I seemed to be seeing the past and the future galloping head to head without end. A recent visit to India made me realize the so very dramatic contrast between two social and political realities that lie behind contrasting economic results. India and Mexico show that it is not only economic policy that determines growth: perhaps as important, if not more, is the recognition or social rejection to the creation of wealth.

Mexico resolved many essential issues of infrastructure many decades ago and, nevertheless, got stuck along the way. The grand highway construction and electrification programs began in the last century during the thirties. In India, these have been an issue of the last twenty years. While it is rare for a Mexican town not to have electricity and even telephone service, in India this was the norm until only two decades ago. Independently of the manner in which one wishes to evaluate the success of Mexican development programs, I have no doubt but that during the last century there was a clear attempt to take infrastructure to the remotest nook and cranny.

In India, the extreme poverty that characterizes the society (which only a few years ago had a per capita income less than 10% of Mexico’s) was the product of a failed strategy inspired by Soviet socialism. As soon as it started to free itself from those ideological and bureaucratic bonds, its economy began to grow in a sustained and accelerated fashion. In only twenty years, India achieved quadrupling its GDP per capita.

Today India confronts the type of dilemma that has plagued our process of development in the last several years, but it finds itself with a much better capacity to deal with these. Although attacking essential problems such as poverty is difficult in all nations, it is infinitely easier within the context of an economy that expands, because that fact alone generates favorable conditions. But perhaps the great difference between India and Mexico does not reside in the economy itself, but in the attitude of its people: even in the midst of crushing and lacerating poverty, Indians maintain a “can do” attitude rather than a “why it can’t be done” one.

For a population that had never before known economic opportunities, the priority is to generate income and an environment of accelerated growth produces one opportunity after another. Despite the lack of government programs devoted to attending to problems of poverty and economic informality, the population acts: its incentive is to break the vicious circle in which it lives and its responses are not foreign to us: those who can, send their children to the best school, not to the one that corresponds to them; what’s important is to generate activity, which Indians seek until they find it, an attitude that has procreated millions of small businesses in all ambits. Some of these grow, others disappear, but living standards rise one family at a time.

An Indian university professor mentions that the most popular language is not English, but “Windows”, because that’s how many perceive their ticket to ride toward the future. For those who have had access to the technical schools that proliferate throughout the country, a degree in Engineering changes life in a millisecond. India illustrates how a regulatory framework that propitiates entrepreneurial activity (by design or by default) can be unbeatable. In this respect, China and India are contrasting in that they have followed models of development that emanate from their very distinct social as well as political characteristics.

A sharp observer of India explained that comparisons between India and China were logical but not very useful. These are two nations that share a region of the world, but radically opposite circumstances and characteristics. The only thing that they appear to have in common is that, after a long period of paralysis, they suddenly woke up, becoming important economic growth engines. In China everything is order, in India disorder; both believe in celerity, but their sources of growth are very distinct: in China there is much foreign investment and big local enterprises, essentially governmental; in India there is an enormous and vigorous entrepreneurial class and a government that, over recent decades, has withdrawn and favored the development of self-starters at all levels. The disorder in India reflects a democratic system that is complex in the extreme, which is in contrast with the order emanating from an authoritarian government in China.

Returning to Mexico, it seems to me that the main lesson shown by the transformation in India of recent decades is that the key does not dwell on having a perfect regulatory framework, with all of the reforms that would be desirable or with a hyper competent government, though all that would obviously makes success more likely. What’s critical is to have an environment that makes economic growth possible. What appears to enliven the success of this Asian nation has more to do with the milieu of freedoms, a contentious political system that generates checks and balances, and above all, social appreciation of the economic boom and of personal enrichment. When individuals identify success with enrichment, their incentive for investing, assuming risks, and viewing the future with optimism ends up being irrepressible.

In Mexico we lost our way at the beginning of the seventies in the past century (fifty years ago!) and, however numerous the significant advances have been, our disputes are not about how to govern us better or how to promote growth, but rather how to come into power and stay there. Compared with India, we have everything to be successful, and we had it many decades before they could even have imagined it. This makes one think that the great difference between the economically successful years of the 20^th Century (1940-1970) and the present has less to do with the specific economic strategy than with the legitimacy that the society grants to those responsible for generating wealth.

Nations that during the last several years became emblematic in economic terms follow development strategies that are so dissimilar that it is impossible to attribute success to a single factor: more or less investment or expenditures, the existence (or absence) of a strategy against poverty or the exact nature of private-sector participation. All these obviously matter. But China, India, South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil, and other nations that have grown at a brisk pace do not share any common economic strategy: each of these nations follows its own rationality. Each has achieved high growth rates thanks to a significant political change.

A long time ago Aesop said that “Men often applaud imitations and hiss the real thing”. It seems that he understood our dilemmas better than we do.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

The budget, said Schumpeter, is “the state stripped of ideological pretensions”. True to this principle, in Mexico public budgets serve private interests. Only a new federal-fiscal pact would correct this.

Today’s budgets are not like those in the past. Until the mid-nineties, the federal government decided how to collect and how to distribute and spend public funds. At present, tax collection continues to be essentially federal, but government spending is mainly in charge of the states and municipalities. This creates perverse incentives and begs the question: Are we precipitating a European-style crisis?

Although the European crisis features many dimensions, its heart lies in a fundamental problem that Alexander Hamilton had already anticipated 200 years ago: there can be an alliance among sovereign entities, or there can be a government that governs the citizens of these sovereign entities. What there can’t be, said the Secretary of the Treasury of the then-nascent American Union, is the “monster of a government of governments”. In financial terms, the latter model implies that there is no built-in mechanism that supplies funds to pay the debts that these governments incur.

In Europe, every country has its government that collects taxes and spends these, but 17 dissimilar nations share a common currency. Each country has conducted its affairs to the best of its understanding.Thus, while Germany dramatically increased its levels of productivity in the last decade, Italy fell in arrears. In a world of independent currencies,Italy would have ended up devaluating its currency to compensate for these differences. However, thanks to the existence of the euro, the common exchange medium, Italy cannot resolve its situation by means of devaluation. In addition, through a decision of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS, the central bank for central banks), all debts of euro-zone countries were considered sovereign (guaranteed by their governments), therefore risk-free. This decision, more political than economic, led to European banks cheerfully lending without building up reserves were someone not be able to pay them.

Is this situation akin to Mexico’s? Uses and abuses of public funds here are legendary. In Mexico no one is surprised when a governor utilizes public treasury monies to upgrade his image or that public funds are dispensed in the most awkward ways without anybody blushing. Although governors cannot print their own money, recent experience (e.g., Coahuila) shows that through deceit and the manipulation of information, a state government can get itself into unlimited debt, something similar to having their own currency.

The use and distribution of public funds is serious to the extreme. To begin with, perhaps one of the main reasons that public spending in Mexico has very little capacity to stimulate economic growth pertains to its peculiar fiscal system.

The federation collects and the states spend. Given the political power that governors have accumulated in recent years, their expenses are taboo, and, for all practical purposes, they are not accountable to anyone. From an economic perspective, many, perhaps the majority of projects promoted by governors, have little impact because their logic is frequently more political and electoral than economic. Of course they build roads and other services, but not necessarily those that generate the greatest economic impact.

Without the desire of proposingto return to the centralized system of the 1950s and 1960s, it is important to understand the difference. During that era, the Mexican Ministry of Finance had enormous “pots” of money that it devoted to development projects. With a small army of economists, the Ministry evaluated the cost-benefit of each project to determine the highest multiplier effect. In this manner, one year they allocated these money pots to electrification of the Southeast and another to constructing Cancún or the highway to Querétaro. The basic objective was to achieve a high rate of economic growth.

The current rationale of the governors is very distinct. Above all, they conceive of themselves as future presidents and view the expenditure as a personal marketing tool. Second, even among those more modest in their individualpretensions, few have a team with the analytical capacity to determine the most salubrious use of the expenditure. In addition, the “money pot” aggregated at the federal level is not the same as 32 disperse state budgets.

To all this we must add the “European element”: the governors do not collect taxes, they only spend. This is more convenient for them, but terrifying for the growth of the economy. This scheme denies the right to the citizenry to upbraid the governor: their faculty of exacting accountability. The governor is delighted for the money to be collected from afar, thus having no need to explain anything to the local citizenry. But the consequence is that the country has lost economic dynamism in good measure due to the current distorted fiscal system.

Facing forward, one of the principal priorities must be the fiscal structure of the country. The phenomenon retains many rough edges and one cannot be resolved without the others being affected. Today, a significant part of the federal budget is financed with oil money, the latter ending up in the states with no control or planning. The citizenry is not of a mind to pay more taxes, at least partly because it is well aware of how these funds are spent.

Inevitably, if we want to recover the growth capacity of the economy, we will have to construct a new fiscal structure in such a way that the taxes collectedmatch with federal- and well as with state-level expenses. The federal government will be required to free up significant resources to Pemex for the company’s growth, and state and municipal governments will have to collect taxes at the local level, above all property taxes. Such a change in the rules will demand extraordinary political capital.

At the same time, with respect to tax collection, changes such as these will only be possible inasmuch as the citizenry observes a new power relationship with its governments at all levels. In these times better tax collection is impossible without improving the use of the money and performing responsible checks and balances thereupon. This is the quandary of our fiscal reality at present.

Power in Mexican society has been decentralized in such a way that it has generated more veto capacity than creative opportunities. The solution does not reside in an impossible recentralization of power but rather in a new federal equilibrium: a novel political arrangement between the federation and the states and municipalities that incorporates rules and incentives for public monies to join forces in a sole objective: to generate greater economic growth.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

“The Prince”, wrote Machiavelli, “ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable”. President Calderón is a decent, responsible, and serious person who has presided over a government in turbulent times without a clear sense of direction and with an enfeebled team. An old saying suggests that difficult times generate natural leaders; unfortunately for Mexico, this was not the case.

This six-year term of office began with turbulence and is ending in disorderly and even chaotic fashion. We owe Felipe Calderón for having impeded the destructive threat represented by a return to populism, but his government did not have clear objectives, a sense of direction or a well-thought strategy. Combating organized crime, a praiseworthy objective, is not a substitute for strategy nor can it be the cause of a government. Despite this, this presidential term concentrated on a sole objective at the cost of all others. The result is that the country finds itself reeling and, once more, expecting someone who is at least not worse. His failure can be gauged by the fact that the election was about those against the PRI versus those that were against Lopez Obrador. Calderondidn’tevenexist.

The decisive factor of the term has been the personality of the president himself: distrustful, obsessed with the PRI, incapable of recruiting professional personnel, he was content with a fundamentally mediocre –but supposedly loyal- team that little by little displaced –and inflicted harm on- the few public officials who excelled in capacity, as well as those who came aboard his project from outside the PAN sphere. Certain of understanding the Mexican with clairvoyance, he devoted himself to imitating, perhaps unconsciously, an old version of the PRIistpresidentialism, privileging the cult of personality above his administration’s performance. In the final analysis, his conduct was that of a PRIist but without the ability (and malice) of the latter and without leaving the nation in better conditions than those in which he found it.

If one characteristic defined the administration it was, indubitably, distrust, and at an overwhelming cost: he alienated his counterparts; he made it impossible to negotiate relevant legislative reforms; it meant the presence of opaque and incompetent functionaries; and was always characterized by a sick obsession to make everything and anything necessary in order to avoid the PRI’s winning the Presidencywhich, as he demonstrated this week, is his real nature. In this search, he undermined his own team, reigned despotic over his own party, ventured into alliances without rhyme or reason and, one by one, destroyed every vestige of an institutional order. Distrust of some translated into immoderate confidence in others who did not justify this with their capacity or maturity. His lack of understanding of power prompted him to be very decisive in some themes (above all those related with narcotrafficking) but detached and distant in others.

As occurs with all gamblers, President Calderón ended up with a bad deck. He associated himself with corrupt union leaders who never made good on their promises; he privileged conflict, rather than cooperation, with his only possible legislative ally; turned a blind eye to opportunities in fronts distinct from security –such as education, judiciary reform, and foreign policy-; and finally left in his wake unprecedented levels of violence and insecurity without a shimmer of resolution. In a word, he bet and lost.

Organized crime did not come into being with President Calderón. Rather, as a responsible person, he understood the magnitude of the challenge to the State represented by the criminal organizations and forged full steam ahead to combat these. His strategy can be arguable, but the fact of fighting such a brutal enemy is indisputable. The problem is that the strategy adopted has consequences and, on not having convinced the population of its need and potential benefits and on not having won their support from the start, when the violence began to ascend and the impact of criminality jarred Mexican families, the President was left with nothing.

Now that the sunset of his term approaches, the President continues to persist in his own obsessions, abandoning the historical legacy of the PAN comprised of the causes of the citizenry. Worse yet, paradox of paradoxes, as concerned of a PRI triumph as he was, he abandoned his party’s candidate and failed to construct an institutional and economic scaffolding to contribute to a more favorable electoral result. Instead of being a factor of unity, conciliation, and institutionality, the President has inclined toward conflict and animadversion. Instead of striving for his party to win the presidential race, he ended with the scenario that most obsessed him.

One PRI ex-governor says that it would be detrimental if his colleagues and those of the PRD were to underestimate the destructive capacity of Felipe Calderón when he persists in advancing his objectives, even if he leaves nothing after the fray. Given the election result, he placed himself in the worst possible position: as the example of what a president ought not to be and, thus, as the likely whipping boy of the incoming administration: to show a stark contrast. He bet against the PRI but did nothing to avert its victory. Calderon will end up as the PANist who made PRI’s return possible, as the reason for its recovery.

Presidents assume their mandate certain of possessing a universe of time to organize and transform the country. However, as their term advances, time runs out and very soon they find themselves in the home stretch. From the beginning and up to this moment, they try everything that occurs to them and some of these come out well. But when the final moment arrives, there is no longer any possibility of attempting new things. Time runs out and the typical question concerning the president’s legacy becomes irrelevant. The only thing left is to try to avoid a crisis and to come out as unscathed as possible.

His government’s liabilities are well known and it is not necessary to go into these here. But there are also assets that have not been exploited in good measure because all of attention has been focused on unachievable objectives. Instead of the antagonisms that tend to characterize him and that could easily turn him into the laughing stock of the next administration, it would be better for him to strengthen the assets that he did create, explaining the logic and strategy of the fight against organized crime and constructing agreements for the protection of the army.

Obsession, noted Norman Mailer, is the single most wasteful human activity. Obsessions with achieving something not in his power are futile and, worse yet, fraught with danger. Felipe Calderón ends like he started: without a project, without a party and without direction. The only thing that remains is to trust that the next administration thinks more about the future rather than attempting to rebuild the past because only then will he have something to be remembered by with bonhomie. Buttrustingisnot his thing.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

“Be careful what you wish for”, goes the old adage, “because it may come true”. The electorate as well as the new president-elect should meditate in these terms. The victory of Enrique Peña-Nieto was impeccable and indisputable. Viewed in retrospect, this electoral contest was a new watershed, similar to 2000. Now comes the good part.

The electoral result has two faces: what the electorate demanded, and what Peña supplied. Both reveal a changed country.

On the part of the citizenry it is evident that there is weariness. Decades of crisis followed by more of disorder, the absence of leadership and economic stagnation ended up ruining the expectations that the solution would be via the route of a divided government, incomplete democracy, or a bunch of incompetent governments. The last three administrations, free as they were from financial crises, were mediocre and ended up not satisfying anyone. Peña understood that the electorate wanted an effective government and that’s what he promised.

The majority of the problems that the country is currently experiencing are the residues of the PRIist era that has not been overcome and that translated into violence, institutional weakness, bureaucratic abuse and a pathetic system of government. The PANist governments proved unable to change the country: they neither built democratic institutions nor did they distinguish themselves for the quality of their administration.  But the problems are still there.

Although the final result did not bring about a “full cart” (i.e. control of both legislative houses and the presidency) that some polls anticipated, the changed landscape is nonetheless amazing. The PRI candidate clearly won. The PAN candidate gave a lesson of democracy and integrity up to now absent in the country’s brief democratic history. And the PRD candidate behaved, well, as always: Facundo Cabral would be delighting himself.

The winning candidate prepared himself for years. Peña organized a team, conceived of his term as governor as a showcase for this campaign, planned every step of the construction of his candidacy and developed an impeccable political operation. Instead of wasting time attacking the federal government, he devoted himself to organizing the PRIists, coaxing the dissenters on board and eliminating all competition. He foresaw attacks on his weaknesses by making them public, propitiating the printing of books that justified him, and threatening, albeit in roundabout fashion, those who opposed him. He associated himself with the Mexican multimedia mass media company Televisa to become the sole positive public figure for six years and undermined his potential rivals by attracting and buying leading figures of the Left and the PAN, notably Fox. Peña left nothing to fate.

The campaign proceeded like a perfectly well-oiled and -financed machine driven like a bulldozer. As IvonneMelgar wrote recently, he anticipated diverse scenarios and groomed a team skillful in image management and in immediate response to and care of even the most trivial contingency, by any means possible. In view of this, none of his contenders, however capable, attractive or organized they might have been, had any chance at all. The numbers show this to be so from day one.

Now come the consequences.

Peña did not receive a blank check but a halo of legitimacy. Instead of the risk that an absolute legislative majority entailed –for him and for the country- the electoral outcome will force him to forge agreements and build a legislative majority with opposition parties. The political talent that he showed during the campaign suggests that he has everything going to accomplish that. Also, the moments and circumstances in which he found himself in a predicament during the campaign (as with at the Ibero) illustrate the kind of problems he is likely to face when facing unpredictable scenarios.

It is to be expected that in the upcoming months we will see many adjustments and disadjustments. The underground war between the “center” and the state governors has just begun. Different from the thirties, the latter do not have armies at their fingertips, but no one will give up their privileges without a struggle. The notion that the PRI-Presidency nuptials can simply be restored as if nothing happened in the past decade is simply ludicrous.  When a similar situation was encountered in Poland, the return of the Communist Party, Lech Walesa affirmed that “making fish soup from an aquarium is not the same as making an aquarium from fish soup”. A similar situation will come about with PRI: Peña’s opportunity is immense.

Soon the de facto powers will rear their heads, some to make their weight felt and to establish limits for the new government, other to cash in on campaign favors. The response that they receive, and the manner of that response, will earmark the tenor and nature of the incoming government. The temptation to centralize and impose order will be strong. The example of the State of Mexico, of which he was governor and where nothing moves without the governor’s consent is suggestive.

For Peña the dilemma is to come face to face with recovering what has been lost and to rebuild PRIist hegemony –as well as he can-, or to devote himself to constructing a modern country, which would imply exactly the opposite: abandoning the old PRI once and for all. This would imply achieving precisely what the PANist governments were timorous about and incapable of articulating. The party -PAN or PRD- that first succeeds in organizing itself to negotiate a legislative coalition will be crucial and will determine the nature of the economic policy and thus the potential for transformation of the country. I have no doubt that there will be ad-hoc legislative coalitions. The question is with whom.

A modern country entails, above all, a structure of checks and balances that confers stability and strong institutions on the country and the government. Since 1997, when the PRI lost legislative majority, the country has experienced the checks, but never proper counterweights. That is, diverse private interests (above all the so-called de facto powers, but also the Congress), have achieved blocking and impeding reforms, the elimination of obstacles to economic growth and other means to turn around a country that is ripe for transformation. What there have not been are balances: that is, the means to strengthen the government’s capacity to act for the benefit of the citizenship, marginalizing restrictions imposed by special interests.

The good news of not enjoying a legislative majority is that this makes it irrelevant whether the new government will want to construct a modern country. The bad news is that such a possibility will depend on the quality of the opposition with which he has to work: the opportunity, and responsibility, of the opposition parties to forge a coalition to modernize the country is extraordinary. The paradox is that all that power can be used to advance but also to retreat. Mexican society is avid for answers and for a future. Peña has the opportunity to respond at the tip of his hand. The question is whether he’ll be able to defeat PRI in order to achieve it.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

For Bismarck, the great German chancellor, politicians“never lie as much as before elections, during a war, and after a hunt”. The citizen’s task on an election day such as today is to elucidate among the poses, proposals, images and… lies. Anything goes in an election and the one that ends today was no exception. Now is the time for citizen responsibility.

The candidates did their job and today it’s the citizen’s turn to choose. Like six years ago, over the past several days there have been attempts to generate an ambience of disqualification of the electoral processes. Different from then, today the surveys show very distinct numbers that confer greater assurance on the democratic exercise. The two candidates in the lead do not put economic stability at play as was done previously. The advance on this front is solid and the threat of regression in economic matters has receded to such a degree that it did not comprise a relevant theme in the election.

Today the tessitura is distinct: it is lodged between the past and the future: reconstruct what worked before or construct a distinct platform oriented toward the future. The reality is that despite the democratic advances that have in effect been made, we are far from living under a consolidated democratic regime. The politicians did not fulfill their responsibility of constructing institutions that, on affording solidity and predictability to decision-making processes, would eliminate the risk of instability that always accompanies moments of political transition. With our votes, the citizens now have to force the politicians to construct the key institutions that are necessary for the development, stability and rapid growth of the economy.

Of the three main contending candidates that present themselves today before the electorate, one has not ceased to exert a threat in terms of rejectingthe results on election day and another represents a contingency that aspires to regain power and never let go of it again. Both are emblematic of the immaturity that continues to characterize our political reality. In consolidated democracies what is in dispute is a small change of focus that places in doubt neither the population’s daily lives nor the country’s stability. Regrettably, everyday debates among Mexicans during recent weeks reveal that we are far from having reached the point at which that the latter would be true. The very fact that stability (or the risk of the return of the PRI) is a topic of discussion is telling in itself.

In the face of this, the citizenry must choose the best option, or combination of options, which casts certainty on the future. The case of the economy is illustrative: although this has improved systematically over the past years (in fact, 2011 was the year of the greatest job creation in our entire history), disputes prevail concerning the course that this should follow. In the proposals heard throughout the campaigns one candidate idealized the past, another proposed a return to what worked before and yet another offered an approach for tackling the future. That is, despite that Mexico is basking in one the best circumstances of economic matters in the world at this moment, effervescence runs high.

Behind many of the proposals the idea is found, very deep-rooted in two of the parties, that it is possible to reconstruct distinct moments of our history (above all the sixties or the seventies, respectively) instead of facing up to the challenge represented by the complex world we live in. A better alternative would be to make the wave of change that has characterized the world in this half century our own: to really take hold of it and break with the obstacles that this so very polarized and contrasting economy has generated in which one part grows rapidly while the other languishes without course nor opportunity. The apparent differences may appear to be small, but thisconcerns a radical difference in focus and vision. The question is how to make certain that the country advances towards the consolidation of a platform of growth with equal opportunity to all. The vote is a limited, albeit exceptional, instrument for that.

The dilemma in today’s elections resides in the what for of the government and what this implies for the future of the country. The difference lies in the attempt to reconstruct that idyllic past or to sever from, once and for all, the impediments to growth that persist, many of these engendered in that idyllic world of many decades ago that, as Cervantes said so well, was never such.

I, for one, have no doubt whatsoever: Mexico must look ahead, leaving the past in the history books. The key to the future does not reside in restoring but rather in liberating and in providing the citizenry –the individual, the entrepreneur, the worker- with instruments for competing in a globalized world in which the capacity for adding value is determined by the quality of education (and the nature of this), the functionality of the physical and human infrastructure and the links with the rest of the world. The citizen today has the opportunity and the responsibility of constructing with his or her vote their votes the equilibriums that best contribute to achieving this: a different party in the presidency and in the legislature

In decades past, Mexico abandoned the introspective economic model because the latter had ceased to be viable. Today we begin to see the results of decades of transformation and, for the first time in a long time, the future appears exceedingly promising. This is the moment to take the great leap forward toward the future.

It goes without saying that Mexico needs a competent government dedicated to building the political and structural conditions so that the economy can prosper at a much higher clip than we’ve experienced lately. Mexicans also need limited government, properly constrained by checks and balances, that avoids and hinders excess and abuse or backtracking, given that the immature democracy that today exists make that feasible. Mexico has to take the last stride: to construct the platform of a modern nation in the context of freedom, in which the creativity of the people can thrive in the form of entrepreneurial activity to which all have access.

The choice in this election is very clear: return to what was and that did not work, or take the great leap, but with clear governmental stewardship, toward the change that did not gel in the final analysis of this last decade but that is necessary and, to a great extent, unstoppable. Each and every voter will have to determine the best combination of votes that would make politicians act.

I have already stated my preference of candidate in a previous article, as well as of formula: president and congress of different parties. The task of the voter today is to make a decision and go cast a vote for the candidate that can resolutely advance –and will have no choice but to do so- in this direction and to create conditions that make a different future possible. Responsibility for the result will be all his.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

“Sometimes in error, but never in doubt” is a characterization that could be easily applied to the PRI. The “Party of the Revolution” stabilized the country after the revolutionary era but never achieved overcoming its original sin, a system devoted fully and exclusively to the interests of the so-called revolutionary family:to control power and to advance their business dealings. The risk of this election dwells in going back to that world of complacency. Mexico clearly requires an effective government and the way in which both of the PANist governments that succeeded the PRI defeat in 2000 evolved was everything except effective. The solution, however, does not reside in going back to a system in absolute control.

The PRIists are proud of their skills at running a government. However, their proven abilities to execute the functions of governing are not equivalent to a good government: through the 20th century, Mexico had many decades of deft governments but not of good governments. Had those been good governments, Mexico would be a prosperous and wealth nation, like Korea or other countries of similar development level. Clearly Mexico needs an effective government, but also a good government. The question is how to achieve that successful combination.

The PRI that today is flexing its muscles is not a modern or visionary PRI. Its view is decidedly concentrated on the rearview mirror, in what for many PRIists should never have been abandoned. It is the idyllic world of the professor: a government in control, a society in subordination, and a growing economy. The sixties.

For the old, PRI, political system, Mexican society never existed except as a manipulable instrument. I do not wish to suggest with this that the PRIist regimen denied the opportunity of economic development because evidence to the contrary is enormous, but it did do so in that its objective function, its raison d’être, was that of serving the interests of the revolutionary family: preserve power and exploit it to its benefit. That is what absolute majorities make possible: to impose their will.

When the PRI lost the presidency, it created the opportunity of transforming the political system and, in the way in which other nations surmounted their previous traumas, building on what already existed. Unfortunately, the two administrations that succeeded the PRI (and, in fact, the last three) lacked the vision, the grandeur, the capacity to transcend what they had inherited. We citizens ended up with a frail democracy that has not satisfied the expectations or changed the course of the country. The conclusion many reach is that the problem lies in the lack of legislative majorities to push the government’s agenda. I differ: the problem dwells in the incompetence of our recent presidents, in their inability to build majorities and transform the political system. It is not the same thing.

This failure is the main explanation for the PRI’s current situation. In frank contrast with the political parties of the old regime in other societies, the PRI had it easy: it didn’t have to reform itself to become electorally competitive again. The risk now is that it is the society that has to pay the piper.

Beyond the surveys and the differences in perspective between young and old –those who lived through the era of the abusive PRI and those who are living through the current disenchantment- the tangible fact is that the country itself is a great disorder. The PRI’s proposal to restore order is thus quite convincing: an effective government. The problem is that efficacy does not imply good government and that is the history of PRI. The paradox that no one apparently wants to see is that, beyond the generalized incompetence that the last three governments evidenced (two of PAN, one of PRI), the problems of the country hearken back to the fact that PRIist structures and interests were never substituted by functional institutions and duly structured checks and balances. That is to say, the problem that continues to this day is that the PRIist system persists despite the fact that the era died several decades ago.

Nobody can doubt that the country needs an effective government. In the PRI era, efficacy was almost guaranteed because the system was so powerful and ubiquitous that it made it possible for even lousy administrations to function in effective fashion. However, since the PRI split in the middle of the 80’s, its capacity to impose the presidential will drastically diminished. Ever since then, the success of a government has depended on the political skills of the individual in the presidency: it is no coincidence that between 1982 and the present only Salinas was effective.

In the past two decades, the country has decentralized in amazing fashion, but it has not developed a system of effective checks and balances that could confer stability and predictability. It is this factor that creates so much uncertainty: the possibility that the PRI might return to restore the old, oppressive, system or that Lopez Obrador would destroy the few things that have decisively advanced. Our problem is of absence of counterweights and that cannot be fixed with an “effective” government and much less so with absolute majorities in the Congress. Mexico requires a political negotiation among the political parties so as to create and institutionalize an effective system of checks and balances that can take the country to a new stadium of development.

Mexico has greatly changed, but not always for the better. The reality of the power in the country is already not one of political centralization but rather one of dispersion of power with an enormous concentration in partisan leaderships and governors, in addition to the so-called “de facto powers”. In outright contrast with the old PRIist era, the multiplicity of contacts that characterizes the average Mexican with the rest of the world is impacting. The only reason that the country has continued to get ahead in the past twenty or thirty years is precisely that Mexicans found ways of functioning independently of the government. It is the aftertaste of the old system -that of PRI and of Lopez Obrador- that keeps the country paralyzed. There’s nowhere to go back to.

The challenge for Mexico consists of dismantling, now definitively, once and for all, the corporatist structure that persists and that can be appreciated in state-run corporations, corrupt unionism, and in the private businesses, many of which are illicit, of PRI’s exalted personages. That is, to affect bases and support structures of the very PRI. What Mexico requires is taking liberalization –in the economic and in the political realms- to its maturity and this implies affecting interests that are fundamentally PRIist. The question is whether the beast can survive the dismantling of its entrails, and whether by controlling the presidency and the two legislative chambers, it would have the incentive to do it.  I doubt it.

The Mexican wants order, a factor that has strengthened the PRI in this electoral contest. But order without content is not an answer. To restore order and to end up constructing the pathway to economic growth it is imperative to break with what Mexico has been for so many years, that is, with the PRIist system. Who could accomplish that? Only a president with the political skills but one guided by the imperative of having to build a political arrangement with the other political parties.Returning to the era of absolute majorities would be an enormous regression.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

The moment has arrived for deciding whom to vote for. This is the moment when each citizen must translate his or her experience and responsibility into a vote. Each of the contenders has assets and liabilities and each of these entails a distinct vision of the future. I shall make use of this space to explain my vote.

In an open society, the citizens decide who will govern them by placing a mark on a ballot, an action apparently small and insignificant but one that constitutes a fundamental decision. With this mark, the citizen summarizes his/her vision and expectations for achieving a better life. Although we can like one candidate more than another, what’s crucial is who will know how to respond when the time comes for decision-making under crisis circumstances that, by definition, are not predictable and that are not to be found in any script. At that moment –which always presents itself-  the only thing that counts is the president’s strength and personality, that is, his or her character. There is no perfect translation of this word into Spanish but the concept embodies the backbone, values, and vision of the person in charge. That’s why the person matters.

In the past months, the candidates have bombarded us with communiqués and discourses. Much of that will end up among the dregs of history because the heat of the battle generates proposals and ideas that are not always feasible (or desirable) once a leader is in government. Whoever wins the election will have to define not only objectives and strategies, but also the personnel who will be responsible for putting these into practice. Mexicans have already seen the costs of poorly equipped and/or loyal teams. A professional and exceptionally qualified team that takes on wrongs, independently of their party provenance, will be key.

The context that characterizes the country requires very special skills. Precisely at the moment of greatest change and turbulence in the country and throughout the world (1994-2012), we’ve had three presidents who did not possess the political skills to rally opponents and confront these heretofore unparalleled challenges. In the next six years, the country will have to achieve at least two things: first, an internal political reconciliation that lays the foundation for a new regime: a country of institutions; and second, the transformation of the economic structures to eliminate the privileges, monopolies, and wellsprings of favoritism that result in such poor economic-growth rates. Who among the candidates has the capacity and vision to advance these objectives, all the while maintaining stability?

From my perspective, there are four factors or essential attributes that define the best person to govern us. First, his/her values, world view, and concept of the citizen vis-à-vis the government. Second, his or her executive talent, the function for which a president is elected: the capacity to define objectives; assemble teams; supervise subordinates, and respond when the circumstances take a turn. Third, the ability and disposition to negotiate with adversaries.Finally, the integrity to maintain the equanimity and clarity of vision in order not to veer off course in good times and bad.

My vote goes to the candidate who presents the best combination of these attributes. In terms of values, she believes in personal freedom as the essence of life, respect beliefs and preferences distinct from hers, has an inbred concern for poverty and inequality, and knowsthat only by joining together -a coalition- and building institutions can the country achieve what it requires to change and to build anew. The ethics of this candidate is that of a citizen that entered politics as an adult and who separates the personal from the public with absolute clarity. She has a particular conviction comprising equality of opportunity for all, beginning with those who have had the greatest disadvantages in life.

Over the past decade, I observed Josefina Vázquez-Mota as Minister of Social Development, of Education, and as leader of the PAN contingent in the Congress: in each of these posts she exhibited amazing executive capacity, far superior to her two bosses, Fox and Calderon. As chief she knew how to put together the best teams, she got rid of those who didn’t function, she exacted precise accountability of their work, and had no problem working with people more capable than she. I imagine her to be perfectly willing and capable to invite the best to be on her team, independently of party or ideology: those who can indeed deliver to resolve the problems of the country. She is not an expert in all matters; thus, she seeks out the best talent, without limiting herself to members of her in-group. When she is not acquainted with an issue, she asks and has a prodigious capacity for understanding and acting.

At the Mexican Ministry of Education (SEP) she demonstrated negotiating capacity and had no difficulty coming to terms with the union  boss and leading her toward an innovative reform: the end of the sale of teaching positions and compensation for teachers based on pupil performance in standardized tests, both anathema for the union. When the hurricanes hit, she knew the most acute poverty and despair and took resolving causes upon herself, not only to attenuate the symptoms: she changed and institutionalized the Oportunidades program and eliminated politicization in dispensing foodstuffs and other support.

She entered politics as a citizen and has not stopped being one. She understands the country’s mood and what she has accomplished has been the product of her effort, capacity, sensitivity, and vision. She is not dogmatic and above all, she is a person endowed with common sense.

I met Josefina more than twenty years ago because one day I listened to her on the radio and I immediately invited her to join CIDAC (she did not accept). Throughout all these years, I have seen her at successful moments and at difficult moments. Always, even under the worst circumstances, she knew how to regroup and go on. Like all humans, she has fallibilities but her history shows an enormous capability for learning and self-control. Behind the smile that captivates her audiences there is a calculating politician who has demonstrated again and again the capacity to make decisions, to twist arms, and to engage with her interlocutors, even the most difficult of these. What many interpret as softness is no more than a willingness to listen and join in: while in the Congress, she dominated the House of Representatives and made possible the approval of practically the entire president’s agenda. She stands in no fear of the most dangerous affairs. When she acts, no one can stop her.

It is evident that the three contenders possess valuable qualities and experiences. However, I am convinced that only she brings together the best combination of attributes, capacities, and vision. I am also certain that only she has the capacity to bring together the team that is most qualified to resolve the problems of security, economy, employment, and institutional structure because she is not afraid to invite onboard those who have the abilities and to give them her undivided support to achieve it. It’s time we had somebody in the presidency who wears the pants.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

In an episode of the T.V. series West Wing, the contender for the upcoming election is asked why he wanted to be president. The candidate mumblesand his response is anything but convincing. His advisers engage in a chuckle until it suddenly dawns on them that their chief, the president, doesn’t have any idea of why he wants to be re-elected.    Something like that is happening with the present electoral match in Mexico: grand stances but little quality.

There are many ways of considering and evaluating the prospects of a presidential election. One is to study the history of the party that postulates each candidate; another is to analyze the past performance of the individual him/herself who is contending for the presidency. Maybe it’s time to incorporate other, probably more transcending, variables into the analysis.

The easy one is to go by the personality of the candidate or by his/her proposals exactly as they emerge in a platform designed precisely to convince the incautious. Election campaigns are an opportunity for each party and candidate to present their vision of the future in biased fashion, as if what one wished and desired were always possible. In this respect, campaigns end up being an exceptional occasion for aggrandizement and serving up Nirvana without the need to link up their proposals with the reality.

In the heat of the fray, the last thing that the candidates want to see or hear is that the reality is more complicated than they suppose, that their overtures are not especially innovative, or that there are limiting factors that make the implementationof their desires difficult, if not impossible. Thus, from a constituent’s perspective, it would be much better to start at the other end: the ideal would be for us to begin by defining what the problems of the country are and to see how the contenders respond to this reality. Viewed from this perspective, the citizenry would oblige the candidates to refine their proposals and to bring their grandiose ideas down to earth.

It is possible for the necessities and challenges of the country to be summed up in one word: productivity. According to Paul Krugman, productivity “isn’t everything, but in the long term, it’s nearly everything”, because it determines the number and types of jobs  that will be available, therefore, the population’s income. Perhaps one way to proceed in this electoral match is to exact from the candidates an explanation of how they would raise the growth of the productivity of the nation’s economy.

Productivity is a concept that summarizes the entirety of the challenges that characterize a society. In plain terms, productivity consists of producing a more witha lesser amount of resources, that is, optimizing the use of energy, labor, infrastructure, and raw materials in order to satisfy the largest number of persons. The reason the concept is so useful is that productivity can only thrive when there are no obstacles to itsoccurring.

Potential obstacles are of many types. When an entrepreneur proposes the production ofgoods or a service, he/she must begin by setting up shop somewhere, obtaining the requisite permits, and getting the human, financial, and material resources together to be able to do it. Each of these steps entails potential problems, each proffers the possibility of becoming an insurmountable barrier. Wherever one looks, the combination of monopolies, unions, bureaucrats, de facto powers, and extremely poor education and infrastructure constitutes formidable flies-in-the-ointment that threaten not only the productivity, but the viability of the country.

If we accept productivity as the objectivetoachieve, the country appears to be designed to fetter its growth. It is not a coincidence that, within this context, the informal economy is such a natural resource, because it allows obviating many of these obstacles. However, productivity entails absolute limits at which a company, thus the country, can develop and grow.

Raising the economy’s general productivity will require confronting obstacles, that is, powerful interests that today benefit the status quo:the latter of which is nowadays at a standstill. In theory, one could suppose that any of the candidates could overcome these obstacles. However, this hasn’t occurred in the country in decades, suggesting that it’s not so simple.

Faced by the need to increase productivity, our candidates, even at this late stage, have proved to be quite laconic. The PRI proposes strengthening the government for the economy to flourish once again, as it did in the sixties, when there was no Chinese competition, imports were irrelevant, and the country had no foreign commercial or investment commitments. The PRD has become more inured; they tell us that the thing to do is to ignore the current reality and its restrictions for reconstructing the 1970s because that way, as if by magic, we could imitate China or Brazil. The PAN tells us that we have to look towards the future and consolidate what has been attained because there is nowhere to go back to.

Of course each of these sketches is no more than a caricature, but the problem is that it’s not too far from the reality. Our only way out as a country is to raise productivity and that is not going to happenby spending as proposed by the PRD, by concentrating power as the PRI proposes, or only by combating criminality in the manner of the present government.

What the country requires is a convincing plan of how to facilitate the functioning of the economy, how to reduce the costs of producing in the country, and how to accelerate the formation of available personnel so we can compete successfully with the rest of the world. In other words, the candidate who deserves to win is he or she who presents us with a reasonable project that entails the following: a greater balance of powers that renders the government functional, but not abusive, in its entirety; an educative system that concentrates on the pupil and not on the demands of the teachers’ union; and a scheme that confers privilege on the citizen above the bureaucrat.

Above all else, the key of the next government lies in which candidate has the capacity and the disposition to confront the obstacles and the special interests that lie in wait, without destroying the financial stability or affecting the citizens’ rights, which have only advanced after such difficulty. Any one of the candidates could confront the obstacles. The question is which of them would do it without destroying what has indeed worked and that is crucial for development.

Instead of offering false panaceas, we the citizens should demand proposals that are likely to demolish, once and for all, the wrongs that have us paralyzed. That’s only possible by looking forward because it’s obvious that what’s behind never worked.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Throughout history, the world has been constructed, and more than once nearly destroyed, as a result of alliances both sacrosanct and sacrilegious.Alliances and coalitions are the essence of power. The ancient monarchies procured political marriages that expanded or consolidated empires, while modern parliaments construct coalitions in order to function. Independently of the objective that it pursues, the world stays in motion with power-sharing accords.

In the last two decades, Mexico has been an exception to this rule. Although there has been a great deal of legislative activity –more in fact in the fifteen years after1997, in which the legislative hegemonyof PRIdisappeared, than in the previous fifteen- the country has witnessed a political class that is practically incapable of committing itself and acting on the core challenges Mexico confronts, which in turn have translated into critical foot-dragging in matters above all economic. There have been an infinite number of reforms relative to social and political rights, but none relevant in the themes that impede the type of economic revolution that our main competitors on the global scale have experienced.

The explanation for this situation is obvious: the PRIist pact that sanctioned decades of stability in the last century collapsed due to the erosion that inexorably accompanies the exercise of power and, to no small degree, due to the evolution of Mexican society during this same period. The agreements of the twenties with which the grandfather of the PRI, the National Revolutionary Party, was born, were primitive, but were in sync with the post-revolutionary moment. In their essence, those compacts commanded respect for the top leader and cacique (jefemáximo) and his successors every six years, a presidential succession procedure and a mechanism for the distribution of benefits tied to the loyalty of players to the leader and to the systemat every point in time. That pact finally collapsed in the eighties when the party divided and the instruments that had furnished cohesiveness for the political class (PRIist) vanished. The 1997 and 2000 defeats were nothing but coups de grâce to a system that had stopped functioning and that, beyond nostalgic intimations, cannot be reconstructed.

Since the end of the eighties, the country has functioned, poorly or well, depending on the dexterity and political operative capacity of the individuals who have occupied the presidency. Salinas, a skillful and shrewd politician, knew how to use the instruments of power, while his successors did not; by the same token, the absence of checks and balances ended in political violence and a catastrophic financial crisis. In frank contrast with previous decades, the “system” –which had permitted political functioning independently of the abilities of the individual at the helm- stopped working. Our paralysis is not the product of coincidence.

The problem is, then, one of the organization and administration of power. The genius of the PRIist system consisted of its constructing an authoritarian mechanism but that, due to its nature,became an institutional structure that it was perceived as legitimate. What’s needed today is an institutional construction within a competitive and democratic milieu.

The PRIist structure worked around the PRI-President binomial that implicated internal negotiations with a great capacity for implementation.The PRI, as political control system, allowedguaranteeing that the decisions arrived at from thisbinomial could be implemented. It also incorporated disciplinary mechanisms that permitted marking off at least the worst forms of excess and abuse by public officials, union leaders, and politicos in general. The most evident consequence of that authoritarian and centralized structure was that it never fathomed the construction of functional institutions because these would havedelimited the power of the center. This is the reason for the brutal weakness of the state governments, a factor that has made possible, with the collapse of the central control, the constitution of primitive replicas of the old system at the state level.

How can this be changed? I see three answers: one, the favorite of the nostalgia-ridden of the old system localized today in two parties, would consist of reconstructing the mechanisms of authoritarian control in order to recover the effectiveness of the old system. The second would imply a great institutional revolution –the so-called political reform- which would procure institutionalizing what exists by the legislative route. The third would have institutional construction as its objective but its proposal would be procedural: to construct a great coalition that allows for transformation into a political system in its entirety. It is noteworthy that there are prominent politicians of all parties advocating each of these proposals: this is not a partisan affair.

In myopinion Mexico can only evolve through institutional construction. The notion that the old system can be reconstructed is absurd not because it would be impossible to strike an authoritarian blow,but rather because this would not resolve anything. This leaves us with two scenarios: that of the good will of our legislators in the presence of effective presidential leadership or the construction of prior agreements that make the latter possible. There is no difference of objectives, only of procedure.

The notion of a coalition government is not new, but it is not natural to a presidential systems due to an obvious reason: while a coalition in a parliamentary system obliges everyone to participatelest the government collapses, in a presidential system, the functionaries serve at the president’s pleasure and, thus,the permanence of a coalition depends on the disposition of the president. This fact explains the reticence of other parties to participate in the government that in past years -from Zedillo with a PANist attorney general and Fox without knowing what for- was attempted.

The logic of a coalition government is very clear: to incorporate representative political forces into a government committed to institutional construction in which all lose if any abandon ship midway. This would be equivalent, albeit a tardy Mexican response to the Monclova Pacts or to the Chilean Concertaciónafter Pinochet. The objective would not be media-driven but instead political: to attempt the construction of the new MexicanState. In this era, this requires the participation of all political parties because none presently represents a large enough portion of Mexican society.

Churchill said it very well in 1940, when he took the reins of a Government of National Unity: “We have differed and quarreled but now one bond unites us all”. In Mexico’s case that would be national reconciliation and the transformation of the State.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

The paralysis of which we complain so much reminds me of the “laboratories of democracy” described by Louis Brandeis, a U.S. Supreme Court judge. His argument was that it is impossible to set rules for everything so you have to let things flow and find their place, so that experimentation leads to finding the best way to bring about the development of a society. Sometimes I think that the Mexican interpretation of such a laboratory ended up producing something more akin to Dr. Moreau´s Island, the H.G Wells novel where horrific vivisection experiments mixed men and beasts.

For starters, I have no doubt that the country has confused democracy with paralysis. I wonder if the etiology of this paralysis is “structural” as some have suggested or is the by-product of our current circumstances. For example, while someone in England breaks the rules (as with an unauthorized demonstration),he or she will suffer the direct and merciless onslaught of the authorities, in Mexico marches, sit-ins and blockades of mayor city arteries are celebrated and protected regardless of the cost to the population. Some might say this is the result of a political assessment: it may be less costly for a decision maker to look after and protect protesters than to suffer the citizen´s contempt. But at least in this instance there is no doubt that, first, there is a political calculation involved and, second, if willing, those in power would be able to act.

However, what happens when “things do not happen,” when a government proposes legislation and it gets stuck down the road, when a free trade agreement is negotiated only to end up being rejected in the Senate. In these cases, are we observingpolitical calculation or plain incompetence?

Let us start at the beginning, at the issue of the famous paralysis. If we refer to paralysis only in terms of the legislative process and the relationship between congress and the executive then it is clear that the alleged paralysis was first noted when the PRI lost its legislative majority in the year 1997. The then-new Congress wanted to distinguish itself from its predecessors by failing to comply with the wishes of the almighty presidency of old.We only need to remember some of the pompous, boastful, absurd and even disrespectful speeches of opposition lawmakers in their responses to the president’sState of the Union address of those years to illustrate that the explicit aim was to settle a historical debt not to build the foundations of a better system of government.

But let’s not overly dramatize: Congress is a much more active entity since 1997 than it was before. Today many more laws are passed and many of the laws that are approved respond to the interests of all kinds of people that have nothing to do with billsput forth by the executive (a subject which in itself deserves comprehensive analysis), but it shows that, far from being paralyzed, congress has in fact been quite active. And this truth also applies to presidential initiatives: Maria AmparoCasarhas studied constitutional reforms and provides a number that sums it all: in the fifteen years since 1997, 64 constitutional decrees were approved, compared with 42 in the previous fifteen years. Paralysis is a myth.

What has certainly changed is the fact that presidential initiatives are no longer approved right away and some never are. The infamous “freezer” (as presidential bills that go nowhere are known) is full of bills that never saw the light of day. However, this fact in itself does not prove thatthere is paralysis or that this is necessarily a bad outcome. In my opinion, a highly relevant and often laudable state of things is that we have ended the terrible habit of having Congress endorse anything that was sent by the executive. Although we are far from having built a system of checks and balances, at least now there are some boundaries to the potential for abuse by the executive, which was previously the norm.

Having said this, it is obvious that we have a problem. Beyond the figures, we all know that the country requires significant changes in several areas and almost none of these have thrived in Congress. That is, although Congress has been overly active, the country has spent years waiting to amend laws on economic issues. This leads me to put forth two hypotheses: either politicians are unable to move by a combination of inertia and fear, or they simply do not have what it takes, especially the ability to build political processes, that will propel us towards the needed answers and solutions. Our politicians turn seemingly insignificant obstacles into a trek to the Himalayas.

Reflecting on this leads me to conclude two things. First, the country’s problems have nothing to do with the existence of legislative majorities and, therefore, assuming that the mere fact of there being a majority wouldsolvethe challenges ofdevelopment is not just a chimerabut also a form of self-deception. And second, the fundamental problem lies in the astonishing lack of capacity for political maneuvering displayed by the last three administrations.

The belief that all problems could be solved with a legislative majority is, to say the least,infantile. It implies assuming that the old political structure of control can be reconstructed by the mere fact that one party controls both the presidency and Congress. If something is self-evident today it is that politicians of all parties have learned to use their relative independence to avoid being overwhelmed by the president. At the same time, the president no longer has the tools at his disposal to impose his or her will. Pretending that everything will be solved by returning to the ways of the past is truly naive.

The underlying problem lies elsewhere: in addition to the controls that characterized the system created by the PRI, it was also effective in maintaining the ability to command and control because from inception it forged a politicalaccordthat allowed for legitimacy, sharing of benefits and loyalty among its members. All this vanished during the seventies and eighties. What we need now is a new political arrangement that achieves the same goal but with distinct –and very distinct- forces,within an open system. That is, the prerequisite for building a functional system capable of addressing the challenges the country faces today lies in designinga new political arrangement. Majorities are required, but in today’s Mexico they have to be the result of coalitions, not of imposition.

The huge deficit of the last three administrations lies in the inability or political incompetence of our presidents. Certainly not a new problem, but the authoritarian nature of the oldcontrol structures even allowed for incompetent rulers. Not so anymore. Today we need the political skills that will permit the next president to go beyond the limits of a dysfunctional system, and ideally build one for the next hundred years.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof