change of regime just as the citizenry demanded and President López Obrador offered. But not any change will do.

For the second time in a few decades, Mexicans find themselves face to face with the opportunity to modify the regime and build one that responds to the needs of all of the citizens, one that impedes abuse by those in charge of governing -present and future- and that guarantees the stability of the country.  Vicente Fox had the first opportunity in his hands but did not have the vision nor the capacity to grasp it. Now, the circumstances have created a new, perhaps last, opportunity to institutionalize the country and truly transform it. The question is whether the new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will promote a transformation towards institutionalization or authoritarianism.

The key question is what does a regime change mean. This is not a play on words:  for some, the regime is the person, while for others, the matter lies in the nature of the projects that will in fact drive a given government. In reality, the regime is something very distinct and much more fundamental: it is the way that a society is organized to govern itself.

One thing is the political system of a country, while another, very distinct from this, is the nature of the regime. Most European nations govern themselves by means of a parliament that reduces the system into two powers (the legislative branch within which lies the executive and the judiciary), while the presidential system is based on separate powers with a president heading the executive branch. The regime is distinct from the system of government: it is the way that the citizens relate with the political system, as well as the mechanisms that allow for their interaction with the system’s diverse components.

Developed countries have formal and informal mechanisms that constitute counterweights so that no component of the system abuses or imposes itself on the others. Of course, each nation has its own characteristics, the product of its history and experience. In this manner, a constitutional amendment in Denmark, to cite a paradigmatic example, can take years because it requires three votes of the parliament and at least one election. In England there is no written constitution but there is a constitutional tribunal that settles differences among powers and advocates for citizen rights. France is distinguished by a hybrid system, with a strong president and a parliament with its prime minister. Each country is different, but the common denominator of all the developed nations is that they incorporate institutional mechanisms and formal Institutions that obligate the distinct elements to negotiate, interact and adhere to transparent procedures in decision making.

Those mechanisms are the essence of the regime of each country because they constitute the way the citizens are protected -or unprotected. An example says more than a thousand words: in a developed country, no government can expropriate an enterprise without just cause, in addition to that its decision is subject to judicial review. These mechanisms are designed in order for no governmental functionary to abuse his or her faculties to the detriment of a citizen, thus conferring certainty on the citizenry. If President Trump shouts or becomes angry, the average U.S. citizen does not suffer the consequences in their everyday life. In Mexico’s case, if the President decides on an expropriation and the next day changes the law to justify this, the citizen is absolutely defenseless. Something similar takes place when the government spends more money than it has without having to give explanations, engendering with this a devaluation, which immediately affects an entire society in the consequent rising of prices and rents. That cannot happen in an institutionalized regime with effective checks and balances, the latter the necessary condition for development.

The regime emanated from the Mexican Revolution consisted of a political system around which everything functioned. That system continues to operate and now not only in practice, but also even in the overwhelming legislative numbers accompanying the new president. With that power, President López Obrador can transform the country; the question is whether he will do this in the spirit of polarizing the citizenry or constructing the regime of the XXI century, one that fits the needs of the citizens and the economy, or whether he effects this transformation to consolidate his own power and that of his political group.

In 2000, Fox wasted the opportunity of exchanging the institutionalization of the country for making tabula rasa of the past: the conditions were perfect to achieve this because the PRIsts were terrified that the new president would raze everything, including themselves to the ground. Something not very distinct is occuring today: the whole country is on tenterhooks, desirous of building a different future. Everything is lined up to construct a new regime, a modern one, geared to joining all the population together toward a better future. This is the opportunity to break with the unions that hold back the development of the population and the abusive monopolies, with the lack of transparency and with the corruption. There will not be another opportunity. Hopefully AMLO will not squander it by leading the country backward.

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Luis Rubio

The country lost its way when it began to privilege economic decisions over political criteria. Things went well when leaders emanated from the people made decisions that separated -and, in fact, subordinated- the economic power and the interests of the elites to the political power. Therefore, the solution to the problems of the country -from security to the growth of the economy- lies in a change of vectors: from now on, the government will establish priorities and society -including all its social and economic components- will have to adapt. The result will be good because I am not corrupt.

This is a change of paradigm: the criteria that have governed the functioning of the country over the past thirty years will disappear, to give rise to a model of society that proved successful in the past and that should never have been abandoned because, in contrast with what followed, the previous one produced economic growth, social mobility, employment and political stability. It is no coincidence that Mexican society lived in peace, order and without violence. Our mandate is to restore the balance that privileged the people as a priority.

The message is transparent: Mexico can solve its problems if it heeds its internal causes, something that was abandoned with the change of economic strategy and the beginning of the reforms from 1982. That economic policy caused poverty and inequality because it did not generate enough growth to employ young people who, due to lack of opportunities, ended up in organized crime. The government will reorganize the political structure because therein lies the key to solving the country’s economic problems and, therefore, the issue of security.

At the heart of the country’s ills lies the corruption that characterized all previous governments, which cannot be prosecuted because there is not enough space in all of the country’s jails. However, as long as everyone is aligned, as was the case in the sixties, the mafia of power that produced all this corruption will disappear and the economy will be transformed to meet the needs of the people.

In terms of security, the strategy has been wrong because it was not understood that the police, military, drug traffickers and criminals -all of them- come from the people and the people are always good. Therefore, we must attend to the symptoms and consequences instead of fighting the causes. Violence is not a solution but, rather, the cause of the problems that affect us today. El Chapo, since he comes from the people, is good and deserves amnesty.

The world that the country abandoned after the sixties worked because the hierarchy of things was prone to development. The State ruled and defined objectives, priorities and rules, assuring benign results for the society. Infrastructure spending set the stage for private investment. The government controlled the private sector via permit requirements and the unions were disciplined through corrupt leaders. The governors were the implementing arms of the presidential priorities. The recreation of that structure requires an inward looking perspective, maintaining effective control of the governors, a new unionism driven by the State and the subordination of the economic power to the political power. The following months we will see the implementation of this new political structure and its results, in terms of economic growth and social peace, will become evident.

Everyone fits into the new project, as long as they accept the new rules -and are willing to give up the freedoms that they have enjoyed in these decades and legal certainty- and this is equally true for citizens, unions, businessmen, governors, investors from abroad, governments of other countries and the financial markets. To the extent that all these key players in Mexican society understand and join the project and respect the rules of the game of the new president imposes, progress will be unstoppable. Success depends on there being the will to address the country’s problems and to bring the people on board, because Mexico is a poor country that has been the victim of abuses by nationals and foreigners.

The previous governments went astray because they did not understand that the solution was in plain sight, in our own past. It was not necessary to look abroad, adapt the education system to the demands of globalization and search for social mobility in the chimera of exports, but to reactivate the domestic market, protect domestic producers and provide for young people who do not study or work. Instead, they engaged in frivolous pursuits: they accepted the imposition of rules from abroad, subordinated national interests to the market and business criteria, built pharaonic infrastructure projects, denationalized our oil resources and decimated the industry that lies at the heart of the development of the country, in the past and in the future.

The project is clear, and the vision leaves no doubt about what the new government wants to achieve. Its challenge lies in ensuring that the reality adapts to the project, because if not, too bad for reality.

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@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Governmental changes are always paradoxical: one administration exits knowing that it did not achieve what it had proposed and another begins believing that the moon and the stars are within its reach. Whatsoever the nation or the moment in history, political transitions are always a study in contrasts between optimism and pessimism, derailed expectations and realism with respect to all that has been gone through. The inauguration of a government is always promising, but the end is closer than it imagines.

The phenomenon is not new and reflects the nature of humanity. In his Letter to Father, Franz Kafka pens a suggestive paragraph:  “…The world was for me divided into three parts: one in which I, the slave, lived under laws that had been invented only for me and which I could, I never knew why, never completely comply with; then a second world, which was infinitely remote from mine, in which you lived, concerned with government, with the issuing of orders and with the annoyance of their not being obeyed; and finally a third world where everybody else lived happily and free from orders and from having to obey.” Kafka was referring to his father, but he could also have been speaking about life in society or a change of government: the ones inside, the ones outside and those who pay the consequences.

Now the most arrogant and simultaneously incompetent adminstration in the modern history of the country is coming to an end: a lethal combination that rendered impossible the consolidation of its pertinent reforms and these becoming the bedrock of a better future. Its arrogance impeded the outgoing government from understanding that the politics of the era of ubiquitous information lies in explaining and convincing, not in imposing, pretending that the future would vindicate it. Its deeds not only defeated it, but also made possible the worst succession scenario that it could have been imagined.

Once the government takes its leave, another begins, which is paradoxical in that the latter has generated the highest level of expectations Mexicans have ever known, but one that sets out from the principle that Mexico is a poor country, incapable of rising up and transforming itself. While Peña Nieto envisioned a grandiose future without having the least idea of –or disposition for- constructing it, López Obrador gives rise to unaccomplishable prospects but does not envisage that the Mexico of the future can be successful. He entertains peak clarity with respect to the urgency of including the entire population in the development project, not only the segment that has been the beneficiary for a long time, but his vision is retrospective and modest.

Peña Nieto thinks that he has left the country at its most pivotal point in time, at the zenith of development; López Obrador clings to the issue of poverty and devotes himself to the symptoms of a country that have left innumerable Mexicans behind. The Mexico City Airport illustrates the contrast: Peña, expansive, who dreams of a splendid future without having convinced the citizenry, face to face with López Obrador who cannot visualize more than limited and small undertakings for an impoverished country and one without possibilities.

López Obrador entertains a very limpid vision of that he wants to achieve, but not a project specifically designed for this. The strategies he has outlined from the beginning of his campaign, but especially during these long interregnum months, reveal a propensity for annenuating symptoms -of poverty, unemployment, disabled elders- to a greater degree than resolving problems and attacking causes. There is herein a confusion of causes and symptoms and a natural inclination for amassing clienteles and loyalties. There are obsessions rather than strategies.  His problem is that the latter will serve to mitigate the privations and resentments but will not satisfy the enormous expectations that he has generated.

Peña Nieto leaves behind a polarized country, one whose citizenry despises politics and politicians for their corruption and incompetence. But the Mexico that he leaves has a vastly more solid economic platform than most of our neighbors in the continent to the south and of many other latitudes and one with prodigious potential for advancing. Together with the lacks, errors, corruptions and arrogance of those taking their leave, the new team appears to be incapable of recognizing that there are good things on which it can and should build. With greater proclivity for terse judgments than for diagnoses based on solid evaluations, the entering government will soon find the limits to their lack of consistency, as illustrated by the Airport eye to eye with the Tren Maya.

Some years ago I was privy to the anecdote of a Colombian exfunctionary that comes to mind because it is applicable to this time of transition and to each of those who were and will be responsible for heading up domestic affairs. The Colombian, recently named Undersecretary, felt that he was floating on air. A few days after being named to office, on a raw, rainy and stormy night, he got into his automobile, one of the privileges of the post, and gave instructions to the driver. On arriving at the first traffic light, he saw a very well-dressed man, soaked and shivering from the cold, waiting for a taxi. On regarding him carefully, he noticed that the man was none other than his predecessor as Undersecretary. My friend never forgot the lesson: power is temporary and must be used to advance or is wasted and one ends up in utter ignominy. Paradoxes.

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Luis Rubio

Nostalgia is strikingly afoot. The government of Enrique Peña Nieto is finally over, and another is about to begin, about which it will surely be more difficult to find reasons to laugh. In this regard there is a great parallel between Peña and Nixon.

Nixon was a strange person, mistrustful, taciturn and Machiavellian. He plotted dirty tricks of every ilk (Tricky Dick), the product perhaps of a mind simultaneously brilliant and derailed, a mind that could envision a strategy for world peace (Nixon goes to China), and that at the same time could create an ambience that led to a group of “White House Plumbers” to enter and steal documents from the Democrats from a building that became famous for it: Watergate. His personality and contradictions made him an easy target for cartoonists and comedians who exploited every declaration, absurdity or action that made their readers do nothing but laugh.

Art Buchwald, for decades the dean of comedy writers, enjoyed Nixon like few others. For various years, he wrote multiple columns describing, conjuring up and satirizing the President of the time, to the extent that satire about Nixon became a sport for this humor columnist. While most people in the U.S. finally rested when Nixon resigned from the Presidency, Buchwald lamented this as no other: “If the truth to be known,” he wrote in a later column, “I needed Richard Nixon a lot more than he needed me.”

Something like that is happening with Enrique Peña Nieto. Of course, the exiting president is nothing like Nixon in temperament or characteristics but, as with Nixon, the end of his presidential term brought to a stop an entire era in Mexico. Whatever comes to pass with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the country will never be the same again.

Peña Nieto vowed to restore order and return Mexico to the path of economic growth. His offer consisted of restoring what, in his vision, had functioned in the past. Six years later, he leaves the country with some new -and not to be disdained- instruments, such as the energy reform that, were it to continue, would permit the transformation of vast regions of the country in the future. He also leaves Mexicans in the hands of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The two sides of the same coin: the achievements and the consequences.

The paradox of the moment is not small: in their historical vision, both personages, the entering president and the one taking his leave, inhabit a similar world. Both are politicians anchored in the Mexico of the sixties and they uphold an enormous nostalgia for the country that, in their minds, worked well. Both believe that the way to emerge from the problems of today (and that are defined nearly exactly in the same manner: security, growth and order) lies in the rebuilding of the old, all-powerful State of yesteryear. Where they differ, as occurred in the then PRIist world, is in their political philosophy. Peña did not advance his reconstructive project beyond the caricature of the imperial presidency, to a great degree because it is impossible to do so, but also because it flagrantly contradicted his own reforms. One cancelled out the other.

López Obrador feels the same nostalgia for the overpowering “rector” State of before, but he has been building it with power and not with luxurious artifices or dazzling mirrors. He is not motivated by media histrionics, but by the power to be wielded. As he readies himself to govern, now formally, he counts on a span of control never before possible, at least since there have been open and competitive elections; in addition, in a closed political system centered upon the president and practically without institutional limits in his range-of-action, his capacity “for doing” is practically limitless. If one adds to this the fact that a good part of the press has remained silent, has been intimidated or has engaged in self-censorship, AMLO is found at a rare point in time that may lead either to an extraordinary transformation or to a hecatomb. It all depends on one person.

The old presidency delivered some encouraging results, but also uncontainable, pernicious and highly destructive crises. From a country in ruins after the Revolution, today Mexicans have a vibrant nation with an economy in a much better condition -with all its avatars- than AMLO’s rhetoric during the campaign suggested. In addition, there is a population anxious to take the great leap forward that AMLO has put forth.  With it all, the change, whatever it might be, engenders expectations and fears (again, two sides of the same coin), entailing an enormous responsibility, because the risks -of doing and of not doing- are also great.

New presidency, country in progress. The paradigm shifts, but that does not modify the surrounding reality. The government’s mode-of-action will set the tone and the rhythm, which will inevitably generate opportunities that will confirm prejudices or modify them, so that the satirists, the cartoonists, and the critics talk of the power. The society would also have to define itself; what Norbert Elias called “the civilizing process”.

Buchwald benefited from the lunacy and gaffes of the president at the time, while facilitating the society’s coming out of the trance.   Nations grow and develop when the society acts and is responsible. That is how the Mexico of today must be.

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 Luis Rubio

The government that (finally…) is at the point of concluding lived besieged by what the president himself called the “bad social mood.” This is a vague concept that allows the transference of responsibility to others: It is not my fault but that of the population who does not understand. Using that measuring stick, the citizenry in Mexico has summarily engaged in a half century of “not understanding.” The exiting government never confronted the social mood as a problem, which led it to employ antidotes that not only did not attend to this mood, but that also exacerbated it, as in the famous media campaign, “stop complaining.” If the upcoming government wants to conclude in a better place, it will have to face the issue that all of the prior administrations have evaded and that is, in essence, the citizenry’s trust in the government.

The overwhelming majority of politicians have not wanted to understand that Mexican society lacks mainstays of certainty that confer on it a sense of security and future. Up to the sixties, the post-revolutionary governments achieved both of the latter by means of positive results in economic growth as well as in political stability; when. Beginning in the mid-seventies, crises and expropriations arrived, successive governments lost their bearings and never got them back.

From 1970, the citizenry has been privy to an internal war among politicians who have generated permanent polarization, creating deep-hewn social, regional, economic and political schisms across the length and breadth of the country. The security crisis is not the product of chance, but instead one of the incompetence of our politicians to transform the system of government into one suitable for the XXI century. The result has been an absolute incapacity to generate hope and tranquility, which are crucial for a “good” social mood or, simply, trust. After decades of the same, trust becomes increasingly more difficult to recuperate

Without the trust of the population, said Mao, nothing is possible. One can have arms and food, but there is nothing like having the acquiescence and cooperation of the citizenry to attain development. That trust is won inch by inch, but lost in the blink of an eye. Several of Mexico’s recent presidents achieved an inkling of trust only to subsequently squander it: like Sisyphus attempting to carry the stone to the top of the mountain, rebuilding trust is ever more difficult and costly. I ask myself whether the new government will attempt to do this if it really wants to make a difference.

In December of 1941, when Pearl Harbor was practically annihilated, the U.S felt defeated. President Roosevelt understood that, to win, he had to recoup the mood of the population, for which he pledged his first great effort to modifying perceptions, commencing when his Air Force bombed Tokyo the following April. The politico-social impact was brutal: suddenly, Americans realized that it was possible to win, thus the final stage of the war ensued. Something similar occurred in the U.K. when its coastal fishing and Merchant Marine communities wholeheartedly gave themselves over to retrieving the soldiers trapped on the French coast at Dunkirk.  England seemed to be quashed and on the brink of being invaded, but the heroic performance of the citizenry in transforming the popular mood converted the military endeavor into a true national liberation.

The next president does not have it easy. Although his plans are clearly very ambitious and grandiose, they will only bear fruit to the degree that he faces the deep-seated causes of citizen indifference and their profound distrust in the government. These months have shown that even the president’s most loyal acolytes harbor doubts and hold contradictory agendas. Thus, it is imperative for AMLO to address the distant causes of distrust. And soon.

In Mexico social ill-being goes back to Luis Echeverría (LEA), who destroyed the implicit “social compact” that had served to govern the country since the Revolution. His successor, López Portillo (JOLOPO), initiated his government intending to recover trust, only to end up wreaking havoc on it with his pathetic discourse on the expropriation of the banks. The devastation wrought was so acute that even later generations who have never heard of LEA or JOLOPO are skeptical of the government and reject it instinctively.

The society that viewed the future with optimism is today waiting for the other shoe to drop in the knowledge that the government –all governments- entertains other agendas, incompatible with those of the average citizen. AMLO might believe that he can count on an immutable base of popular support, but nothing is permanent and now, with the full responsibility on his shoulders, he’ll have end impunity and corruption and, for that, his persona will not be enough. He will have to construct institutions that limit his own power or he will end up like all the others.

The recent election revealed a profound social and political chasm. The winner has in his hands the challenge of polarizing or bringing the whole of the population in and, if it opts for joining all, his sole option will be to build guarantees for the permanence of citizen trust. That is, exactly the opposite of what he proposed to do as the presidential candidate.

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@lrubiof

AMERICAS QUARTERLY
Web Exclusive

How AMLO’s Airport Decision Signals a Return to Mexico’s Past

BY LUIS RUBIO | NOVEMBER 6, 2018

The end of Mexico City’s airport project reveals much about how AMLO will govern, writes the chairman of Mexico’s Council on Foreign Relations.

Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador likes to frame his coming presidency as the start of a new era in Mexican politics. He also wants to re-establish the role of the presidency as the centerpiece of power. That was part of his justification for holding a $13 billion airport project already underway outside Mexico City up to a public vote in October.

But the informal and legally dubious way that vote was conducted – and López Obrador’s subsequent decision to cancel the project anyway – shows what his goals are and how much of an old-establishment politician he really is. The question now is whether outcry over his decision will be enough for AMLO (as he is widely known) to adjust his approach.

López Obrador has a clear vision of what he wants to accomplish, but no concrete plan for how to get there. Like politicians from the autocratic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the 1960s, he wants to recentralize power to recreate the old, strong presidency, and have the government establish priorities while the private sector follows along. He appears convinced the country lost its way when the old political system was abandoned, and reforms in the 1980s and beyond began to liberalize the economy and create autonomous agencies to provide certainty to investors and the public at large.

It is in this context that López Obrador’s decision to cancel the airport project must be understood. For him, everything is about politics: economic considerations had nothing to do with it. López Obrador’s decision was instead meant to establish new rules of the game, where he, rather than business or what he derisively refers to as “the markets,” will be in charge. But that shift may come with a cost.

Soon after he announced his decision, López Obrador said that negotiations would ensue to settle whatever claims contractors involved in the canceled project might have. It was a revealing statement. As in the 1960s, AMLO assumes that decisions of this magnitude are all about wheeling and dealing with a few influential powerbrokers. While he has already settled with most of the domestic contractors, Mexican style, he neglects the fact that Mexico’s economy has become totally integrated into the world economy and financial system. In other words, AMLO does not wield as much power as he believes.

López Obrador won’t take office until Dec. 1. But his airport decision clearly establishes the nature of things to come.

First, decisions will be political and López Obrador will seek to legitimize them through referenda (he’s already announced plans for a consultation on a rail project in Mexico’s southeast in coming months). If AMLO gets his way, he would also be on the ballot in midterm elections in 2021, giving citizens a chance to revoke his mandate.

Second, AMLO has shown willingness to eliminate, or undermine, independent or autonomous regulatory agencies (competition, telecommunications, energy, hydrocarbons, and so on), so as to further concentrate power in the presidency.

Finally, everything in Mexico in the foreseeable future will be about him. On this point, he’s not very different from the current U.S. president.

What López Obrador seems not realize, at least not yet, is that as Mexico’s next president his decisions carry far more weight than they did when he was an opposition figure. The airport cancellation, which roiled financial markets and the peso, is a perfect example. AMLO’s actions now directly affect Mexico’s ability to service its debt, and decisions made by investors both in Mexico and abroad. To that end, the airport decision – particularly the capricious way in which it was made – create enormous uncertainty for investors and citizens alike.

The current economic environment further complicates matters. López Obrador’s inauguration comes on the heels of the signing of a replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement. The new agreement severely reduces legal protection for companies investing in Mexico. The danger today is that this combination – AMLO’s way of deciding and the trade agreement’s weakness – will combine to stall Mexico’s progress. It is worth remembering that NAFTA was originally conceived as a means to provide investors with certainty that the Mexican government would not change the rules of the game arbitrarily, and that this was seen to be in the U.S.’ national interest.

I expect AMLO will soon realize the enormous consequences of his decisions. The question is how he will respond. One possibility would be to search for scapegoats everywhere: from businessmen to Donald Trump to the media. However, the fact that this is coming so early in his administration, even before he’s been inaugurated, could well force him to rethink his ways.

AMLO won the presidency in large part because voters were convinced that “more of the same” wouldn’t fix Mexico’s problems. AMLO has a complex challenge ahead; if he truly wants to be a revolutionary, he should focus his efforts on strengthening institutions, rather than tearing them down.

https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/how-amlos-airport-decision-signals-return-mexicos-past

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Luis 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 is A World of Opportunities, published by the Wilson Center.

Luis Rubio

All presidents feel themselves destined to change the world, but none has achieved this in the last half century. What difference will the next one make? Recent presidents tried everything: exacerbated public spending (Echeverría and López Portillo), pacts (Miguel de la Madrid and Peña Nieto), alliances (Salinas), agreements (Zedillo) and treaties (like NAFTA). Plans were many but the results are not commendable because none of the former tackled the main challenge of the country: how to govern but, above all, why to govern. AMLO has the opportunity to carry out a deep transformation due to the legitimacy that he enjoys, but also because he’s not committed to preserving the status quo.

If one observes the nation, from at least 1964 when Díaz Ordaz assumed the Presidency, all the presidents began with grand plans and proposals and, with the sole exception of Zedillo, ended up badly: some because they provoked uncontrollable crises, others because their acts discredited them to the point of their not being able to be in the public light again. All promised the moon and the stars but few finished well.  Without doubt, some left transcendental legacies (as NAFTA has been) and others built institutions that have changed the nature of the national debate. All of them, each in his own fashion, attempted to reform the country to achieve elevated and sustained growth, but none procured that to be the case for the entirety of the population.

Today it is clear that no one has wished or has been willing to confront the problem at the core of the political and institutional structure: although much has changed, the government has remained the same. The country has underugone an economic transformation through the rise of an exporter economy that today comprises the most important, nearly single, growth engine; the demography is totally different from that in 1964: currently, the population is three times greater and has dispersed throughout the whole territory, and in addition sustains contacts and exchanges worldwide, something simply inconceivable a half century ago.  Mexicans are at present going through the most critical demographic moment -the so-called demographic bonus- the juncture at which young people are in the majority and, on their successful incorporation into the labor market, are slated to constitute the platform of creation of the most important wealth for the future. Were this process to fail, Mexico would wind up a poor and old society in the next generation. There’s no place left to hide.

While the economy and the demography furnish huge opportunities, the security crisis, poverty and political pugnaciousness are the sandbags that hold Mexico back; this has hindered the country from prospering and transforming itself into a power capable of successfully providing for all of the citizenry. Because at the end of the day, if the purpose of governing is not prosperity, its function is irrelevant. And the record of the last half century comes up short by this yardstick. The same goes for the way Lopez Obrador pretends to govern, as the affair with the airport demonstrated.

Three or four years ago, the government conducted a survey on perceptions about the country. The result was expressed in a bar graph in which there appeared, from more to less, the issues that the population evaluated positively, descending toward those that it perceived as negative. In this manner, there were very high bars on the left side of the graph and other, very negativeones on the right. The left-hand bars referred to the nature of the Mexican, the cuisine, the affability, the art, the history, the exports, and so on. Later there followed many small bars covering matters not perceived by the population as either good or bad, and terminating with a series of bars extending downward, each worse than the previous one: the latter referred to the police, education, the government, the tax and court authorities. That is, the population approved of everything that forms part of the country’s history and nature, while it disapproved of everything associated with the government. That is the country’s problem: it does not have a government that functions for what is relevant, for generating prosperity.

Politicians love to use the term “governance” to refer to the ability to do as they please. AMLO does not have that problem and he has demonstrated in a thorough manner. The problem for him is that it must yield results: it is not enough to dismantle existing programs or have an overwhelming majority in the legislative branch. If he does not achieve the prosperity of the country, his enormous power will end up being inconsequential. History teaches that recreating the same vices, programs and strategies that did not work in the past will not work in the future either. The country and the world have changed, which forces him to look for new ways to access opportunities for the entire population.

If AMLO wants this to end well, the government has to create conditions for the prosperity of the population and, for that, it must not only change the structure of the government, but also build means of access for the population that has always been excluded. It is not enough to be powerful: to get out of the hole it is imperative to create a new system of institutionalized government with the explicit criteria of social inclusion. The tragedy of his “consultation” about the airport is that he only thought about the change of power relations he wants, while utterly disregarding its consequences in terms of long-term development.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

All of the crises that Mexicans have experienced have been the result of a president who stopped doing his job or who did it badly. That is the price of a system centered on a sole individual: his moods, capacities, quality of his responses and errors determine the result for 120 million Mexicans.

The political system emanating from the Revolution constituted the institutionalization of the Porfirio Diaz system: instead of an eternal dictator, the presidents would be monarchs without the possibility of bequeathing their post, in the words of Cosío Villegas, but monarchs nonetheless. That regime conferred meta-constitutional faculties on those who would occupy the Presidency, which would serve for executing public power in discretionary fashion, making arbitrary decisions and ensuring the permanence of the status quo through loyalties and clienteles, effectively nurtured by corruption. The president, at the center of the power, having the public resources and the so-called “institutions” at his beck and call for his own purposes.

The great benefit of that system was the dexterity with which changes could be achieved when they were necessary, while the immense cost and risk lay in the inexistence of the counterweights that would impede costly errors. This system led to profound exchange-rate crises in 1976, 1982 and 1994-1995, all attributable to the evident mistakes of the individual occupying the Presidency at the time, but it also facilitated rapid recovery the next year under a new administration. In the same manner, while duly institutionalized countries take years to carry out reforms to attack their economies’ nodal problems (as occurred with the European ones in the past decade), in Mexico those reforms have always been adopted almost without batting an eye.

The point is that development and civilization entail costs, but the benefit lies in that the citizenry of these nations are not subject to the caprices, styles and capacities of whoever presides over governmental functioning. One can argue that the possibility of undertaking urgent reforms compensates for the risks of a poor government, but what would indeed be desirable would be for there to be no bad governments or for their capacity to make bad decisions to be limited by strong and independent institutions.

In the political arena it is common to hear expressions relative to the strength of the institutions. Ascribed to these institutions, the argument goes, are fundamental powers to limit the exercise of presidential power. However, the evidence does not justify those pretensions. One can observe how those institutions have been changed -or those responsible for them- each time the de facto powers, beginning with the Presidency, decide that they are not satisfied with their functioning: that is what happened with the Federal Electoral Institute and with the Commissions of Competition and Telecommunications. From this perspective, there is no reason to think that, within a scenario of pressure, the same thing would not take place with others such as the Supreme Court or the Bank of Mexico. It is not even necessary to speak here about the Congress and the Senate: one comment by the incumbent is all that is needed for them to act.

Mexico’s political regime is unipersonal and that implies effective powers over the institutions: a president with extraordinary faculties who, these days, is only limited by the personal capacities of he who flaunts them and by the international financial markets that very few in the world dare to challenge.

A unipersonal presidential system has its virtues but all of them depend on the capacities and integrity of the president. Governments that operate in this way depend on the zealousness, consistency, fortitude and character of the president. If the president falls short of the mark or refrains from doing his job, the nation pays the consequences. If the president utilizes the public resources to wager on the future of the country, it is the citizens who would benefit from or suffer the costs. When Enrique Peña Nieto fell asleep at the wheel after Ayotzinapa, the country froze, rendering possible the coming of a messiah. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

We Mexicans love to push the envelope, make illegal turns in traffic or double-park. It seems to us that it is improper, wrong or unjust for someone else to do this, but we think that we personally have the divine right to do it ourselves. That way of being is a faithful reflection of the political system, where the president entertains royal powers for behaving himself in the same manner, within the ambits of competence of his function. If we want the president to abide by the rules and the mechanisms of checks and balances, the citizenry itself would have to change its ways.

Every six years the country goes into a trance due to the inherent danger that a madman, a destroyer or a person postulating a radical change will assume the presidency. However, rather than our focusing on underlying problem –the excessive faculties of the Presidency- all lights are trained on the supposed or real defects or positive characteristics of that person. Mexico’s problem is not that this or that individual is good and deserving of the opportunity of being president, but rather that there are no effective limits in case that individual turns out to be not so deserving. Even of López Obrador does not recognize it, Mexico, and he himself, are in urgent need of a new regime sustained on successful checks and balances.

www.cidac.org
@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Trump has been a headache but for a reason that we Mexicans are obligated to accept: because we have not built a platform of certainty for the citizenry to be able to lead their lives in a normal manner. Overwhelmed by the insecurity, the bureaucratic excesses and the permanent economic ups and downs, we Mexicans have become accustomed to living on the dark side of the law. What is most revealing about the current political moment is that the president-elect and his team do not recognize that the principal challenge that the country is presently encountering is not economic but rather one of certainty.

From the time of his campaign, it was evident that Trump would be an enormous challenge for Mexico. His violent rhetoric implied a new political relationship and a severe risk for the sources of sustainability of the Mexican economy. And rightly so: NAFTA has been the main domestic economic engine and, however much the political grandiloquence may denote something else, there are no easy substitutes. The nation wagered on closeness to the U.S. economy through NAFTA for obvious reasons: above all, because it was more efficient and rational in economic terms but, mostly, because NAFTA has served as a source of certitude without which the tremendous progress of the last several decades would have been impossible.

The fact that Trump called into question the permanence of NAFTA gave rise to vast uncertainty that appears to be incomprehensible for many politicians because they cannot fathom the lack of trust and uncertainty that lie at the heart of the nation’s dilemma. In the face of the absence of a functional government and clear and reliable rules (the latter nothing other than the Rule of Law), NAFTA has been the main source of certainty in the Mexican economy; all of the governments, from 1994 to date, have opted to enshrine NAFTA as if it were a museum piece instead of constructing a great institutional scaffold that incorporated the entire economy –not only the one that interconnected with foreign trade- and the society in the logic of a modern country, one sure of itself.

The weakness of the Mexican stance in the recent negotiations derived from the reality that during all of those years political and institutional reforms were not carried out that created a modern system of government in a manner in which the country could replace the political function of NAFTA: that is, the risk was not, in the strict sense, of economic nature; the risk dwelt in that the sole source of trust and certainty currently existing in the country would disappear. Consciously or unconsciously, this has been the foremost source of stability of the middle class, the business community and the investors. And that risk mushrooms dramatically inasmuch as radical changes might be proposed for economic policy, something that would have been less threatening prior to the arrival of Trump.

Mexico’s system of government has made development impossible because it is designed for a few to control the key processes that generate power and privilege. As long as that does not change, the economy will continue to exhibit immense variance throughout the nation, whatever the economic project of the incoming administration might be: whether one of the great reforms or one focused on the national market. It’s all the same.

The fundamental challenge for the next government, even more so because of its long critical stand of the reforms, will be that of creating sources of internal trust that consolidate and solidify the function that NAFTA, during all these years, has fulfilled. Certainty is achieved when there are game rules -laws, practices, actions- that cannot be modified by a functionary or the bureaucracy without mediation by a legislative process with effective checks and balances. The reason NAFTA has been as powerful as a source of confidence, at least until Trump threatened to withdraw his domain from it, is precisely because its content could not be modified on a unilateral basis. In this fashion, in contrast with the Mexican laws that change every time a public official decides to do so, NAFTA instituted perennial, thus reliable, rules, something less certain now with the new agreement. It is certainty that is at stake in the decision of the new airport.

The quasi democratic life that the nation is experiencing occurs within a context in which there are no certainties for the citizenry. The president-elect will wield immense –excessive?- powers that are susceptible to recast the lives of Mexicans for good or ill. The virtue of NAFTA was that it limited the potential of pernicious effects on a vital part of the Mexican nation, that is, productive investment. With the new agreement, “ACME” in Spanish, the incoming administration can count on a more or less solid source of external trust, but will have no choice but to develop new sources of certainty deriving from an integral political transformation, a political reengineering that supplies better equity and a new equilibrium among the government and the populace. This is not about concessions to the citizenry, but rather recouping the capacity to grow the economy within a context of political stability and citizen security. And trust.

The worst that the president-elect could do would be to underestimate the enormous distrust, uncertainty and insecurity in which the citizenry, of all colors, lives.

  www.cidac.org
@lrubiof