Mexico had always been a country of entrepreneurs. From Aztec tianguis to marketplaces in the middle of the Periférico traffic loop, the instinct of the Mexican has always been to own and manage a small business. The totality of businesses, large and small, generated great benefits: wealth was created; the population viewed the future with optimism, and knew that their future depended on their own effort. For centuries, all types of governments and circumstances ─some good, others very bad─ found the way to make it possible for entrepreneurship to thrive and bear fruit. But over the past decades, beginning in 1970, the country has become so bureaucratized that it has undermined not only existing businesses, but also the entire entrepreneurial spirit found in its natural state in the Mexican.

From a country of born entrepreneurs, we became a country of entitlements and claimants, and this applies to the most modest peasant as well as to the most encumbered magnate. From being a country of business and company owners, we became one of employees and dependents on protection and subsidies; from a country devoted to economic growth, we became a country of rights, but no obligations. All of this has weakened the main function of the economy and lies at the heart of our problem of growth.

Mexico’s problem is one of wealth generation, not of employment, poverty, oil, or taxes. That is, Mexico’s problem is that it does not generate sufficient wealth, and this is the function of businesses. However, the whole country is focused the other way around: on extracting taxes, subsidizing poverty, permanently bureaucratizing oil. Instead of promoting entrepreneurial activity ─the generation of wealth─ our governments endeavor to erect obstacles in the form of regulations, norms, laws, and all types of trammels, which not only complicate the life of the business person, but in addition simultaneously generate a climate of uncertainty for investment. All bets are placed on what already exists, and not on a much better future.

Empirical research demonstrates that when there is trust in the permanence of the rules, low taxes, public safety, and patrimonial and macroeconomic stability, entrepreneurs emerge who engender wealth and contribute decisively to the generation of employment and the diminution of poverty. The logic is pure and quite simple, but in Mexico, it has been overturned and perverted.

If one observes the past, before there existed a series of conditions that fashioned an environment that augured well for entrepreneurial development. Before, there was none of the acute bureaucratitis that today is the natural characteristic of the government: public officials did not live in fear of making decisions, and this allowed them to act. Before, the government went out of its way to preserve the rules of the game and avoid sudden changes. Now, the rules change every day: when new regulations are not being installed, a novel tax conundrum, in the form of a yearly miscellany, and frequent tax memoranda, appear on the scene.

Another change, and not a lesser one, has been the transformation of the presidency. Before, the word of the President was law; today, no one pays attention to what the President says or decides. In a country of weak institutions, the strength that the presidential utterance would confer ─whether a yes or a no─ created a climate, at least once every six years, of clarity for which there was no substitute. It is evident that a modern country cannot live by the word of an individual; thus, democracy has been such an important allure. However, we have been unable to move from an absolute presidency to strong institutional conditions that bestow certainty upon the citizenry in general and upon businesspeople and investors in particular.  We abide in the bureaucratic jungle, and worse: not only is no one able to say yes now, but there is also an infinity of interests capable of mobilizing themselves to halt anything.

In contrast to Asian countries, there never has been a true strategy of business development in Mexico. The most successful nations in Asia created developmental, pro capitalistic alliances that fomented the development of enterprises at the same time that they forced these to compete in open world markets. In our case, there was neither competition nor alliance nor capitalistic legitimacy. The government acted under a corporativist concept that permitted the functioning of enterprises because it perceived them to be something necessary: the generation of wealth. However, from the 1970s, this concept changed, and the entire business scenario deteriorated. The Manichaeism of former President Echeverría undermined the little that did work, and what, to date, has not been restored. Rather than backing Galileos, the governmental strategy came to promote Inquisitors.

The consequence of what we have lived through since 1970 is that the weight and interference of the government has been greater and greater in the functioning of businesses, but the public officials who decide are more and more removed from the dynamic that affects the enterprises. Young people no longer view business activity as a promising or desirable career, preferring instead to be employees, and in the case of many of these, public employees who want to be positioned “where the money is.” Before, companies tended to be family institutions in which all members participated in the process actively; this is no longer the norm, except perhaps for the informal economy and the smallest businesses. Although many companies are owned by one family, the families are less and less involved, opting for consumption and for propinquity with the bureaucracy as a normal modus vivendi. In a word, we have fallen into a world in which there is more profit in awaiting for a handout than generating the wealth behind it.

Nations such China and Brazil illustrate something as critical for the generation of wealth as for the development of viable enterprises: neither of these nations has been able to achieve a consolidated rule of law that approximates that which exists in Switzerland or the U.K. What they indeed have achieved, and what constitutes a dramatic contrast with today’s Mexico, comprises the conferral of certainty on entrepreneurs and investors. We had that until the 1960s, but it evaporated and has not been able to reconstitute itself.

On a visit some years ago to Mexico, the scholar Michael Novak said that in Mexico there are many books on poverty and underdevelopment, but no matter now important to understand this, what is truly transcendental is to understand the geneses of wealth, because that is what we lack. Our economic model is wrong side up and requires a radical redefinition. Manichean rhetoric furnishes the opposite: what is imperative is a decided drive for the promotion of a competitive entrepreneur who competes.

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All presidents believe themselves to be predestined to change the future and to leave a legacy of historic dimensions. However, very few, universally speaking, achieve this. The contradiction between the grandiose plans and ambitions with which they launch a governmental period and the poverty in this regard with which they tend to complete their presidential term is patent. Yet the cause of the contradiction is less clear.

Inevitably, initial plans quickly cross swords with the dogged reality, and the governmental period, which appears long on time at the beginning, soon becomes a maelstrom of daily problems that absorb those who govern in nearly fatal fashion, to the extent that perspective is lost and time evaporates. Abruptly, presidents are consumed with the end of the period, as well as with the legacy that they will leave or, at least, with the way their term-of-office will conclude. This moment becomes crucial: the grand objectives tarry behind, and only closing well is important. Regrettably, by then it is difficult to understand the difference between what is desirable and what is possible. What is necessary is to reflect upon being able to construct the best possible in the little time left, but that is not always easy and thus the risks mount.

The problem is generalized. No one would imagine that such ambitious and grandiloquent presidents such as Echeverría, Menem, Bush (W), or Salinas planned ahead to end up as poorly as they did. They ended up poorly because their plans were not realistic or because they lost contact with reality. They were all sure that they would have a happy ending, and did not anticipate further than their rhetoric. The reality ended up being another. The most incredible thing is that they did not even have the capacity to understand the effect that the circumstances would have on their own personal futures.

The reality ended up badly for many reasons, but the main one is dogmatism. Presidents cling to their plans and convictions and surround themselves with people who do nothing more than revere them. Adrián Lajous, the great functionary of other times, captured the essence well: “The president lives in isolation behind a five-meter wall. The chosen ones who enter the official residence of Los Pinos tend to arrive with racing pulse and bated breath. Many draw near the president with shoulders hunched and sweaty palms. The majority attempt to divine the president’s thoughts to say what he wishes to hear. They read in the press that the president is a genius. When presidents take leave of Los Pinos, doves are released for them, confetti is tossed at them, the National Anthem is played for them, and there is even a 21-gun salute in their honor. This degree of obsequiousness comes to distort even the most realistic vision”.

It is interesting that there are presidents who do conclude well, or reasonably well, a state of affairs that leads us to ask what is was that they did that was distinct. Part of the answer is undoubtedly involved with the personality of each individual. In Brazil, for example, Collor de Mello ended up very badly, while Cardoso pledged himself enthusiastically to the transformation of structures in order to construct a better country for the long term. Similar to Zedillo in Mexico, Cardoso ended up well, but both have grown in stature over time because they were more concerned about the future of their country than about their own. Both submitted the government to a party different from their own without necessarily having aimed at that. Independently of the grandeur or paucity of their achievements, their governments ended well for only one reason: because they did not hold fast to what had existed or to their own personal or party dogmas. In the case of Brazil, Lula continued to carry out the strategy initiated by Cardoso, affording the country enormous opportunities that it is currently reaping.

What coincides with those who have ended up with positive balances is that they followed a constructive logic and abandoned the proposal that their party or dauphin should safeguard the power; their logic was to advance substantive objectives that enhanced their worth down the road. They conquered the temptation for being their country’s president to serve partisan objectives and overcame their historical ill will and grievances with political adversaries: they made key decisions for the citizenry. In other words, successful presidents are those who procure a leadership capable of inspiring, but also of listening to and arousing confidence in, their interlocutors.

Those who end up well build up support and consensus around their projects while knowing how to adapt themselves and change course when the cart gets stuck. Neither of these is easy, and less so when circumstances are difficult. Clinton got his government under way with great projects but, when he was beaten in the midterm elections, immediately changed tack: had he stuck to his original strategy, he most probably would have wound up a one-term president. Master of pragmatism, Clinton understood that he had to veer off course; he ended up absconding with his opponents’ agenda and achieved exceptional economic and political success. His secret was to look toward the future instead of the next election.

We are at the threshold of the last third of President Calderón’s government. In view of the most recent electoral results, the tessitura could not be clearer or more ominous. The two years that remain of Calderóns six-year term could be either the beginning of a new era of transformation, or two very loooong years of paralysis, lusting after power, and conflict. As Einstein once said, it is madness to expect distinct results if one insists upon doing what has not worked.

President Calderón must decide whether he will do something different (I mean this about the political realm, not on drug policy), something susceptible to yielding better results in what is left of his term, or whether he will cling to the same team of persons and the very policies that have not elicited positive effects for his programs, his party, or himself. Avoiding a PRI win cannot be a governmental strategy, and its cost would be incommensurable.

Two years seem few, above all because they include the entire assemblage of presidential contest paraphernalia. However, there are many countries, such as Australia, where the governing period is nearly as short. Wasting this time on more of the same would constitute a true crime, in addition to harakiri for the president himself. The next two years in Mexico constitute the last-ditch opportunity to construct an institutionality that would allow us greater proximity to nations such as Chile, where alternation of parties in government does not translate into chaos or endless revenge. Better to force an institutional regime on the PRI than to attempt to impede its return, better to foil the perverse logic of reinventing the country every six years and bequeathing the government to one’s cronies.

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With a mere look at recent electoral results in Mexico, anyone would think that the PRI –or a former priista– is mounted atop a prize horse. The big question is where it is going. This is not a trifling question; the PRI boasts the best political operators in the country, but the record of their performance leaves much to be desired. A party and a culture created to maintain control in the hands of an elitist minority, the PRI distinguished itself by stabilizing the country and creating a foundation of order and economic growth that lasted nearly forty years. However, in the mid-seventies, PRIist governments mislaid their compass and were never able to retrieve it. The crises experienced by the country since then, including lack of vision for spearheading a robust political transition, are due entirely to the PRI. Now, two years away from the presidential election, they would do well to consider why they want to return.

The recent elections suggest that, come 2012, a priista will govern the country, but not necessarily one nominated by PRI. Some priistas, those Pharaonic in style, seem to concerned about returning to the presidency to care about content; the former priistas that are in the ascent in the hierarchies of other parties and their alliances are more flexible and used to competing for power, but are equally aloof about the challenges the country is facing in the globalized world.

Whatever its stripes, the priistas are condescending because, at last, they begin to see that the famed wheel of fortune has begun to smile upon them. Less obvious is whether they are prepared to make a difference: what is happening to them is akin to that noted by French littérateur Louis Ferdinand Céline, who affirmed that “everyone’s guilty except me.”  The problem of the PRI culture is not that its members are emboldened by the fact that the evolution of things is beneficial to them, but rather, that they have chosen to be unconversant with their own reality and history. The truth is that both of the two PAN administrations have made their work very, perhaps too easy.

In lieu of confronting the grounds for their defeat in 2000, the priistas have been engaged in the dead man’s float, confident that the tide, sooner or later, will begin to turn, as recent electoral trends suggest. The conundrum lies in that this modus operandi will not aid them in the case of their return to power or, to a much lesser degree, to govern effectively. No one doubts the considerable political abilities of many priistas, but the world, and above all, development itself, is not hewn only from dealing with issues on a daily basis, but also from long-term strategies, and the PRI culture has changed nothing in this respect: it continues dwelling and presenting the issues and ideas in which it failed in the seventies, but now, with much greater intensity.

In their recent legislative work, the priistas –whether in PRI, PRD or PAN- excelled in their insistence on solutions that in the past ushered us to paralysis. For example, while the world moves toward the promotion of the so-called startups, technological enterprises capable of creating wealth and development by means unknown under the old industrial paradigm, the priista cohorts concentrate on the promotion of a “social and economic council”, an elephantine entity in which the old unions, businesses, and government would come together to preserve the old economy, that which has no possibility of generating future wealth. Their proposals for regulatory framework modifications, beginning with competition, are reduced to creating a new space of control, now over big business. The control paradigm is as alive as it was during the Cárdenas era, when the world found itself poised at the edge of the Second World War.

The problem of the priistas is not, as Talleyrand said à propos of the French nobility after the Revolution that “it has learned nothing nor forgotten nothing,” but rather, that they have not prepared themselves for the type of country to which they would return. The time they have spent in the opposition has emboldened them, but has not prepared them for the country that Mexico has become. Their performance in the legislature and at the state level reveals them to be cloistered within their same formats, ideas, and solutions; practically no one accepts the fact that the PRI culture lost because the population was fed up with their fiascos, waste, abuse, and improvidence, but above all, with the stagnation that the country has experienced for nearly five decades. The notion that everything can be fixed and resolved by repeating what has failed time after time is risible, at the very least.

The PRI’s defeat in 2000 –and now in its old strongholds of Oaxaca and Puebla- changed the country in at least one fundamental regard: it made possible the transition of Mexicans from subjects to citizens. This is easily said, but the end of priista controls transformed the country in a much more profound fashion than what would appear at first glance. A future government commandeered by a priista would surely attempt to reestablish the control network and to recentralize power one more time, but, unless it hires Mr. Pinochet as its operator, it will not be easy. The change has been thoroughgoing and real. The PAN governments may have been limited and incompetent, but they were contending with a very different animal: with a liberated citizenry and a framework devoid of functional institutions. The former is due to the population; the absence of the latter is unqualifiedly the fault of the PRI.

With trifling moments of exception, if something has indeed characterized the PRI and its culture, as government and as opposition, from the time that the country entered into a series of interminable crises dating from the fall of corn exports in 1965, it is its extraordinary constancy: it has always been fixedly oriented toward the past. The temporary exception comprised the Salinas government, which forced the country to look outwards and forward, but the contradictions between his development strategy and his family interests engendered the undercurrent that regenerated the old PRI. On intending to persevere down the same path, a potential 2012 PRI-like government would precipitately find itself face to face with the cruel reality: it is no longer possible to control everything, and solutions are not to be found in the past. Mexico urgently needs a development strategy that is consistent with our geopolitical reality, with the change in worldwide productive structures, and with the Mexican people’s needs and aspirations.

What the PRI culture and skills does bring to the table is an exceptional capacity for political operation. If the party wants their members to reinitiate an era of priista governments, it would behoove them to direct these aptitudes toward a future project, because that of the past has passed on.

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Many elections will be held today, but the citizen has good reason to ask what difference the result will make. Judging by the effort, resources, rhetoric, and animadversion that have freed up these processes, it would appear obvious that much lies in the balance.

Something transcendental must be in the works because all the coordinates of the political system have gone awry. Some months ago with the elections in Yucatán, the PAN appeared to have transformed itself into the new PRD, disputing the electoral results as if it had no memory. Despite calling into question the presidential candidacy, which gnaws at it, the PRI has joined forces for these elections because it entertains the hope that today will mark the beginning of its return to power. The PAN and PRD parties, enemies par excellence (since 2006), have tried everything to stop, even in modest measure, the PRI. The conclusion, in positive mode, is that perhaps Mexican democracy is robust because it erodes and dilutes the rigid traditional barriers among parties and issues an invitation to its actors to experience novel forms of association and collaboration.

The results of today’s elections will deliver a tip-off on the standing that the parties occupy in the population’s electoral preferences, and, without doubt, will be read as a summons to the dispute that follows, i.e., the “big one” in 2012. The importance of suffrage today is huge for the states deciding who will govern them, and to a lesser extent, for the country in general. Beyond the symbolism that the aggregate results represent (who wins more, who loses less), today’s elections are yet another milestone in the process of political change and adjustment that Mexico has been experiencing for years and that has not succeeded in landing on the playing field of a better system of government or a more functional and successful country.

The problematic is more abstruse than would appear. Mexican democracy was ushered in with bells and whistles, but has not resolved fundamental problems, beginning with the most relevant: that of how to govern us. Ten years after the first alternation of parties in the presidency, all contingents proffer a recipe for solving the problem, but none gives the impression of attending to rockbed matters. For some, the solution lies in reconstructing the majority that previously allowed governing; for others, the important dimension is not governing, but rather a broad representation of the diverse political currents of the country in the Legislature. The problem, as we all know, is set into motion by the lack of legitimacy and not because of the absence of majorities, a situation that reminds me of the expression I heard some time ago from a studious Filipino: in the Philippines, he said, “there are no losers in the elections, only winners and those to whom victory was denied”. The problem in Mexico is not one of majorities or of representation, but one of legitimacy. The old political system collapsed because it lost its legitimacy. Despite having ample representation of all political forces in the legislative, legitimacy has not been restored. More of what there was before, or more of what there is now, is no solution.

In reference to Argentina, Guillermo O’Donnell stated that the electoral problem is not the Election Day itself, but rather, the circumstances under which it comes to pass, because this determines what is transcendent. In O’Donnell’s own words: “Within this context, losing an election is an unacceptable tragedy because it is no longer a normal mechanism of a representative democracy of the exchange of government, but because it is a symptom of the failure of this noble cause. Thus, elections must not be lost, and everything possible must be done not to lose them”. This would appear to refer to the  PRI and the PAN and the PRD. It doesn’t matter. Everyone believes that life as we know it will end today. And on election days to come. In this same interview, O’Donnell was asked what it means to lose an election: “If I am convinced that I am the bearer of a sacred cause, that I know the cause, and that some people share this in good faith, and if my good fortune is proven a thousand times… then this loss is the failure of the project that would have saved the Nation.”

If elections have not resolved the problem of the government, and, as we saw in 2006, not even that of legitimacy, the question is what’s next. Adam Przeworski, a U.S. academic, asserts that “democracies persist when all of the relevant political forces grasp that they can improve the situation only if they channel their claims and their conflicts by way of democratic institutions”. In Mexico, the political forces have played it both ways: on the one hand, they participate in electoral processes with fervor and conviction. On the other hand, however, they are always disposed to dispute the result, and, in too many quarters (including several states that contest the governorship today), violate not only the spirit, but also the letter, of the standing electoral law. Power in Mexico continues to be a zero-sum game, in which some perceive that they win everything and others lose everything. Thus, it is inevitable that the battle will be to the death.

This reality brings to mind the corollary of an article by Womack in which he affirms that “democracy does not produce, by itself, a decent form of living. It is the decent forms of living that produce democracy.” The question for us is how to develop these decent forms of living in which power is distributed, there is transparency in its daily operation, and there is accountability. The task is great and its complexity, even greater. But, as observed by Carlos Castillo-Peraza, the PAN visionary whose presence has been a great, missed, absence in his party’s governments, one must “resist the temptation to destroy what is imperfect in order to substitute it with the perfectly impossible.”

The risk today is falling onto the other side. Stalin noted that “I consider it totally irrelevant who will vote or not vote; what is extraordinarily important is who counts the votes and how.” We would have appeared to have overcome this  stage unqualifiedly, but that is not what is appreciated in the accusations and counteraccusations overheard in diverse Mexican states that celebrate today the most elemental of democratic rituals.

Are today’s elections, then, important? Today will be the hallmark of another stage in the growth process of the country. If one reads the history of countries that are now paragons of democracy, their advance was tortuous, violent, and complex, but, little by little, and irrespective of the experience and the costs, systems of decision and government were consolidated that are at present an example for the entire world. There is no reason to think that we are less able of achieving this, however great the stench of the old system, which has not yet disappeared. It remains present at every juncture, and even more so today.

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Reclamations come and reclamations go, but we advance little in the substantive relationship with the U.S. Presidents are in Washington and parliamentarians share earthly goodies in Campeche, but for some reason, I always am left with the sensation that Groucho Marx, the great serious comic, already anticipated with his famous phrase: “I’ve had a perfect evening, but this wasn’t it.” Because it is such a complex and diverse border along which, in the words of Octavio Paz, the first world meets the third, what is impressive is how well the two governments interact to resolve problems, administer processes, and overcome conflicts and incidents of every ilk. In a word, the relationship is being managed, but is not being built.

There is no dearth of spaces of communication and interaction, but, in the last analysis, nearly all of these occasions are finally convenient pulpits for rhetoric, often inflamed, instead of invitations to amity and bilateral transformation. Meetings between functionaries of both governments, from the presidential to the border-governor level, of legislators and of those responsible for the day-to-day administration of all governmental stations, are frequent and germane, but are generally limited to skirting the pitfalls, sorting out the most recent incident de jour, and attempting to put on a good face for the perpetual storm. This manner of interacting maintains the necessary coexistence, but does not permit envisaging a better future because no one even imagines one.

The ability to interact and resolve problems is something that deserves enormous recognition. Until no more than two or three decades ago, Mexican governments viewed the Americans with suspicion, and, in fact, employed nationalistic and anti-American bombast as a vehicle to build and sustain internal legitimacy. This reality of domestic politics rendered contemplation of a distinct vision for the future impossible and limited any interchange to the indispensable. The change of tack dating from the liberalization of exports in the mid-eighties promoted a redefinition of the relationship with the U.S., an innovation that eventually translated into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and very tight interaction in all orders.

Today, twenty years after the beginning of negotiations in commercial matters, both nations recognize the inevitability of the relationship, and, above all, the interdependence that exists between the two. Washington as well as Mexico City recognizes that many of the problems besetting each country are unsolvable without the active concurrence of the other nation. This fact constitutes a landmark in a relationship that, though long-time, has not always been embraced by the populations and governments on either side of the border.

But greater proximity and interaction have not heightened the understanding that one country has of the other. Each expects the other to resolve the problems that besiege it without ever amending the true restrictions under which the neighbor operates. Mexico expects and presses the U.S. to resolve the migratory theme and that of arms export, while the U.S. expects us to resolve the drug issue. In both cases, this concerns illusory and unrealizable expectations, not because no solutions exist, but rather, because these are inconceivable if unaccompanied by joint action. Whether we like it or not, the day the matter of migration is really met head-on, Mexico will be compelled to commit itself to regulating the flow of Mexicans exiting the country at informal border points, while the U.S. will be obliged to find a way to diminish drug use within its territory. That’s it in a nutshell: there is no other way.

From our perspective, better understanding of the motivations of those who oppose legalization for Mexican migrants would allow resistance to eventual legislation to diminish, while requiring us to come to terms with some of our most prominent shortcomings, such as the absence of legality in innumerable spaces and activities in our country. For Americans, a better understanding of the differences in focus and history that motivate and self-justify our migrants and our politicians would impel them to be less critical and more responsible in some of their attitudes. Both of us have much to understand about the other. However, none of this is possible if there is no long-term vision of what this bilateral relationship is, can be, and should be.

NAFTA created a structure that establishes the norms for commercial interaction and investment flows, and has become perhaps the leading factor in Mexico’s economic stability. There have been diverse attempts to enrich and fortify this mechanism, but, for whatever reason, none has prospered to any marked degree. The animus of the vision that sparked and drove the negotiation twenty years ago has disappeared from the map and nothing has replaced it. In addition to the growing economic interdependence, what indeed did prosper was the propinquity developed by both nations’ officials to resolve crises every time they appear. Although it is obvious that crises and problems will not diminish while such considerable differences prevail between the two nations, the resolutive capacity of the two governments is impressive and explains the celerity with which the U.S. government has responded every time a difficult situation appears imminent, as occurred with the visit of the entire U.S. Security Cabinet to Mexico a few months ago.

But we must not lose sight of that the objective of NAFTA was to be the accelerant for Mexico’s development. Both governments at the time recognized that was critical was for Mexico to achieve high and sustained growth rates, and that this would require certainty in the permanence of the economic policy, investment flows to Mexico, and access for Mexican products to the U.S. marketplace. Viewed in retrospect, the specifics have been fulfilled, but not the development.

The reason for this has nothing to do with the U.S., but with our own disinclination for modifying the archaic internal structures that have become impediments to investment and, in general, to development. There are many hypotheses on what is lacking, but there is no doubt that the educational system, poor-quality infrastructure, deficient public safety, and the absence of legality are powerful factors in this process. In inverse fashion, if these factors were modified, all of the variables would in turn be easily reconciled.

The U.S. is our natural ally and the chief source of opportunities for our national development, but the latter will not come about if we do not define what we want and adapt the rhetoric to achieve it. Without vision, the oratory will continue to be one of protests and will not let us build and have leverage over our development in the most difficult, but also the most sought-after, neighborhood of the world.

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In one of his famous observations, Einstein affirmed that “the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking”. The same can be said for the changes that Mexico has experienced over the past two decades.

It is easy to become disheartened0020|and uneasy when one scrutinizes the problems that we confront. The economy does not appear to improve much, insecurity takes its toll in new ways with every passing day, and the nearly generalized sensation is that everything can get worse. However, if one looks back, what is impressive is the rhythm of change that has characterized the country. It is simple to think that all things past were good, but, as happened with the true Alonso Quijada, on whom the fictional Don Quijote is based, “past times never were better.” Despite our problems and imbroglios, the physical change of the country, the productive transformation, and the striking sea change sustained by the parameters of everything surrounding us -from the way we elect those who govern us to freedom of speech- speak for themselves. Of course, life has become more complex, a universal phenomenon, but no one with the least amount of sensibility fails to appreciate the hard-hitting change that we have undergone.

Contrariwise, no one in our public life appears to have perceived what has occurred in its entirety. PRIists ready themselves to return to what was (“when everything worked”), PRDists, to change whatever exists, and PANists, to pretend that everything is perfect. No one in that world appears to ponder the striking transformation that the population, together with the country in general, has weathered. To recap: I am not affirming that everything that we have today is better than what there was, but certainly it is  impossible to pretend that nothing has changed, or that myriad and extraordinarily auspicious changes have not been wrought.

The pretension of wanting to return the genie to the magic lamp is human, but is not much more serious than attempting to put the toothpaste back in the tube. However, this is the tonic of the debate and attitudes that characterize the political world of the moment. This, in point of fact, reveals a total lack of understanding of the true turmoil that has the country in its grips. Worse: it shows a concerning distance with reality.

During the past twenty years, the country withstood two great revolutions that transformed everything in daily life, and we can not back down. On the one hand, the country underwent the transformation of its productive apparatus from the liberalization of imports. Thanks to this, which began in the mid-eighties, Mexican families have had access to better-quality and less expensive clothing, footwear, food, and durable goods. The competition represented by these imports has allowed the productive apparatus to be transformed, all for the benefit of the domestic consumer. Notwithstanding the many limitations and difficulties, at present we enjoy goods and services at prices that were formerly inconceivable. The productive plant is competitive, exports have demonstrated that domestic quality is as good as the best worldwide, and the workers comprising a segment of this revolution partake in income levels that are very superior to those of their predecessors in the era of autarkic economy.

The other revolution is political. Although our democracy is highly imperfect, Mexicans savor freedoms that were unthinkable in the years of hard-line PRIism, albeit one that never approximated South American-style dictatorship. Today we elect those who govern us that the votes are counted. Perhaps most importantly, we have the freedom to talk straight, at least concerning the political apparatus. Mexicans have become accustomed to saying what they think and to acting freely.

Little by little, the two revolutions have transformed our reality at all levels, in all regions. People have become used to being free, merit becomes an ascent vehicle in productive life, and above all, the sensation of opportunity and possibility grows and multiplies: Mexicans demonstrate to themselves that they are able to function and be successful at the same time. And, little by little, in a word, the Mexican is being transformed into a citizen.

The majority of our politicians, isolated from daily life by a system that holds them aloft, have not understood the gravity that all of this implies, nor the transcendence that it entails. Many purport that these changes have yet to come about, and some believe that the clock can be turned back. But as Lech Walesa quipped on losing the election to the reformed Communist Party, “making fish soup from an aquarium is not the same as making an aquarium from fish soup”. The population has already savored freedom and its accompanying opportunities, and will not permit it to be wrested from them, however attractive the oppression’s rhetoric, disguised as nationalism, appears.

Lack of understanding of the transformation is palpable at many levels: in the call for greater expenditures and less transparency; in Pharaonic spending instead of productive infrastructure; in the inanity of upholding  and supporting unions that impede the progress and development of entire sectors, but principally of the population itself; in the mythology associated with the exploitation of natural resources; in the lack of recognition of the transcendence of legality for the functioning of the economy; but, above all, in disparaging the population’s capacity to stand on its own two feet. It is sufficient to observe the transformation that Mexican migrants undergo on entering into the U.S. labor market to demonstrate that the problem is not our intrinsic ability, but rather, a system of government that handicaps and invalidates it.

As we draw nearer to the next presidential elections, all aspirants will begin to develop their campaign proposals and their visions of the future. Along the way, they will be obliged to choose between a vision of what was, or of what, after all, was not, and what it can and should be. How marvelous it would be were they to understand that the country wants to go ahead, and that its only opportunity is providing it with a vision of a future to a population fed up with promises, but avid for leadership capable of treating it as adults and citizens. I have no doubt that the winner will be the contender who respects the population and convinces it that something much better is possible.

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In his film Annie Hall, Woody Allen attempts to explain irrational relationships with a joke: “This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘My brother’s crazy, he thinks he’s a chicken.’ The doctor says, ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?’ and the guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.'” This type of reasoning serves to illustrate the absurdities of our political structure at present. Regrettably, this is not merely the theme of an anecdote: the costs are disproportionate.

The legislative process is a good example of the peculiarities of our system and the absurdities that characterize it. Legislative bills can arise from the executive or from the legislative chambers themselves, but the overwhelming majority continues to originate at the presidential house. What has indeed changed with respect to the old PRI system is that now, legislators modify the bills substantially, discard them frequently and, on occasion, respond to them with one of their own. One day, a certain legislator commented to me that the true political control of the country resided in the capacity of the president to reform the Constitution. Up to a few years ago, that was not more than a minor accomplishment.

Not only has the power of the legislature changed. Currently, the president sends bills in wholesale fashion, many of them contradictory among themselves. While it is easy to imagine a president of times past waiting by the telephone for his informants to confirm that his desires had been satisfied, today the president dispatches initiatives and devotes himself to the remainder of his functions, because if he did not, he wouldn’t do anything else. In the same manner, legislators process bills on themes about which they know nothing, allow themselves to be carried away by special interests (in the practical or ideological sense, or both), and often assume extreme positions because there is nothing that  limits or controls them. Additionally, the nature of our legislative process begets instantaneous experts, legislators inured to the process, and unmentionable pacts, all this with no consequences for those involved: no one cares whether the effect of the law passed is good or bad, because the only sure thing in this system is that those who acted are never responsible, nor will they continue to hold their post long enough for them to even blush.

The same occurs from the other side of the field: businesspeople, unions, governors, secretaries and undersecretaries, intellectuals, and NGOs dedicate themselves to pressuring, influencing, and intimidating functionaries and legislators into modifying a determined bill, impeding its advance, or forcing the process to serve its particular beliefs or interests. The legislative process has become a great political and media lobby that operates as a free-for-all, one in which the sole referent is the ability to exert pressure. It is yet another perspective, perhaps less conventional, of the “de facto powers”, in which what matters is to get what one wants, whatever the cost. No sanction is imposed for extremism.

Of course, a democratic process entails the active participation of all members of society, and this should be welcome. However, what we are witnessing is a system that lacks the most minimal component of accountability, which is always opaque, and whose participants take pleasure in a terrifying impunity. Perhaps most revealing for me has been observing the mirror effect that this creates: those with decision-making responsibility (government officials and legislators, but currently, especially legislators) lend themselves to pressure and blackmail because they themselves possess no other referent than that of their own personal, group or party interests. Those on the other side, who represent a certain interest, have no reason at all to moderate their language, vacillate in their demands, or delimit their instruments of pressure: anything goes. There are de facto powers on both sides of the table.

With it all, there is apparent nostalgia for the old system, a factor revealing in itself of the type of impact that the alternation of parties in government has had. Many yearn for the old times when decisions were made (yes, in effect, decisions were made, and they were those that the commander-in-chief wanted and negotiated, but, judging by results in terms of development, good decisions were the exception). But what is really impressive is how instead of democratizing, power simply fragmented: at present, we have figures in the government, in the legislature, and in society who act as the president did formerly: as unaccountable powers that can get away with anything. They all feel themselves to be the masters, and all want arbitrary power that renders no accounts. Further than the personal benefits that can be derived from this, the decisions of these individuals affect lives and property, but have no negative consequences for the actors themselves. Democracy without responsibility.

Alternation of parties in the presidency has had an enormous impact in reducing the concentration of power, but it has not changed the forms of exercising it nor has it democratized. The benefit of decentralization of power is evident to me, and this gain is laudable in itself. However, the type of transition on which the country embarked virtually guaranteed disorderly and careless political development processes. The old counterweight mechanisms of before (vividly perceivable in the relationship between the then-presidency and the union bosses, where there was capacity, although often extra-institutional, to curb the worst excesses) were dismantled, and we ended up with a country dominated by de facto powers without the most miniscule counterweight. The good news is that the disputes materialize within the legislative context, symbol that institutional processes are respected; the bad news is that the laws are always flexible and adaptable, thus not affecting anyone with the power and ability to act. We win in terms of institutionality being accepted, but we lose because it is not worth much.

Of course, the great absentee in this film is the citizen. No one, beginning with their supposed representatives, work for those who are, at least in theory, the raison d’être of the country. In this context, it is not difficult to understand why things are the way they are, why other countries achieve high growth rates, why other nations enjoy an environment of safety and justice, and we do not. These forsaken citizens remind me of the Cantinflas film in which, without knowing how, Cantinflas ends up sitting at a table of powerful people who are all unknown to him: suddenly he asks himself, “And what am I doing here?”

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All Mexican presidents begin their six-year terms certain in the knowledge that they will transform the country and erect the platform of development that they envisaged and that the population demands. Sooner or later, they finally come face to face with the sad reality: they realize that the solutions are more complex than they had foreseen, and, above all, that there are no prefabricated solutions. All presidents come to understand that the true powers of the presidency are many fewer (and today, infinitely fewer) than they supposed beforehand. Those who are successful in the end, in Mexico and everywhere, are those who recognize that, beyond what the credentials state or what tradition dictates, true presidential power resides in the moral authority with which they act.

In his book on his experiences as a presidential advisor, Stan Greenberg affirms that a successful leader is one who carefully and minutely explains to the people the challenge confronting their nation, and convinces the population of the importance of embarking upon transcending actions: their function is rather one of creating a spirit than undertaking myriad affairs, because attitudes can either add and transform, or subtract and defeat. Primarily, says Greenberg, the key lies in the narrative that the president establishes, not only to convince, but instead to procure the understanding of the citizenry concerning the dilemma and make the presidential response their own. The wisdom for presidents to heed is that they cannot govern with speeches lacking in transcendence, because what is important is that there is a narrative in existence that is intelligible for everyone: this is how to construct support bases, and these, in turn, make it possible to make a difference.

It is easy to exaggerate the momentousness of a leader in great social processes. No country advances to a great degree because it has individuals endowed with exceptional charisma. What makes the difference, at least at the time, is the existence of equal opportunities for all and the proper conditions for every individual to develop his abilities to the maximum. However, there are moments when exceptional leadership can take on transformer dimensions if the leader is able to build a support base that develops a new reality. When things are at such a standstill and in such decline that they require fundamental reconsideration, a leader who understands the moment can be the factor that unfetters shackles, affects interests, and posits foundations for a new era.

Mexico does not have the conditions that augur well for its development. For decades we have been erecting obstacles, putting up barriers, protecting interests, to the point that everything has ultimately arrived at a state of paralysis. Every person, group, union, enterprise, and entity in the country has structured mechanisms of protection that allow them to contend with (when not taking advantage of) the circumstances. Some enjoy fiscal exemptions, others receive subsidies; some survive in the informal economy, others grease palms; some come by soft jobs, and still others simply opt for the status quo in the face of whichever alternative, because their experience has taught them that any change implies something worse. The tangible fact is that the Mexico of today is one in which everyone is displeased but no one is disposed to change anything.

A University of Pennsylvania study* on presidents asserts that “history rewards presidents who take risks”. I have no doubt that we live in an era of leadership crisis, which is, as Einstein once noted, a crisis of incompetence. For decades we have had bad governments and anodyne presidents who agreed to preside, in a word, over decadence. Along the way, they tolerated, when they did not indeed precipitate, the consolidation of all these vices and interests that have come to incapacitate the country. Of course, no one did it on purpose –that would have been even more Machiavellian than our illuminati would countenance- but the fact is that, between those who would save the third world and those who would administer the riches, not to mention those who sought to change the model only to leave the country in the worst crisis in its history, what is left is a country clogged in the mire which no one wants to change even one iota.

And this is where effective and intelligent leadership, leadership that transcends the quotidian discourse and embarks upon an honest, believable, transforming, and non-threatening narrative, can contribute decisively to breaking the impasse.

From his defeat in the midterm elections, Felipe Calderón understood that the time has passed for attempting to save the country one more time. His recent speeches reflect a new tonic, a wish to explore opportunities that he had not contemplated previously as being possible or, even, desirable. Save for a few partisan speeches, his most recent rhetoric assumes something transcendental: that a country is not built in six years, an insight to which very few of our presidents have been privy. The task of a president is not to change everything, but, strictly speaking, to advance solutions, many of which can take decades to bear fruit.

The change in tone has been noteworthy, but the method has not. The president continues to believe that a speech is all that is required to govern. Instead of a narrative that evolves and builds, we continue to observe a spate of disunited individual discourses that fall short of transcending the immediate objective. There is no understanding that the population needs to be convinced, that it is not an inert mass incapable of understanding the dilemmas and the problems. When a succession of presidents -and, in fact, the entire political class- addresses the population with contempt and treats them with scorn, the citizenry not only ridicules them, but also takes refuge in the form of entrenchment, which is characteristic of our present reality.

Everyone knows that fundamental changes are required to be able to go forward. In technical terms, it is not difficult to diagnose the wrongs and to spell out the options that we are confronting. But our problem is not technical: an overtone more, an overtone less, but the solutions are known. Our problem is to shatter the inertia in order to emerge from the gridlock. Effective leadership could make an enormous difference.

Mexicans want a leader who confers upon them a sense of strength, trust, and self-esteem. A leader who transcends the speech and its partisan lures and fears to make it possible to begin to walk. President Calderón already knows that he cannot do what no president can; perhaps this is why he could do what they all should. Galbraith observed that the common characteristic among great leaders is their disposition to confront their people’s sources of anxiety in unequivocal fashion. This would be a worthy challenge for our president to brave.

*Ten Ways to Judge a President, July 22, 2009, in Knowledge@Wharton

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In one of his eloquent observations, Mark Twain noted that “I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.” The bankruptcy of Greece invites reflection upon the opportunities that it had, and that to a great extent wasted, during the thirty years that it has formed part of what is now denominated the European Union (EU). The poor, or less rich, countries that make overtures toward nations that are already developed do so in order to accelerate their own economic process on the basis of the strength of the latter. But, as illustrated by the case of Greece, and similar to that of Mexico with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the association creates the opportunity, but this only becomes a reality when the less economically buoyant country decides to make it its own.

There is great controversy concerning the differences and similarities between the EU and NAFTA. Although the objective of associated nations is similar -all seek the development of their economies- the European mechanism and that which characterizes NAFTA are very distinct. To be an EU member country, a nation must substantially modify its judicial and regulatory structures to conform with the norms of the entity. Throughout several decades, the EU has been perfecting the package of measures necessary for unleashing development: a country that becomes incorporated into the EU and that carries out the changes exacted by the Brussels bureaucracy entertains an extraordinary probability of achieving development, and, as demonstrated by Spain and Ireland, of approximating the income level of the remainder of the Continent. However, experience has also shown that although all EU member countries change their structures and norms (this is de rigueur), not all are successful. The sole fact of modifying the form does not resolve the matter of the underpinnings.

For its part, NAFTA does not entail a political union nor does it propose changing internal structures, except those regarding commercial and investment policy, i.e., the essence of the agreement: the three NAFTA nations, Mexico, the U.S., and Canada, recast the pertinent laws and regulations to conform with that established in the agreement, and nothing more. Many, above all in Europe, have been arguing for years that this difference is what has held Mexico back from attaining an integral transformation of its economy, and from being the paramount star of Latin-American development at present. These critics, principally in Spain, depart from the supposition that mere adoption of the European norm is what leads to a country’s transformation.

The case of Greece affords us a distinct perspective: development is not something magical; it materializes when a country decides that it will transform itself, and from that point, pulls itself up by its bootstraps and gathers together all of its forces and resources to reach this end. That is, development does not come into being as the result of modifying a set of laws or regulations (many in the case of Europe, few in our case), but is, rather, the product of the decision of the society as a whole to relinquish what it has always been and what keeps it in the throes of poverty and inequality. The latter would appear to be excessive verbiage, but it is not: a country such as Switzerland, already wealthy for a long time, could have chosen to join the EU, but refrained because it saw no benefits sufficiently large to justify changes in its nature. On the other hand, Ireland, Spain, or Greece, as well as the Eastern European nations, recognized that their structures or ways of doing things would not lead to development. Thus, they joined the EU. Mexico did its own thing with NAFTA. Looking beyond the financial crisis of the last several months, some of these nations have achieved their objective, but others have not.

In this regard, the mechanism -NAFTA or EU- is less important than the internal transformation: despite all of its European normativity, Greece continues to be very similar to how it was before; without European normativity, Mexico has not reached the development to which it aspires. The lesson in both cases is that development is concerned to a greater degree with the internal disposition of the nation to achieve it than with any external conditioning.

In recent weeks, the EU announced a set of measures to aid Greece in emerging from its crisis. Time will tell whether the Greeks will board the train or miss it again. But the example is relevant: we, the sons and daughters of the Lampedusa character who remarked “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change,” have been experts at reforming everything so that everything can continue as it is. Reform in oil matters over the last few years ago is a good example: the original bill was modest, and what emerged was a thicket of entanglements that was even less functional than what had existed in the first place. The EU will oblige Greece to correct its fiscal accounts and to adopt the many European norms that it has eluded to date. Although this form of “neocolonialism,” as it has been denominated by many critics, will surely correct fiscal disequilibria, it is not obvious whether it will consolidate a platform for long-term growth. In 1995, we in Mexico underwent a similar process and ended up with more restrictions for development than there were before, and with poor results in terms of growth.

These two examples confirm that economic growth is not achieved by means of imposition. Countries must desire to transform themselves and to be willing to carry out the changes that this transformation demands. For example, growth requires the elimination of abuses and privileges -those that are enjoyed by unions and entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and citizens in general, that is, by all of us- with the goal of achieving great benefits later on. Although a government can modify laws and regulations, only popular concurrence and support of the transformation can achieve it. After decades of dictatorship, in the 1970s the Spanish embraced the idea of joining Europe because they saw it as the key to development. Their disposition for transforming themselves and their nation was the key to its success. Their lags also provide evidence of their own decisions: in the last year, for example, Spain’s economic contraction was not very different from that of Germany but, due to its labor policies, unemployment shot up from 8% to 20%.

Mexicans have for years had open access to the greatest and richest economy on the planet, but only part of the population has taken advantage of, or been successful at it. There has not been a development strategy such as that in Spain or in Ireland when they joined the EU, nor has Mexico had the political leadership capable of steering it into a good port.

In Mexico, as in Greece, what is important is not so much what the wealthy countries with which we are associated want us to achieve, but instead, what we are willing to do to end obstacles to development. This is the flip side of sovereignty.

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Six weeks away from the next electoral joust, it is facile to anticipate the scenario at official Mexican presidential residence Los Pinos the day after: everyone will want to know what happened. It was assumed that the new-found party alliances would permit the PAN to advance in domestic geography, weaken the PRI, and establish the bases for two years of non-stop wins. Unfortunately, the reality will have been cruel, with the one or two triumphs that the PAN could have achieved. As the great North American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson would say, “We learned geology the day after the earthquake.” The discussion will surely become heated: some will attempt to explain the phenomenon, and others, to find the guilty parties. A few, perhaps the least in number, will begin to speculate upon the implications of the disaster and the possibilities of the remainder of the presidential term. The new geologists will be very busy.

By Monday morning, July 5, 2010, the country will be another. The question is whether the government will continue to be the same: Will it continue to ask itself,  as it did after the interim elections a year ago, Who did this to us?, or, with greater sensitivity, How will we fix it? Last year, the answer was categorical: the government had done everything correctly, but the PRI governors, the television networks, and the economic crisis caused the defeat. Hence, their inevitable reaction: go after them all.

The government’s alternative at present is very simple: to reconsider its strategy for constructing whatever is still possible, or to strike out on a new crusade for the destruction of the PRI that, by that time, will presumably have reached a new milestone in the process of reconquering the presidency. The chip that dominates the government has not been that of the construction of and search for consensus, but instead, that of reaction against “the bad guys,” and that day, the PRI will be the worst of all of these. But by that time the alibi will no longer be convincing: while a year ago the governors continued to maintain control over state processes, the notion that an out-going governor could ordain voting fancies will no longer be persuasive.

The situation of the government will not be simple. If the result that appears to be nearly inevitable materializes, the PRI will be emboldened and probably indisposed to enter into negotiations in which they do not perceive a better opportunity. The government will find itself in the face of the limits of excessively reduced governability and authority, in addition to that the entire political world will look to the PRI, inexorably viewing it as the 2012 victor.

There are two elements to consider. First, the position of the president as he confronts the two years that remain of his term and, no doubt, before history. Second, the atrophy that increasingly characterizes the country because everyone is mostly concentrated on winning (or on the other one losing) than on governing, legislating, or constructing. And third, the relative position of each of the parties in the grips of the mother of all battles, that of 2012. This latter point is easy to elucidate: on following the pathway that it has taken to date, the government will guarantee that 2012 will be a field day, but for the PRI.

The day after the election events, the government, along with its party, will be required to rethink the rash wagers that they placed on the alliances and to define its strategy once more. Indubitably, the most difficult part will be the role of the president in the face of the new reality. Regrettably for him, the bet on the alliances on which he gambled did not guarantee any victory, but did indeed ensure the PRI’s hostility, without whose countenance the legislative front was an impossible course. The president will now have the option of correcting or of attempting novel madness: to correct so as to attempt to construct something relevant during what is left of his term, which would entail clear readiness to negotiate, create common spaces, and forsake the temptation of winning 2010 at any price. Or, on the other hand, to attempt a new alliance against the PRI, whatever the cost. Deep down, what the president would be required to define is whether he is capable of overcoming his gut anti-PRIism in order to hand down a minimally relevant legacy.

In contrast with the midterms of a year ago, the president is now in an acutely dangerous position. A year ago, there was the option of placing himself above the daily conflict with an eye toward advancing, and possibly transcending, the national agenda. Now the theme will be survival.

Although the symbolism of the result of these July 2010 elections will be enormous, electoral history is not written until it is written. As recently illustrated by the antagonism among PRI contingencies in the Legislature (each representing the interests of opposing pre candidates), nothing is ensured for anyone in this game, nor should anyone underestimate the complexity of the other. The perception of a poor government has made it very difficult for the PAN to maintain the presidency, but this is not an absolute. Nonetheless, given the experience of these past few years, it appears reasonable to suppose that if the president does not modify his strategy, his principal legacy will be exactly the opposite of that of Fox: to return the presidential sash to the PRI.

The choice is clear: find the guilty parties, or construct a new strategy. If he opts to search for scapegoats, the sky is the limit. The alternative of devising a new strategy does not guarantee victory for the PAN, but it does confer upon the president the possibility of bequeathing a legacy that transcends the necessary but interminable war against the narco. Will he be able to recognize errors, convoke political forces, and salvage whatever is possible of political civility?

In the scenario of construction and the search for agreements, minimal though they be, it would be mandatory for the government to redefine its objectives; develop an ambitious strategy for transforming communications into an instrument of governing; rethink its team, above all in what concerns political operations; and focalize its efforts. In first place, it would need to define its priorities, no longer in the abstract manner of a beginning term-of-office, but rather, in that of what remains of an administration that, after four years, has few results to show.

The experience of Nelson Mandela in South Africa is exceedingly eloquent: what Mexico needs is reconciliation, to leave the past in the past, and to begin to look ahead. The basic question is whether the government will continue to be guided by phobias, or by the desire to build the future.

The position of the government is not lost. Today, six weeks prior to the elections, it can begin to consolidate an action and civility pact for the post-election stage. It can also initiate agreements for damage control and for facilitating the growth of its own contingencies in the next few months. Its problem is one of strategy, but also of attitude. Both are crucial at this time.

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