Luis Rubio

We Mexicans are peculiar, at least our governments are. We have been reforming for decades, but we avoid changing in order to convert the reforms into an implacable kick-starter toward development. The result is the mediocrity in which we find ourselves: reforms that are richly embossed but a daily reality for which a solution is not found; an educative system that is reformed time and time again but that in day-to-day practice continues the same as always and with worse results; an economy with enormous potential that does not translate into growth, attractive jobs or improvement in expectations; and, above all, a social setting deprived of hope rather than one imbued with optimism, anger instead of satisfaction and a million wasted opportunities. Our circumstance brings to mind that famous quote from Kolakowski on boarding a streetcar: “Please step forward to the rear.”

This has been possible for one very simple reason: Mexico has for decades counted on two instruments that have permitted things to plod along at the minimum, without creating a social or economic crisis, while preserving the political status quo and the privileges accompanying it. These two instruments -migration to the U.S. and NAFTA- will no longer solve the problem in the future and that leaves us only one way out: get on with the task that has been obvious for years, but that no one has wanted to tackle and that is none other than to raise the levels of productivity, the sole manner existing to elevate standards of living. The way out does not lie in more of the same or in returning to what did not work in the past but that continues to generate such nostalgia.

Instead of a serious discussion on the measures necessary for taking that step forward, we have two contrasting discourses. On the governmental side, all the rhetoric from 2012 forward has been concentrated on the “great” reforms that would be implemented by themselves and with which Mexico would enter into the ineffable Nirvana. But it is precisely in the implementation that things got bogged down, diminishing the reforms’ potential benefits. For ALMO, the proposal is for Mexico to concentrate on the internal market, create well compensated means of livelihood and return to an economic ambit with protections from the outside, favoring the producers. Both visions have their foundation, but neither is adequate.

The country requires a strategy of development that must begin by engendering conditions for it to be possible. Having many reforms is not worth anything if there are not suitable condictions for these to advance and the promotion of the internal market is worth nothing if it does not raise productivity. That is, there is no contradiction between reforming and promoting the internal market: the contradiction resides in the pretension of being able to impose development without producing the conditions for this to be possible.  Reforms -of Peña or of AMLO- are mere tools; without a strategy to articulate them, development is impossible. And, of course, any plan of action for development should take into account the domestic market as well as the globalization of production; two faces of the same coin, both necessary for raising life levels.

The two mainstays of the status quo of recent decades, migration and NAFTA, will not be viable in the future. Migration has changed because demand for labor in the U.S. has decreased, but also because the demographic curve in Mexico has been transformed; in addition, the growing difficulties involved in crossing the border certainly discourage migration. For its part, the reality is that the transcendence of NAFTA has declined radically: with Trump the notion disappeared that it is untouchable and this has caused investment to collapse.

Without investment, the economy is not going to grow no matter how many reforms are forged or how much the internal market is emphasized. The only thing left as a possibility is the creation of conditions that make development possible and that is nothing other than raising productivity. How can that be done? Productivity is the result of the best use of human and technological resources and that requires an educative system that allows for the developing of knowledge, skills, and capacities for the productive process; that is to say, it requires that education stop being at the service of the political control that the unions exercise for their own benefit and to concentrate itself on the development of persons to prepare them for a productive and successful life. It is the same case for infrastructure, communications, the treatment that the bureaucracy affords the citizenry and, naturally, the judiciary. The point is that development does not just happen nor can it be ordained by decree: it is the result of the existence of a climate that renders it possible to raise productivity aloft and everything should be dedicated to it.

Our system of government has made development impossible because everything is designed so that the control of key processes that breed power and privilege is in the hands of a few, as is the case of education. Inasmuch as that does not change, the economy will continue to stagnate, whether or not the project is the one of the grand reforms or of the internal market. It’s all the same. What has changed is the environment: the subterfuges that made it possible avoiding proactive actions have vanished from sight; we better do the job or stay stuck. “The best way to predict the future, says Peter Drucker, is to create it.”

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@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The old Soviet Union and Mexico had a distinctive element in common: jokes. There are books of Soviet jokes that were also told in Mexico: both societies were reflected at a distance with respect to the authorities and the contempt that the latter lavished on the population. Faced with the lack of access, the population jested, generally with bitterness and cynicism. Things have changed, but less than one would think. Ridiculing the politicians and their actions is no longer news because not a day goes by that opportunities are not generated and the social networks have become a perfect medium for the expression of the citizenry. But the jokes do not contribute to solving the problems of the country just when these are accruing and they are coupled with the process of succession, the most sensitive moment of any political system.

Jokes lessen tensions and allow for the channeling of the discontent toward a dimension of political stability so that both violent and totalitarian governments such as that of the USSR as well as that of the bland Mexican version of authoritarianism understood it as such and they used it to their benefit. The extreme was a governor of the state of Coahuila in the seventies who, wanting to know what the population was thinking, disguised himself as an ordinary citizen and ended up in jail after a bout of fisticuffs in a bar… Keeping a finger on the pulse of the population is a key function in the art of governing; however it is nonetheless no substitute for governing, but that has become, unfortunately, the reality of the country in recent decades: the citizens scoffed at the politicians and these scoffed at the citizens, nothing nor no one built the future that, one would suppose, is the main responsibility of those in government.

In the midst of jokes and memes, we are drawing near the succession process without any certainty about what is in store for Mexicans. A glance at the political panorama reveals, in the traditional phrase, slim pickings but, different from the past, a crisis of the political parties that does not augur well. One should at least ask oneself, in a world in which the old instruments and criteria for predicting elections have ceased being pertinent, why should Mexicans be distinct? That is, in the same way that the results in Nuevo León and of the other seven states were not predicted correctly in 2016, what makes one think that it will be distinct in 2018: what makes us think that we are not advancing toward a political crisis?

On the one hand we find the citizens and their voting rationales; on the other, the parties are no longer the appurtenant reference for a good part of the citizenry due to their aloofness, indolence and corruption. On the other hand, the PRI is living through fateful days: it may have won two of the three recent electoral bouts, but the derision is unending; certainly, I suppose, the PRIists will think that it is better to win by losing rather than losing by losing, but this is no consolation for the party that has the greatest responsibility for the permanent crisis that the country is currently undergoing. The PRI has no lack of competent potential leaders, but it has for years devoted itself to not governing, which is, from my perspective, Mexico’s true challenge: governing with sights on the future.

The PAN, on its part, is not doing any better: its internal divisions are legendary, its incapacity for governing patent and its contradictions –derived from the clash between their surmised moral principles and their pettiness when (un)organizing themselves- incorrigible. Today there are three ambitious precandidates dedicated to ensuring that the other does not make it: in their unmistakable ritual, they would rather finish off the party than support a credible alternative.

The PRD confronts a dilemma of a party that cannot win by itself but that cannot afford itself the luxury of entering into an alliance that would make it disappear from the map. Morena is the new political force of the Left that survives by being the victim instead of attempting to govern. Like the PRI, although for distinct reasons, it avails itself of the status quo and prefers to remain there.

The tangible fact is that no one worries about creating a better system of government so that the country can grow and prosper. Engulfed in a useless discussion on the permanence of this or that social or economic policy, we have lost sight of that what is important is not only who enters the government (or even how) but instead what they get there for; precisely what matters to 99% of the citizenry. Worse yet, the electoral processes no longer even generate legitimacy. Under these conditions, it is not inconceivable that the citizens would opt for decisions that the parties would consider heretical.

For me there is no doubt that our great deficit is one of government more than one of democracy, not because the latter functions like clockwork, but because democracy is solely a method for making decisions, but these do indeed have to be made; insofar as Mexican democracy commits itself exclusively to changing authorities but does not have the capacity to oblige them to govern –that is, for them to guarantee security, pave the streets, do not abuse the citizens- the citizen will end up losing. That is why the jokes are increasingly bitterer, uncouth and direct; with the lack of government, everything is a caricature: what is important has vanished without a trace and that’s no joke.

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Luis Rubio

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he changed the history of Rome. That step, says Lawrence Alexander, implied “that a decision was made. That there was no turning back. It also meant that the Republic was finished, that whatever forms were kept, the new reality was that Rome was now going to be ruled by one man.” As at that moment, Mexico entered into a new era in 2012 and it is not impossible for the circle to close in 2018: consolidating the way toward the PRI of yesteryear that Enrique Peña Nieto as well as Andrés Manuel López Obrador represent.

The similarities are many more than is apparent: for whoever recalls the notion of the pendulum in the era of the “old regime” of Mexican politics, the presidential successions, it was said, tended to vacillate from Right to Left, and vice versa, depending on the coalition that backed the successful candidate. EPN is the heir to the body of followers that, from Miguel Alemán up to Carlos Hank González, commandeered the most moderate economic positions and, within the canons of the epoch, liberalizing. For his part, AMLO is the scion of the other tradition, that headed by Lázaro Cárdenas, Luis Echeverría and José López Portillo, who procured a preponderant role for the government in the development of the country. Although the politico-ideological differences were much less extreme than they are today, the impact of those shifts on daily life and on the functioning of the economy was enormous. That old PRI –with all of its characteristics, while not all its practices- returned five years ago and could consolidate itself into becoming the new national reality. Were this so, as with the immortal alea jacta est of Caesar –the die is cast- we could return to a time past from which there would be no going back.

With these statements I do not wish to minimize the differences between the Left and Right of the hard PRI age, or to argue that the economic policy of today is similar to that of the 1960s but, instead, to highlight the likenesses. Both currents conceive of the government as the heart of domestic life, thus they propose centralization of power, control of the population and the factors of production, although with very distinct objectives and rationales. President Peña, moored to a XX century political vision, promoted, with great pragmatism, some of the most transcendent reforms for the XXI century. AMLO proposes to reconstruct an economic platform of the XX century: founded on the internal market, fueled by subsidies and public expenditure from the government and protective of the production factors from external competition.

The point of departure of the old system, to which both subscribe, is the call to create sources and engines of internal growth following a logic of power that feeds off the dissatisfaction of recent times as well as the nostalgia. Evidently, economic growth is necessary, but none will be possible, from an ahistorical post-Revolutionary-era vision. The old system did not collapse because of the will of a person or a group, but rather due to its effeteness and lack of viability in an era of the knowledge economy, integrated production of supply chains and the ubiquity of information. The centralization to which the present government aspired served for the purpose of corruption but not for confronting the structural challenges the country finds itself faced with.

Nor would it go better for AMLO were he to win the presidency. His project is emotional and sentimental poetry but not a strategy of development. To begin with, he underestimates the degree of popular support for the economic liberalization (the beneficiaries of imported goods and of competition with national producers are not few in number) and the deep-seated presence of the middle class in rural zones, all the product of the remittances from abroad. In second place, the domestic industry that would presumably become the hub of the intended “national regeneration” does not entertain any capacity of sustaining accelerated growth: an industry that is barely surviving at death’s door and that does not produce the goods demanded by the domestic consumer or required by the most advanced industrial sectors, which grow fastest, cannot be revived. It is, in a word, a fallacy to suppose that a nation can retrench and, by that means, revitalize its economy. Once liberalized, there’s no going back: the alternative is inexistent. More to the point, once liberalized, the die is cast. The economic liberalization that took place in the eighties was to save industry, not kill it. That difference is incomprehensible from the perspective of the PRIist vision of the fifties or, more to the point, the seventies.

The problem with the AMLO project does not lie in its ideological thrust or in its objective of development, but in its incompatibility with today’s Mexico, not to mention with the world in general. It is evident that there are many things lagging behind and many people who have been left behind which deserve to be and should be seen to, but the solution does not reside in pushing back the entire country, but, rather, in creating create conditions and the opportunity for all to join the development in integral fashion.

The members of PRI that will be gathering next week should face this challenge head on, looking towards the future and abandoning that which cannot -and should not- be.

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Luis Rubio

Mexican democracy is in problems: for some, it is the cause of the rise in criminality; for others, it has permitted the decentralization of power that, in turn, gave free rein to the governors to waste resources, incur in all types of acts of corruption and thrive in impunity; for the majority, democracy has not brought with it a better system of government, a more successful economy or a more egalitarian society. According to these diagnoses, the solution -implicit, because (nearly) nobody dares to be so politically incorrect as to propose it openly- rests in the reconstruction of the old political system or something similar.  That is precisely what Morena wants and what many members of PRI will seek at their coming convention.

The debate on the validity and viability of democracy is universal. The electoral “surprises” of recent times speak for themselves: the decision of British voters to withdraw from the European Union (the so-called “Brexit”); the election of Donald Trump; the electoral strength of Marine Le Pen in France; the referendum to grant virtually unlimited powers to the President of Turkey; and the envy that the capacity of the Chinese government to impose decisions and reforms generates in vast political and intellectual circles. All these are nothing other than examples of the pummeling that democracy is the object of throughout the world.

The wrangling between the critics of democracy and its defenders and proponents is burgeoning and sharp, not to say violent. Many attribute the resurgence of populism to the defects of democracy, others to its excesses. In the political revolts that lie behind Brexit and Trump the perception, and the anger, is noteworthy that democracy has become dismembered because voters no longer have the capacity to influence -or decide about- things that affect them: this is the same whether it concerns a distant regulatory body that oversees what can be imported or exported or a supranational entity that exacts standards that are different from those favored by the local community. In a word, some criticize democracy because of the problems that it (supposedly) engenders, while others bemoan the erosion of it. There is no unique pattern.

The complexity of the moment through which we are living -elections, insecurity, corruption, the absence of leadership and a lengthy etcetera- accentuates the perception that this is an exceptional and exclusive phenomenon of our era. However, more than two thousand years ago, Plato argued that tyranny can emerge from a mature democracy on employing the mechanisms of democracy itself, while Thucydides stated that Athens was “in theory a democracy, but in fact ruled by the foremost individual.” Then, as now, some deplored the limits of democracy while others viewed it as the grounds for extant quandaries. Little has changed over these millennia.

Whatever the reason for the unease and disfunctionality discerned from all quarters, the result is a revolution in expectations, perceptions and electoral behavior. The gap between the polls and the outcomes of diverse ballot boxes worldwide -on occasion dramatic- suggest that the population in innumerable nations happens upon no answer in the existing democratic forms, whether these are relatively new as in Mexico or ancestral as in the Athens of old.

Nor is there consensus concerning the nature of the problem: for some, those who attempt to justify the ascent of populism, the issue is the fault of the politicians, who do not know how to lead, who decide according to their own interests and who have alienated the populace. For those for whom the subject of dispute stems from democracy itself, the blame is placed on the technocrats, who ordain their own predilections above the electors’ prerogatives: something especially disparaged about the European bureaucracy in Brussels, but also by NAFTA dispute-settlement panels. There are also those who assert that the issue at heart is the product of the self-same representative democracy in that, on the voters’ transferring their jurisdiction to the popular representatives (congressional members and senators), politicians have become insulated and do not feel obligated to the voters. This comprises a triangle in which each vertex entertains greater or lesser incidence in each country, in accord with the local circumstances. What is universal is the notion that democracy does not satisfy, which frequently generates strange and surprising outcomes.

Is democracy to blame? Above all, the question entails at least two assumptions: first, that there exists a sole democratic form and structure; and, second that democracy is thoroughlyfunctional. All we Mexicans know that our democracy embodies enormous flaws, but the main fault, to my way of thinking, is a very simple one: we have adopted some democratic configurations (such as electoral competition), but we have not embraced democracy as a system of government. Our problem is not democracy but rather the persistence of the authoritarian system of yesteryear, but now without its time-honored muscle or capacity of action. The point at issue is very straightforward: as the current government has proven, returning to the past is not possible. The alternative is to be resolute in aimlessness or build a new political structure.

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@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The first vacation I remember was at the then new Oaxtepec Center of the Mexican Social Security Institute, a paradise in the state of Morelos that had just been inaugurated by the outgoing President of Mexico. There was a block of rooms for guests where we stayed and practically all of the rest of the center was still under construction or semi-abandoned. Notwithstanding this, at the entrance there was an enormous plaque commemorating the inauguration that, surely, had been only one of many Pharaonic acts that are a fixation of our political class: what is important is not the result but the intention. That malady can be appreciated in everything around us, for example, the preference for “great” reforms instead of solutions to little problems that, oftentimes, are more important and transcendent, albeit accompanied by less bogus applause.

Of course, epic reforms that can transform sectors, activities and lives are necessary for creating new conditions for the functioning of the economy, the development of society or the adoption of novel ways to solve problems. A country with such timeworn forms, structures and institutions (that were never designed to be adaptable or for transformation and development but for control and pillage) evidently requires many reforms of the most diverse nature. However, although some of the reforms of the last decades have produced great benefits, many have got stuck due to the haste with which they were conceived –and the purchasing of votes in the Legislative Branch-, which limit their capacity to delivering their entire potential. Above all, because of the manner of advancing the reforms, they tend to alienate rather than connect with the population.

Perhaps the weightiest of the absences in the reform processes has been the lack of social agreement with respect to their goodness or, even, the need for the latter. The reforms are evidently necessary, but what matters is not hanging an engraved nameplate (in the figurative sense) of the reform but that the reform gets underway and benefits the citizenry. There are countries, like India, where the negotiating process is arduous and complex because it involves all kinds of parties, groups and interests, but once a settlement is reached, the obstacles have been removed. Contrariwise, in China reforms are implemented from the seat of power. What is interesting here is that, beyond the method, in both nations reforms have been achieved that not only benefit the population, but have met with its approval. Our case has been very distinct.

Mexico has made many reforms, some ambitious and profound but, only exceptionally, has there has been the least attempt to join with the population or convince it of their potential benefits, even in the long term. The boons of many of those reforms are evident in the lower real prices (after inflation) of innumerable products, in the increased availability of high-quality goods and in general, in better life levels for the lower-income population.  However, in contrast with China and India, in Mexico pessimism and malaise abound.

My impression is that the differences lies in a very concrete factor: in addition to great reforms and with multidimensional impact, in those nations there has been the understanding that it is necessary to tend to matters that appear little but that are the ones that afflict the population day to day and that have permitted perceptions to improve swiftly. For a homemaker it can be difficult to perceive that the shoes that her children wear cost less in constant pesos, because in current pesos they cost more.   However, her perception would change radically if suddenly, a person had access to an IMSS (social security) physician in less than thirty minutes, instead of having to wait hours, and sometimes months, to be treated. Something similar could be said about public transportation: on any given morning one can observe the torrents of people arriving from places like Chalco or Ecatepec to work in Mexico City, a process to which they devote up to three and four hours every day. Resolving these problems that the population suffers through may seem like something minor, but it is much more important for the ordinary person than the “great” reforms.

How long have we been discussing public insecurity without having defined the character of the problem? Rather than recognizing the momentousness of the problem and identifying its causes, politicians strive for solutions –such as the single chain of command- that they do not recognize such simple causes, for example, as the hugely rampant corruption in the State Police. That is, instead of understanding the extraordinary and disruptive impact of insecurity on families and the daily lives of the population and the urgency of seeing to the phenomenon, those who pretend that they are “governing” seek control of municipal presidents and the population in general.

The point is that solutions are required for improving everyday life and that is much more important, and often many times over, than all the extremely consequential reforms put together. Of course, one is not a substitute for the other, but the absence of those little things helps to explain in great measure the reason that the current government is so unpopular: the worst is not only the absence of solutions, but the lofty contempt from on high.

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Luis Rubio

We Mexicans have witnessed a myriad of reforms in all orders and many of these have transformed the country, in the economic as well as in political ambit; this has created opportunities for transcending toward the development, that were inconceivable in the seventies and the beginning of the eighties when the old world collapsed and the viability of the economy as well as that of the post-revolutionary system had clearly given its all. What the reforms did not solve, nor did they even propose to address, was the constitution of a new system of government, coherent with the consequences which the very reform processes brought about with them.

That is, on modifying the bases of decision making in economic matters (above all with the liberalization of imports and investments) and of the manner of access to the power (with the electoral reforms), the political reality of the country was altered -the very entrails of the power- but nothing was done to institutionalize those new realities and power sources. Even less was done to modernize the system of government that, in its essence, was created at the end of the 19^th century, under Porfirio Díaz. So many and such profound reforms have not changed a fundamental thing: the power structure.

The political parties and the political class have done a juggling act and played musical chairs, but the same have ended up continuing to bask in the system of privileges. The way of acceding power has been reformed but not who accedes to it; that is, these have been reforms for the benefit of the political parties and the political class: the citizenry has been absent from the scene and their problems and demands, although known in these ambits, are not recognized as valid or relevant. Yes, there is prodigious insecurity and violence, but what can we do; yes, there is rampant corruption, but it is something cultural; the infrastructure is of the worst kind, yes, but we are attempting to find a competent contractor to address it.

After decades of reform, it is unmistakable that a reform to make the country functional and viable will not derive from those who do not want that reform. If it is not going to come from there, could it come from the society?

In a recent investigation on this phenomenon, I applied myself to the study of what the society has been doing while the politicians pretend they are governing. What I found is an immense social effervescence: a society that is no longer willing to wait, essentially because it has no choice but to deal with the insecurity that is its reality.

The Mexican society has appropriated an uncustomary militancy over the last decades. All types of civil organizations have come into being, accusations are presented, manifestos proliferate and discontent grows. There are organizations that propose solutions, others that evaluate the government; some denounce corruption, others engage in combating delinquency and criminality. Some of these entities are the product of specific circumstances or events –an abduction, a murder, the construction of a new airport-, others respond to more general concerns. Some seek immediate impact, other a long-term one.  Many of these organizations are not visible, other are permanent protagonists. There is some of everything in the public arena.

Much more transcendent, and revealing, is the manner in which innumerable communities, in all nooks and crannies of the country, have organized themselves to attend to their most basic needs, the needs that, in a serious nation, would have been seen to by the government. There are extraordinary examples of communities that, as in Cheran, Michoacán, have taken the initiative, above all in matters of violence and criminality, and have taken it upon themselves to safeguard their localities and convert them into territory where the entry of bands of criminals is not permitted. In Santiago Ixcuintla, the story is distinct, but the result is similar: in this municipality in the state of Nayarit there has not been a sole abduction in more than six years. In Monterrey, Sister Consuelo Morales of the CADHAC human rights league has achieved the adoption by the Attorney’s Office of a model for more efficient work by the public prosecutors; in the states of Veracruz and Morelos (Tetelcingo) the families of missing persons have come together as groups, have trained themselves in forensics (women who have become experts in DNA and forensic samples) and in the search for clandestine grave sites. In some cases, the authorities have accompanied them in their efforts. These are mere examples of the thousands of stories that proliferate throughout the entire country: years of violence and criminality have forced the population to stop hoping that the government will respond and they have organized themselves to attend to their community needs.

It’s impossible to conclude from these few examples that the country is at the brink of a grand scale transformation. The obstacles for such a feat are immense and the capacity to organize and mobilize is obviously limited; however, nothing impedes that, little by little elements or organizations will arise that catalyze these initiatives and change the political reality of the country. This plainly offers obvious opportunities to the traditional mountebanks, but also to social organizations with a national presence.

What is beyond question to me is that the country will change when individuals and organizations of very distinct origins join together despite their differences and, then, take the step that the old system persisted for decades in rendering impossible.

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Revista R – REFORMA – July 09, 2017

The dilemma is as follows: evidencing the corruption and impunity or tackling them. This is not wordplay but a political standpoint. In a hypothetical scenario, it would be possible to differentiate between those that propose or emphasize one type of action over the other, according to their perception on what is possible. Those that are sure of the prevailing decay, tend to be activists and prefer public scandals as a way to create a breeding ground to tackle the core issue. On the other hand, those that know the insides of the beast know very well that there are endless mechanisms, all of them perfectly established and renowned, which make corruption possible. The former are political activists; the latter tend to be auditors, managers and pragmatic politicians. The decision on how to face this issue is deeply political and entails real consequences in everyday life of both society as well as politics.

Let us start with the obvious: everything in the country seems designed for corruption to flourish. The institutional rules are defined in such an ambiguous and discretional manner that it is always possible to unmercifully punish a perfectly legitimate and adequate action when it is convenient for a given politician. In brief, corruption is not a product of chance but of an implicit design that makes it possible and everlasting. If it is to be eliminated, the rules that enable it ought to be modified. On the other hand, if the goal is political, corruption will not end: as suggested by the examples in this chapter, it will simply continue to mutate.

Regarding corruption, the relevant question is not moral but practical. If assuming that there is an equal number of honest and dishonest individuals, then the key is not the people but the environment and institutions that limit their acts. If this was not the case, we would have to accept that the morals of an individual determine the possibilities of corruption of an activity or public post and we would immediately fall in the lack of definition that a lot of PRI members referred to when they said: “do not give me anything. Just put me where everything is”. It is obvious that the issue is not about morality but opportunity. The question is what creates the opportunity of corruption.

Corruption flourishes under two evident conditions: darkness and discretionary powers. When there is no transparency and clarity on the processes taking place in a specific state or region, its public officers have plenty of opportunities to take advantage of the situation. In other words, the existence of decision spaces that are not subject to public scrutiny becomes an opportunity for dishonest public officers to use the circumstance in their benefit or that of their cronies. A similar thing occurs when the legislation or regulations ruling the functioning of a public company or a government entity grants their workers with discretionary powers so vast that they enable all kinds of interpretation when making a decision. That way, when authorities have the power of approving or rejecting a petition, permit or acquisition without a scrupulous analysis or procedure and without having to provide any kind of explanation, then the possibility of incurring  in situations of corruption is endless. In addition, this possibility is increased when there are no sanctions for violating the regulations (including, for example, the lack of transparency, even if it’s enshrined by law).

The point is that corruption does not emerge from a vacuum.  The rules that regulate the decision-making process are the ones that create or prevent the existence of opportunities for corruption. If this is blatantly obvious, then the way to end corruption is with the rules of the game (whether it is in the judicial framework or in the way decisions are made) that will make arbitrariness impossible: that is to say, that they provide the authorities with the necessary, but no so ample, discretionary powers, that will entail a substantial change in regulation.

There are four ways in which it would be possible, at least in principle, to break the vicious circle of corruption and impunity in Mexico. The first is by ending the incipient democracy that the country has been experiencing. This is precisely what President Putin did in Russia: in only a few months, he ended the direct election of Governors and returned to the old system of centralized appointments; later on, he cornered the Parliament, limited the opposition and took control of the internal processes. By recentralizing power, the Russian President built new institutions, strengthened the police forces and obtained a widespread popular support. Although the current Russia is nothing like the old communist system, the democratic system of the eighties was quickly vanished; and, not least importantly, these actions had popular support.

A second avenue for tackling the problem is modifying the power structure that lives off the ambiguity inherent to all of the political system, an ambiguity that favors ample discretionary powers and which border in complete arbitrariness. If Mexicans truly wanted to end corruption and impunity, this would be the best alternative.

A third idea for breaking the vicious circle is to change the power apparatus, ceding, in altruistic fashion its sources of power and financing. As this will not occur, the question is whether society can force a change within the power structure. That was my proposal in A Mexican Utopia, where I argued that the President should lead this change, albeit knowing it would not happen. In fact, in the following book, The Problem of Power, I analyzed why that was an impossible task: given the structure of interests and privileges in the country, the notion of attempting a transformation “from within” was quite naïve.

A fourth line of action, subscribed by a large group of activists, is often based on publicly displaying the issues rather than analyzing them.  Its goal is not to change – amend, correct or solve the problems – but change the system altogether. Indeed, there is a growing number of organizations dedicated to constructing institutional solutions in aspects such as transparency and accountability but they are the exception: the line that separates the institutions that base their work in a serious analysis and propose solutions from those led by activists advocating exposing and fighting cases that they consider, without analyzing, to be examples of corruption, is a thin one. Generally, activists base their activities in the abuse of information and they follow precooked political agendas in their protests and publications. Some of those that follow this line of action have a clear goal, others think that public scandal is an acceptable way to carry out the necessary changes. In any case, the problem of this strategy is that it is based on the principle that it is not possible to change or improve the current system but that it is necessary to eliminate it. This way, either consciously or not, it’s about political movements rather than projects dedicated to tackling the current problems within the available institutional frameworks.

These four alternatives ask the obvious question of whether the change in the country can come from society. The evidence suggests that, for whichever reason, some discussed before, Mexican society has shown severe limitations in its ability to lead transformative processes; some polls commissioned by Mexico’s National Electoral Institute[i] even suggest that this society is particularly passive, although, with time, nothing prevents this passivity from changing, especially with a growing perception of freedom and a bigger appearance of corruption. Rather, activists have become more important due to the lack of a society that is willing and capable of organizing and acting on its own. Thus, there remains the key disquisition on how can society make its own rights worthy in an era of competition and democratization. It is not a trivial dilemma.

The Mexican political system was built to pacify the country and to reward the winners of the Revolution. The system that emerged from it achieved both goals but had the effect of being frozen in time, preventing its natural evolution, in pace with the growth and development of both society as well as the economy. Corruption, impunity, informality and other problems mentioned in this chapter are symptoms of a political and legal system specifically designed to favor certain sectors of society, to pick winners (and, unavoidably, losers) and, thus, became a structural obstacle to the existence of strong, independent and permanent institutions. That is to say, in the heart of the arbitrariness that makes corruption and impunity possible – and needed – lies a power structure benefitting from it and which sees no reason to alter the established order.

The Mexican society has reached the conclusion that corruption and impunity are the two great evils that cause violence, unproductivity and discomfort. There is no doubt that these phenomena have changed Mexican society and have granted it with a sense of militancy and restlessness that did not previously exist. The question is whether these elements could become a catalyst to transform society and turn into a real factor for political change in Mexico.

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Luis Rubio

“Politics”, wrote the great and irrepressible comedian, Groucho Marx, “is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” The problem in Mexico does not lie in the elections, the vote, the alliances, the single command, the second round, the “opposing front,” the corruption or the reelection of legislators, but in the capacity of the political class –the extended one, including all of the parties that, since 1996, comprise part of the world of privilege- to preserve the status quo. That is, the true problem is that there is no disposition in the least to change the existing reality by those with the power to not change anything. Those who followed the last elections in the State of Mexico or in Coahuila could conclude nothing other than that the problem does not reside in the electoral procedure but in the essence of the political system itself.

Perhaps there is no better way to describe the phenomenon characterizing the debate (read conglomeration of monologues) during recent months than that which recounts the old PANist saying: “Don’t have any illusions, then no one will be disillusioned.” For some strange reason, the notion has emerged that the country’s political problems can be reduced to unbalanced electoral processes that lead to useful-vote calculations and to the absence of legislative majorities that allow whoever is governing at the time to get away with his or her preferences. That is to say, the problem, in this characterization, is that the citizenry is stupid and that, instead of their expressing their inclinations, they should be led by persons who better understand how the problems of the country should be solved.

Decades of observing the national political dynamic have taught me at least three things: first, that there are no magic solutions and that problems are not solved with the adoption of superficial responses that do not deal with the core problem. The second round, or runoff, is all of that:  a magic solution, a fetish, because it would appear to respond to the problematic of the moment, but does not strike at the quintessence: it supposes that all of the players in the game are honest and that they play by the rules. The latest batch of elections demonstrate that this is a fallacy and that political change on a much grander scale is necessary for the power relationships themselves to be altered because therein lies, at the end of the game, the phenomenon perpetuating the status quo.

The second learning is that Mexico lives in two worlds: that of debate, discussion and easy solutions, on the one hand, and that of power on the other. The one discusses, analyzes and advocates -honestly so- for solutions to the problems of the day. The other stands guard over the status quo. There may be no better example of this that the legislation apropos of the reelection of legislators. The basic concept underlying reelection consists of placing the legislator in greater proximity to the citizen whom they (supposedly) represent. However, at the time of approving the respective law a “small” prerequisite was incorporated into the latter in order for a legislator to be reelected: procuring the backing of the party leadership. With that “minor” restriction, the defenders of the status quo and of immobility trimmed down the link that rendered reelection relevant and useful; the result will be that we will have legislators for life without their ever having acquired the endorsement of the citizenry. It is most likely that something similar would take place with the second round.

The third learning is that all of the actors are engaged in a perverse game. Opinion writers, analysts and critics propose solutions, but thereafter cling to myths, magic solutions and fixations that do not solve the problems at the core. On their part, the owners of the power accept the recommendations and subsequently generate solutions that do not attend to the real problem. Some hold fast to their interpretation of the problem, others undermine the viability of the tendered proposal. The fantastic part is that myths are engendered that serve to elude the problem at heart. The beneficiaries will celebrate, as occurred after the elections a few weeks back, while the critics embark upon the next fetish.

The heart of this issue is quite clear: the problem is not the form in which the elections are held, although there one can appreciate -in living Technicolor- the symptoms of the political-electoral chaos into which the country has fallen, but rather in the power monopoly that has had the capacity of paralyzing everything, making the electoral processes irrelevant and corrupting the Legislative Branch. From that perspective, we can go on changing all the laws we want, promoting modifications to the law in electoral matters or press for “coalition cabinets,” but none of these is going to alter the essence of the status quo. And that is the pivotal matter:  the problem is not one of laws or of forms, but of the divorce between those who govern and those who suffer them. And that translates into absence of government.

Over the last several years we have witnessed the renaissance of the vision of the government controlling everything that could not be less concerned with the sensibility of the citizenry, the vision that believes that it can manipulate the vote and impose itself on the choices of the citizens. In this the current government is not distinct from its main challenger: both live in the Mexico of the 1960–1970s.

Mexico will change the day that the society, and its opinion makers, join in unison to modify the essence and not only the symptoms. All the rest is illusion.

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Luis Rubio

The majority of arguments in favor of the second electoral round or runoff in Mexico are sustained on a fallacy of Mexico’s realpolitik, while simultaneously ignoring one of the reasons why the second round could be a significant solution: everything depends on the question that is being addressed. The fallacy resides in the notion that a legislative majority guarantees governance; the opportunity lies in the elimination of the incentives that today propitiate grotesque campaigns such as the most recent one that characterized the state of Mexico.

The most frequently claim brandished for the second round is that of obtaining legislative majorities that permit governing. However, President Peña demonstrated that the existence of a legislative majority is not a necessary condition: all of his reforms were approved by a coalition of legislators of various parties, nearly always with the integral vote of the (then) three most prominent political forces. That was not achieved thanks to a keen and convincing substantive debate, but rather to a costly but successful “spending spree,” old style legislative vote buying. That is, in Mexico’s reality, skillful, power-oriented politicians find it easy to build legislative majorities.

In the recent elections we were able to appreciate an enormous distortion of our much-buffeted democracy: we have a Rolls Royce electoral system, including a governing council and the office of electoral fraud, that does not get its hands dirty with even the suggestion of a formal complaint, but a reality of dirt roads full of potholes and mafias in their stomping grounds on which campaigns are waged. This terrain is fertile for the proliferation of strategies geared to provoking fear, lies, manipulation and intimidation that procure the generation of a vote that is useful for preserving the status quo. The clash of the reality on earth and the easy life at the higher echelons of the National Electoral Institute (INE) is flagrant, nullifying the supposed arbiter and engendering incentives to protest.

From this perspective, for the purists of the electoral system and the promoters of the second round of elections, the country’s core problem lies in “a democracy without democrats,” that is, a dysfunctionality that has led the parties to systematic abuse, to approve laws that they know they will break, to take no heed of campaign expense limits and, in a word, to behold the government as spoils of war and not as a responsibility. That is, the problem is one of culture.

Years ago, the political scientist Guillermo Trejo evidenced the fallacy of this argument: “The functioning of democracies is a problem of effective institutions. Cooperation and governmental efficiency are not the product of individual virtues, but instead of a system of checks and balances that provides incentives for the good functioning of State institutions. The problem is not finding a Mexican Roosevelt, Churchill, Mandela, or Adolfo Suárez. Madison knew it: ‘If men were angels, no type of government would be necessary.’ But since no society is governed by angels, but by men and women with interests and passions, the Federalists devised an effective formula: institutional arrangements to oppose human ambitions. The formula is simple:  rather than await the advent of great statesmen, the objective is to provide incentives so that those in government, even the worst of the ruffians, will guarantee the Rule of Law and be accountable, for the sake of their own interests.  It is not, then, a problem of wills, as we are prone to saying, but one of incentives. It’s not Freud, it’s Madison”.

Therefore, unless another electoral reform is undertaken that does not lead to solving the problems of Mexico’s reality, the key question is what is required to develop incentives that favor different behaviors.  The fundamental problem is not that our politicians are oblivious to the problem, but that they do not see why a system that has been so good to them should change. Consequently, the issue is one of power: the society versus the privileged individuals of the political system.

It has been forty years since the first electoral reform and we still have not achieved the construction of a political system capable of delivering the obvious and essential: proper governance and accountability. In France, the Fourth Republic made its appearance after the Second World War, in 1946, but it turned out to be dysfunctional. In contrast with our politicians, the French decided to devote themselves to correcting the errors of that system and in 1958 they inaugurated the Fifth Republic, which has ruled them ever since. If we were to copy one of their mechanisms (the runoff), we should perhaps understand the context within which it was built and the full scaffolding that integrates it.

The only reason why I believe that a second round might make sense is that it would eliminate the benefit, thus the incentive, to manipulate, buy votes, fabricate surveys and attempt to promote or castigate candidates in the interest of inducing voters to abandon their preferred choice in favor of (or against) the party-in-power, the so-called “useful vote.” When there are two rounds, the campaigns are cleaner, the parties seek to obtain the maximal vote possible and there is no benefit for negative campaigns.  The second round can solve this problem, but not all of the problems. Everything depends on the incentives.

The key question ends up being what the citizenry can do to change the incentives of the politicians.

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Luis Rubio

Any solution must always address a specific problem. However, one of the peculiarities of Mexico’s political life rests on the propensity to turn into mantra half cooked ideas that do not necessarily respond to the problem that needs addressing. Such is the case in the presidential elections’ second round or runoff.

The runoff in France was the product of two rounds of reform after the Second World War -the Fourth and Fifth Republics-, which resulted in a process of trial and error regarding the specific conditions of that country. Copying the mechanism does not guarantee that the problems that Mexico faces will be solved.

The political reform of 1977 had a precise, specific and clearly defined objective: it sought to incorporate into the world of institutions a segment of political life that, for decades, had existed under the cloak of clandestine life. On not engaging in formal participation in the political institutional framework, diverse forces of the Left had become radicalized: some had opted for the guerilla path and, even, terrorism. The objective of the reform was, in consequence, very clear and very simple: to bring into the fore, and to legitimacy within a formal political existence, all those forces living in the underground. The reform was a great success.

The electoral reform of 1996 was more diffuse because it attempted to solve diverse problems at one and the same time. On the one hand it endeavored to create consensual and transparent mechanisms of access to power. On the other hand, it procured the creation of conditions for a political transition, that is, for an eventual defeat of the PRI. There does not necessarily have to be a contradiction between these two purposes, but the reform only solved the first part of the equation, giving rise to the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and establishing rules for the political parties to interact compete and entertain the same possibility of acceding to power.

What that reform did not solve, as is patent today, twenty years later,  was the structure of the government: it did not occur to any of the parties -government and political forces- that a change in the rules of access to power could be enormously disruptive to daily life, for example, in security matters.  Likewise, it was not considered that the country had maintained its (declining) stability thanks to the centralization of power in the presidency and that, when the PRI was defeated, that power concentration would disappear, engendering a crisis of governance.

What we are faced with at present is a chaotic situation in security, absence of checks and balances, above all at the state and local levels, and the inexistence of institutional mechanisms to make public officials accountable. That is, we have a governability crisis: what there is does not serve to solve the problems currently afflicting the country, ranging as they do from security to the regulation of the economy.

In addition to the latter, since 2006, Mexico has undergone a grave (and paradoxical) problem of legitimacy. Approximately one third of the electorate does not recognize the legitimacy of the electoral results, despite the exceptional solidity and professionalism of the administration of the elections and of the mechanisms of conflict resolution. The obvious question is: What would happen if the candidate favored by that crowd fails to join the second round? Unless one were certain that the legitimacy problem would end, the second round would not solve this essential problem.

In this manner, we have two problems and now a magic solution. Advocates of a runoff argue that the second electoral round will solve all the problems and that, on adopting it, we would enter into a political nirvana. However, the second round comprises a possible solution to a problem, not to all of the problems. Thus, it is indispensible to define what the problem is whose solution is quested after. The political reforms of 1977 to date have attempted to solve the problems of the political parties, but not the one about 99% of Mexicans who daily experience the consequences of the dreadful system of government.

The second round deals with the problem of perception: a triumph with 29% of the votes is not the same as one with 51%. If the problem is one of legitimacy –that is, of the acceptance of the electoral result by all Mexicans (and the certainty that this stands for all)- then the second round is the most fitting response.  On the other hand, if the problem is one of the institutionalization of power –that is, of establishing counterweights to future presidents so that they, by such means, are unable to act capriciously, and making the Congress accountable to the citizenry- then the second round may or may not form part of the solution, but it would have to include many other elements. In one word, there is no magic solution or silver bullet.

On the other hand, if the problem is one of governance, solving it should be the objective. The incipient Mexican democracy finds itself in problems because it has an electoral system that is much more advanced than the system of government.  It is urgent for Mexico to undertake a reform of the government so that the elected officials work for the citizenry, solve the problems and create conditions for development. None of that is of an electoral nature, nor would it be fixed by a runoff. It is imperative to start by defining the problem well. Will continue.

www.cidac.org
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