“Politics according to John Kenneth Galbraith, is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” The problem for President Calderon is that in the absence of a government strategy, he is unable to distinguish one from the other. In its early years, his administration sowed what they could but now that he is approaching the final stretch he hesitates and confuses his responsibilities: to be party or to be government?

A question of this nature would not be relevant in a consolidated democracy where institutions are strong and are beyond the inevitable vagaries of individual or party interests. A developed country can overcome the mistakes of a president or the vicissitudes of a crisis. The nations that have not reached that stage are more fragile and require extra care; this is why, for example, a European premier or an American president have no qualms about promoting their parties and successors while in our country that constitutes a fundamental violation of electoral laws. When nations have managed to build strong institutions, men go into the background. Not so in countries like ours where every act and every decision entails consequences.

The current debate is about the potential removal of Fernando Gomez Mont as Secretary of the Interior. In a presidential system, cabinet officials are appointed and removed by the person who appointed them and, therefore, respond to their choices and preferences: they serve at the pleasure of the president. From that perspective, beyond idle gossip, the decision to replace the secretary is only a purely administrative matter. However, current circumstances are far-reaching and warrant serious analysis.
There were two significant moments in the process that led to the current situation. One was when the government was negotiating the 2010 budget, and the other one when government and party discussed the possibility of joining PRD in an electoral alliance for several of the upcoming state elections.

Given the results of the past midterm elections, the PRI was in the privileged position of practically being able to approve the budget all by itself, something that would have left the government completely marginalized, almost with no discretionary spending, as happened to Fox in 2005. However, government and PAN negotiators in the House were very skilful and succeeded in reaching a consensus budget that was extremely close to what the president had originally proposed. Today we know that, in exchange for their willingness to act as loyal opposition, i.e., opposition that acknowledges the legitimacy of the government, the Secretary of the Interior offered the PRI that the PAN would not partner with the PRD in the 2010 state elections.

The second moment took place in the past two months when the PAN and the government debated the PRD proposal to jointly form an alliance to contest the state elections in Oaxaca, Sinaloa, Puebla, Hidalgo and other states. The theme of the government’s commitment not to form an alliance was discussed in public and it was no secret to anyone except, apparently, to the president.

In abstract terms, an alliance with the PRD to try to win some governorships held by the PRI has an impeccable logic, if we were talking about an era prior to 2000. Everything was fair game when the opposition’s only goal, of all parties, was to defeat the monopoly of power (i.e. PRI) and, even under such conditions, the PAN won in 2000 without alliances. As a citizen, I deplore the continued absence of competitive conditions in various states of Mexico: the PRI has managed to preserve oppressive power preserves and a level of control that only benefits the local chieftains. The issue today is that the PAN is just not any party, but the ruling party and the central responsibility of government is to govern and more so in a country with weak institutions.

Certainly, part of the duties of a government committed to democracy should be to strengthen institutions, fight chiefdoms and develop institutional and legal frameworks for the benefit of the citizens. However, forming an alliance with its main rival to defeat its main counterpart and partner in the important issues of governance of the country constitutes an unequivocal irresponsibility. It is understandable that the PAN wants to defeat the PRI in its bastions of power, and it is entirely legitimate that the PRD propose such partnerships to achieve this. What is not reasonable or logical, is that the government risk the stability of the country for the sake of an electoral adventure which, by the way, could also end up losing the elections.

Back to the individual in question. The secretary is being accused of having committed the government in a decision that was not up to him to make but one about which no one complained of when it went well (i.e., when the budget came out as the president wanted). A secretary is not a mere employee: if making choices that are clearly responsible in terms of his or her institutional mandate involves the risk of being accused of insubordination, then no person would work for this government. An official can only function when the goals are clear and so is his or her responsibility. The risks are infinite when there are no margins to make a decision and when the objectives are unclear, contradictory or, worse, when they fluctuate.

In a country characterized by weak institutions, individuals become crucial and their word essential.  More importantly, in the absence of a government strategy, the daily and systematic political operation, of which the Secretary of the Interior is responsible, becomes fundamental to avoid a shipwreck. So, basically, what Mr. Gomez Mont is being accused of is fulfilling his responsibility to maintain stability and help the government to survive.

Over the coming months we will have the opportunity to observe, first, if the electoral alliances were fruitful, at least in terms of having won some governorships for the PAN and the PRD. Then we will have to assess whether the cost in terms of the daily political operation and governance were worthwhile. But the turning point will come at the end of this year when next year’s budget is negotiated, as it will surely be then when the PRI decides how to respond to the unfulfilled promises. Entering the crucial year in which presidential candidates will be nominated, the PAN may end up on the defensive and without discretionary spending capacity. All this due to the lack of strategic vision and for a few alliances of doubtful viability.

Jorge Luis Borges used to say that Peronism was neither good nor bad: it was simply incorrigible. Every political party is what it is, but the PAN seems unable to understand that government and opposition are two entirely different things.

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The U.S. border has always been a reason for substantial concern with respect to the rulers of the federal government. Distant enemies, distant enmities, in close proximity to the traditional foe -and the historic loss of territory- the borders have adopted the myths and realities that are often difficult to understand for those of who do not live along the border. Today, with Ciudad Juárez at the forefront, the themes are more mundane, more specific: the people in this city live with daily violence that appears to have no end and that, little by little, eats away at families, birthrights, and values. Many would rather go to the U.S., others demand solutions; the majority only aspire for the installment of a local government that works, not one composed of so-called aviators, whose names are on Juárez payrolls, but who fly in from the state or federal capital to collect paychecks for work not done, their interest not transcending the proverbial fifteen minutes of media fame.

I Juárez Mexicans came to see what a perfect storm looks like: an economy growing at an extraordinary pace, huge inflows of people from the rest of the country, absences of the minimum social, physical, security and governmental infrastructure, and on top of this all, the sudden collapse of the federal government’s structure of political control. The mixture translated into criminality, destruction of the social fabric, disappearance of the family as a basic social structure and of any sense of community. Only under this framework can one explain the hordes of youths becoming hired assassins roaming through the streets as if they own them. Only this way can we fathom the world of cruelty, violence and death that saw them come to life and grow. Juárez long ago ceased to be an organized and functional society.

The political war that we are experiencing in Mexico makes it difficult to elucidate the central from the peripheral. If we guide ourselves by the newspaper headlines, it is impossible to determine whether 1) an army battle is being waged in Juárez against the population, 2) the narcos are battling against the government, 3) it is the population against violence, or 4) whether it is the country against the narcos. There is no doubt, however, that the Juárez population is satiated with violence, lack of government, narcos, and above all, the most basic criminality: that which coerces, steals, and kills, that which is not necessarily linked with narcotrafficking, and that for which none of the three levels of government has an answer.

Criminality began its destruction of the tranquility of the country from at least the early 1990s; nonetheless, 15 long years later, we have not been able to see concrete and definitive answers. Ciudad Juárez is without doubt an extreme in the wave of insecurity, but it is not atypical. The number of kidnappings, thefts, and extortion strategies spout forth like foam. The number of entrepreneurs, big stores, and Mom-and-Pop operations that have to cough up (“protection” money) or be held up ‒the sale and purchase of protection, or extortion‒ is increasing throughout the country and affects even the large retail enterprises, those which one would imagine would enjoy a certain immunity. Governments come and go, but criminality hangs tough.

President Calderón launched the war against the narco, not because he had to legitimize himself, although this was certainly a circumstantial benefit, but rather because the country was engulfed in narcotrafficking, narcoretailing, corruption, and violence, and recovering the national presence was critical. The criminality to which neither this government, nor its predecessors, has neglected to respond is that which exerts an impact on the average citizen. Yes, this is a local, and not a federal, theme, but for a country emerging from the era of PRI hypercentralism, the distinction remains imperceptible for the populace. All of a sudden, from the 1990s on, federal authority began to erode until, with the defeat of the PRI in 2000, the entire historical structure of power was distorted: criminality took root, and a police and security structure was never created for the new era in which we live. The federal government stopped controlling the state governors and municipal presidents, and the majority of these never developed an effective governmental structure. The result is that the criminals -to a even greater extent than the narcos- call the shots, as it were, if not in reality govern a good part of the national territory.

Federal concerns are poorly focused. Many border zone inhabitants have migrated to the “other side”, not because they prefer to live there, but instead, because they are sick of the criminality. This delinquency is the product of change in the political realities that the country has lived through but not attended to: there is no political structure that is capable of dealing with delinquency; the war against the narco possesses its own logic, but it does not resolve the criminality of every day. What we have is weak, incompetent authorities who do not understand the loss of their own legitimacy and who lack instruments to counteract the pain to which the population is being submitted in the wearing away of their lives. The government’s weakness has been more than matched by the muscle and makeup of organized crime: the latter, with greater clarity of vision, filled the void left by the absence of authority.

In Juárez, a battle is now being conducted that, unfortunately, compounds the theme affecting the voting population in view of the contest among political parties for the upcoming state election. Many Juarenses find themselves fed up amid a surfeit of abuse and lack of attention. One of them declared that now that his son has died, he would be able to go to live on the U.S. side of the border. Some months ago, the Latinobarímetro survey reported that more than one half of Mexicans would go to the U.S. on being presented with the opportunity. For many people in Juárez, moving to the other side of the border is not an issue of opportunity, but one of survival.

Many people are concerned about the loss of identity. However, all of the surveys show that the identity of the Mexican is extraordinarily deep-rooted. Deriving from difficult historical moments such as the U.S. invasion, national identity does not appear to be in doubt. What indeed is openly repudiated by the population is governmental incompetency, at all levels. The population is no longer able to confirm their own concerns each time that the illicit cohabitation of some authority -governor, municipal president, or police official- with organized crime comes to light. And, regrettably, new liaisons of this nature are reported every day. Although dictators like Stalin conveniently identified authority with government, in a democracy legitimacy must be earned by those who govern every day of their political lives. And many decades have elapsed since Mexican governors abandoned the citizenry to their fate in the matter of criminality.

If something does unite Mexican governments over time, it is their singular capacity to respond to the wrong problems. Several decades ago, in the face of fearing excision at the northern border, the government in power devised the National Border Program to “rescue” Mexicans in the region. What would be ideal today would be to transform the police and security systems so that cities like Juárez could regain peace. In an ideal world, this would imply the accelerated development of municipal capacities, but there are few examples in the country that permit contemplating a project of this nature in optimistic fashion. The alternative would be a type of protectorate, a supramunicipal authority, that would attend to, not only the blatant security problem, but also to the nonexistence of infrastructure –not only physical, but also educational, social, community and otherwise- for the city that has provided the country more jobs than any other in past decades. Notwithstanding this, it has occurred to no one to provide succor for the one and the same city of Juárez.

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In reflecting on British politics, Bertrand Russell said that generations of voters follow a predictable pattern that inexorably leads to frustration. They first vote for the party of their dreams, only to find that they do not find the solutions that they seek there. Therefore, they vote for the alternative, in the belief that this ‘other party’ is that which could bestow fortune upon them. Thus, a vicious circle of disillusion sets in. For Russell, the problem resided in the need for each party to impose its preferences instead of convening the majority of the population for a national project that transcends partisanship*. Mexican parties would have a hard time passing the test proposed by Russell.

There are two groups of Mexican voters: those who swear by one party and are only willing in the exceptional case to take leave of their trenches, and those who decide their vote according to the occasion, with a project oriented more toward constructing a future than to awaiting immediate answers. For the party in office, the theme is key: the PAN has been in the presidency for nearly 10 years, but the impact it has exerted on changing the reality for the good has been rather modest.

The 2000 election changed the reality of power, but did not lead to a novel institutionality. We are at present living a moment in which the struggle between parties and candidates is, nearly in its entirety, concerned with the past. The irony is that all appear to have their sights set on the same era, although for different reasons. The PAN appears resolute in recreating the Priista Presidency of the seventies. The PRD is split between ex-priistas who want to return to the economic policies of that era, and those born into the parties of the left and who now attempt to erect a modern social democracy. The PRI solely aspires to return to power and forget its two defeats. No one poses the idea of edifying a different future, one that is capable of checking out the desires and needs of a young and critical population that is in want of instruments, beyond that of the vote, in order for them to be something more than mere onlookers.

While the case of the PRD is the most complex due to the dissimilar genesis of the forces and traditions that consolidate it, the PAN party is perhaps the most paradoxical. The cabinet changes that took place at the end of 2009 were excessively revealing of the profound nature of the PAN. Instituted as a reaction to the Revolutionary Party, panistas have remained in the cryo-image of the all-powerful party of yesteryear.

From the time Fox became President, the panistas supposed that due to the sole fact of their having defeated the PRI, all of the power of the old presidency would flow toward them. Instead of recognizing the new political reality, the upshot of the panista victory, they soon began to criticize the President for not having thrown off the yoke of Hacienda, the Ministry of Public Finance. The obstacle had hitherto been the PRI; now it was Hacienda. In view of the cabinet changes, with Hacienda in the bag, the panistas could indeed be sure that the power was now theirs. They soon would be required to confront an evident dilemma: attempt to reproduce the PRI of the 1970s (spending left and right to carry the elections) or safeguard the economic stability. The dilemma is real, as priistas learned after 1994, but this will not impede their trying. Sooner or later, they will find a new scapegoat who justifies their inability to initiate the transformation that they have been promising for decades.

It would perhaps not be difficult to anticipate that this grandstanding will be directed toward the Bank of Mexico, the ever-appropriate bad guy. Legislative debate has set out to modify the central bank’s statute for incorporating into the entity’s mandate, not only the fight against inflation, but also economic growth. The supposition behind this idea is that higher inflation is a necessary condition for achieving a high growth rate, and that the mandate of the bank thwarts this. Any serious analyst knows that there is no contradiction between these two submissions and that, in fact, price stability is the sine qua non for sustainable economic growth. Notwithstanding this, the irony is that the opposition parties, as much as many of the legislators of the governmental party, embrace the same party line.

The growth problem is concerned with a lack of certainty in the economy and with an economic structure that does not contribute to opening opportunities for saving or investment.  But the panistas appear to be in the throes of another logic: rather than construct a development strategy, they are caught up in reproducing the old PRI. If they wish to return to power at some juncture, the PAN will have to offer something better than not being the PRI.

The worst predicament for the PAN is that their governments have been plagued by all of the vices for which they previously criticized the PRI. From the frivolity of Fox to the absence of continuity between the two six-year programs, the panistas have shown themselves to be a party of six-year terms. Similar to priistas, panistas have been deficient in a development program, long-term vision, or governmental strategy. In some cases, they have provided a pathetic sample of their vices, such as the recent decision of Demetrio Sodi’s delegational government to forsake roadway construction projects that were already in progress and for which the PAN had paid a high political price. Incapable of defending their programs, the panistas have not been different from other governments, except perhaps that they are less skillful in perpetuating themselves in power.

It is evident that the PAN administrations have launched some exceptional programs, even better than those that the PRI was ever able to bring about; among these, for example, the Oportunidades effort was converted into a politically neutral instrument to avoid rendering the fight against poverty a partisan one. It is impossible to ignore that the 2000 defeat of the PRI released Mexicans from the vise of priista authoritarianism. In the last analysis, however, and farther than these benefits, which are in no way irrelevant, the promise of the PAN has remained just that: a promise.

The great theme is what this tells us of the present reality and that of the future of Mexico. The two PAN administrations show that the problem of the country’s functioning is not linked with the party in office, but instead, with the development program in place and the capacity of the government in turn to carry this out. As citizens, top priority resides in how to right the wrongs before the potential return of the old PRI, with more ability—but no less a scarcity of ideas and convictions- to build something better.

*The Need for Political Skepticism, in Sceptical Essays

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Nehru, the great Indian statesman, said that “the moment has arrived, something that rarely takes place in history, when we take leave of the old and proceed toward the new, when an era ends, and when the cry of a nation, long suppressed, achieves its expression”. If ever there were something that unites Mexicans, it is the need to organize ourselves better in order to be capable of confronting the challenges of the future. This does not imply that it will be simple, or even feasible, to forge a consensus with respect to how this organizative structure should be, but it is clear that what we have is not working. Power reform has become an inexorable necessity, and, nonetheless, it is not obvious whether it will be possible.

The problems are enormous and the number of proposals for a solution, even greater. From the political end, approximately a year ago, the PRI party leader in the Senate postulated a proposal of reform drafted under the title of “The Eight Rs of the PRI”. At the end of that same year, the President dispatched a series of initiatives to the Senate directed toward reorganizing relations among the branches of government. With distinct areas of emphasis, each set of proposals responds to the difficulties and complexity that the country encounters in its decision-making processes.

Something similar occurs on the fiscal-economic plane. Although a discussion regarding the need for an “integral” fiscal reform (whatever that means) has been on the back burner for decades, the fall in petroleum prices has rendered this reform inexorable. At the same time, from the moment that the PRI lost their majority in Congress and later the Presidency, the reality of power has changed. This has been reflected in the relative power of the state governors, who currently exercise control over the greater part of the public expenditure. The meetings of the so-called conago, the confrérie of governors, were nothing more than an indication that the former power of the Presidency had broken into fragments, and the new reality of power would be reflected not only at the voting booth, but also in the distribution of monies.

In other words, the post-revolutionary pact launched by the PRI era resolved power problems and the distribution of finances throughout the seven decades that its reign endured. This age ended with the decision of the voters at the polls, but the institutions charged with administration of power relationships and expenditure distribution did not reform. This, and nothing else, is what lies behind the proposals for reform, both institutional and financial.

The clamor today is not due to a series of electoral, institutional, or fiscal reforms, but rather to an integral power reform. However profound and intelligent the proposals marauding around in the public debate, there is the risk of addressing a nonexistent problem, or, more precisely, that the problem is not being dealt with at its root. The risk that a package of reforms that does not clear up the problem will be approved should be of concern to us all. If the problem is one of power, it will not be resolved with new legislation, but instead with a deep-seated agreement –a broad political pact- that is subsequently codified into laws. In this instance, the order of the factors does indeed modify the outcome.

A power reform implies redefinition of what is fundamental in a society. Everyone is aware of the dysfunctional relations between the congressional and the executive branches of power. No less important are the distortions in the power relations between the federal government and those of the states: the old rules no longer work. The reality of power has made possible an evident disability at the Federal level (Congress and Executive) for the governors in terms of accountability.  The public expenditure pours forth, but responsibility does not. In the same fashion, the capacity has disappeared that characterized the former political system to articulate agreements and consensuses that rendered the country governable. Part of the present situation reflects the disabilities of specific notables, but the structural problem is real.

The citizenry, who for the first time have a voice, albeit limited, also clamor for their rights. The rejection of tax increases is not only a reflection of steep living costs or limited incomes, but also of deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the performance of the economy, of the government, and of their own exclusion from the decision-making processes.

All of these points of conflict, controversy, and displeasure speak of a country whose day-to-day operation has ceased being functional and requires a new pact that establishes, or re-establishes, equilibrium among public powers and between the Federation and the States. There would be several ways to come to grips with this problematic: One, that which has been exercised to date, with proposals and counterproposals that do little more than lard the legislative agenda, without offering the least possibility of resolving the basic problem. A second would comprise setting forth a great political pact, of the sort that comes about only once every century, one that establishes the foundations of a general transformation of the country. The third, which entails the greatest pragmatism of all, is that which has oriented dozens of nations facing similar situations (watch Brazil and India, China and South Africa as obvious examples), and would imply sufficient rectification in the short term to enable a break-through of the current impasse to create the conditions for a more durable long-term arrangement.

In general terms, politicians prefer the former, because it provides them with an exceptional starring role, whereas academics and benchwarming politicians prefer the second, because they take in the panorama as a whole and prefer a complete solution to a patchwork approach. And finally, the third is the option of governments in functions that opt to favor the daily functioning of their society rather than magic solutions that, in politics, rarely exist.

The case of Brazil is enlightening. The Brazilian political system is as dysfunctional as ours (although this is attributable to very distinct reasons and characteristics), and notwithstanding this has achieved pragmatic continuity among governments of distinct credos and, more importantly, has entered into a process of movement that stands in contrast to our paralysis, and one that compels it, due to the very fact of its being in movement, to reform to the least extent necessary to sustain the momentum.

It would be extraordinary to be able to achieve a great foundational pact, but it is evident that the conditions under which this could take place do not exist at present. As Roger Bartra recently explained so brilliantly, in Mexican politics coincidence does not exist even concerning the times in which we live, and there is much less synchronicity for laying the foundations of anything relevant. It would be better for us to seek out the repairs that would make possible getting the machine into running order, to facilitate an integral power arrangement in an opportunity at which this would be feasible.

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According to Ambrose Bierce, a famous satirical writer of the nineteenth century, alliances are “the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.” Now that we are in electoral-alliances season, Bierce is worth remembering not only for his wry appreciation of life and wit, but also because of the comedy that characterizes this discussion in our country.
Alliances and coalitions are the bread and butter of parliamentary politics. But in Mexico they have taken amazing dimensions. Here go some thoughts, considerations and opinions:

1.  PAN (Partido Accion Nacional) members are divided on the idea of an alliance with the PRD (Partido Revolucion Democratica) and other parties, particularly the PT (Partido del Trabajo), because they think they belong to a different social class. For its part, the PRD, already fractured into two large blocks, can’t decide what is better: an alliance with its archrival or to continue being in the opposition.

2.    The members of PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) have no doubts: for them the potential alliance between their opponents is “perverse” and “unnatural”, presumably because PAN and PRD do not recognize each other as a legitimate political player (“fascists” say some members of the PRD about PAN; “a danger to the country” say members of PAN about PRD). However, behind the PRI’s stance one can see the concern that a potential alliance, even one that is not altogether saintly, could undermine some of its state strongholds such as Oaxaca, Puebla and Veracruz.

3.    By definition, the aim of an electoral alliance is to defeat a more powerful opponent. In countries with multiparty systems, especially those characterized by run-offs (such as France where there is a proliferation of parties and candidates before the first round that go on to build alliances and coalitions in order to win in the second round), or parliamentary systems with low thresholds for access to parliament, alliances and coalitions are the daily bread of politics. For over sixty years Holland has not had a government without a coalition because no party has reached an absolute majority: alliances are the element that makes it possible to constitute a government.

4.    The problem with such partnerships in Mexico is that our parties do not perceive each other as equals, as partners in a process of nation building. They see each other more like enemies than as adversaries capable of joining efforts, except when it comes to defeating the PRI. In one word, there is an obvious contradiction between want is fundamental and what is comforting.

5.    It is clear that the agendas of the PAN and PRD are different, because if they were not they would be the same party. The problem is not that their agendas differ but that they don’t inhabit the same planet. If their differences were only about social or economic policy, an alliance could help mend differences and develop common ground, such as is the case in all modern democracies. Their differences on abortion or homosexuality are important in terms of partisan philosophy, but they would not necessarily exclude an electoral alliance in which they all agreed not to address those issues. In any event the issues of social policy that divide them are mostly not relevant outside Mexico City, so the notion of building an electoral coalition for other states cannot be dismissed on such grounds.

6.    Electoral alliances have two stages: one is aimed at elections and another at governing. When two or more parties form a coalition they do so because that is the best way to advance their projects and strengthen their electoral and political position. In our context, the first aim, winning an election, has proven successful in several instances; but when it comes to governing, what has happened is that the party of the candidate who won ends up governing and excludes the rest. The experience in this area is extensive and almost overwhelming: the alliances and coalitions in Mexico are always temporary and limited to the specific goal of winning an election. Is it worth it?

7.    The parties that participated in the winning coalition but did not provide the successful candidate become alienated from the daily exercise of power. Those within the parties who oppose this type of opportunistic alliances argue that someone else always enjoys the benefits. The truth is that if there are several simultaneous elections in which the same parties coalesce and the distribution of nominations is equitable, none should feel are left on the fringes. Much more serious, relevant and interesting are the concerns of those who envision the possibility of failure, even if a coalition seemed formidable and likely to win at the outset of an electoral process. Where are the parties left after a failed election?  If instead of obtaining an overwhelming victory as they had hoped, they end defeated, could this lead to a self fulfilling prophesy that delivers the whole country to the PRI in the presidential elections of 2012?

8.    It is obvious that the only goal shared by the PAN and the PRD in the proposed alliance is to defeat the PRI. There is nothing inherently evil in a coalition that pursues an aim of this nature. It could be argued that at least one of the reasons why democracy has not flourished in Mexico is precisely because of the strength of the pre modern strongholds enjoyed by the PRI in several states, starting with the southeast. Under this line of reasoning, the PRI’s defeat would have the effect of fragmenting power at the state level, just as it has happened at the federal level. In this context the potential benefit of disabling those fiefdoms would seems quite clear. However, it is also understandable that even in the most benign scenario of victory, the costs would not be unimportant. As pyrrhic a victory as the current legislature has had in passing the president’s bills (or almost any bills), all of those passed were due to the existing understandings, whether explicit or implied, between the PRI and PAN, both of which accept the legitimacy of the other. Could the proposed PAN-PRD coalitions endanger the only factor that has allowed the country to be governed over the past few years? This is not an argument meant to reject the idea of these alliances, merely a description of the bigger picture.

9.    What really matters is whether there is a deeper content to the proposed alliances designed to defeat PRI. Defeating PRI might be a desirable goal, but it is not the relevant one from the perspective of the citizenship. Many members of the PAN viscerally reject an alliance with PRD in Oaxaca on the grounds that it would mean bringing into the coalition a series of radical organizations that paralyzed that state three years ago and do not recognize President Calderon. Put in this vein, it would clearly make no sense to proceed. However, what if the real goal were to be deeper? What if an alliance like the proposed one advanced towards bringing all political actors, including these organizations, into the institutional side of politics? The benefits would then be immense.

10. In stark contrast with the nature of coalitions in truly democratic nations, an alliance such as those proposed must be appreciated for what they are: an attempt to change the rules of competition and control within the political system. If they are successful in overthrowing some of the PRI feudal strongholds, they would bring oxygen to the system and also to the modern side of PRI that has been unable to reform the party even if its leaders are unwilling to admit it. However, the only relevant benefit for the citizens would be to start building a common agenda to develop the country. That would really seem “unnatural.”

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Saint Augustine said that time is present in three facets: the present, as we experience it; the past, as present memory, and the future, as present expectation. For President Calderón, time is ever shorter, and what is not already built today cannot be harvested, whether after or during his 6-year term of office. Given the manner the current government has evolved and the complexity of the era in which we live, the President must define himself with full clarity: whether he will employ the time left to him in an attempt for his political party to win the upcoming 2012 election, or to confront the problems beleaguering the country. At this point, it is no longer possible to accomplish both.

This is decision time. The time to think, plan, and sow has gone by. Although the presidential term comprises solely 6 years, the political dynamic is not divided into two halves. At its initiation, a government has time to set forth its plans, to place them on track, and to trust that it will be able to harvest these before the end of the term. After the mid-point, which in political terms is marked by the federal elections, the country enters into electioneering dynamic in which everything is defined in terms of the next presidential contest. Each and every theme in Mexico is measured and appraised in light of its potential impact on the approaching joust.

Throughout history, Mexican presidents have done what they could in their first three years in office, and thereafter have devoted themselves to prepare for their succession. During the PRI era, this implied positioning their chips in competent arenas, negotiating with the diverse interest groups, and attempting to drive their preferred candidate. They engaged in the latter by means of innumerable mechanisms: programs with dedicatory and implicit support, transferences, and subsidies for the projects or themes that would benefit the specific individual and similar others. The sole example of the PAN era, Vicente Fox, displayed deficient learning from the PRI system: President Fox supposed that only by his desiring it, everything would come together for the benefit of his anointed one. But, as we well know, the candidate in another’s court won. Due to his way of acting, as President and as Ex-president, Fox was left with the two assets with which he began: his charisma, and the defeat of the PRI. His presidency not only credited nothing to his merits, but also subtracted from these.

President Calderón has had to deal with a much more complex period. From its precipitative initiation to the international crisis, his government has bounced back and forth. Incapable of delegating authority to competent people, it has solely accomplished what its extremely narrow margin of control permits. All of this has earned him relatively low popularity, great disapproval in key sectors, groups, and persons, and very few achievements upon which to secure his personal and political future. Because of his personality, Calderón tends to exclude rather than to include, to alienate rather than to co-opt. His critics may be very ignorant, but they are not always wrong.

He is now caught in the clutches of time. We are at 20 months of defining the presidential candidates and at 1½ years of the next election. The President must define whether he will maintain course, which could well translate into a defeat for the PAN, potentially at the hands of the PRI, or whether he will redefine his project. If he opts to follow the traditional logic—to devote himself to ensuring the election of his favored candidate— he will abdicate all possibility of advancing any reform agenda and achievement for the country. A defeat by the PAN would nearly be ensured. If, on the other hand, he redefines his project, he will be presented with the opportunity of making a difference that would place him on a new personal platform at the end of his term. This is not a minor dilemma. The theme is political, but also personal, i.e., how he wishes to be perceived by history: as a president who, whoever wins, left a better country, or as one who resolutely persisted in a failed project.

Although there is nothing definitive in politics—Yogi Berra, the famous baseball player, is quoted as observing “It ain’t over ’til it’s over”—current tendencies do not favor the governmental party. The wear-and-tear is patent; conflicts at the interior of the PAN are rising; young people have lost faith, and more importantly, there is not much that the current government has at hand that would allow us to suppose that it will glean something relevant in the next 30 months. What was not sown in timely fashion can no longer translate into political or electoral benefits.

This circumstance will force the president to measure his own strengths and possibilities. To devote himself to driving a potential successor would constitute a mainly risky venture, and it would even be possible to argue that it would contribute to the candidate’s defeat. The experience of Calderón himself is relevant here: a good part of the credibility that led him to win the 2006 election was concerned precisely with the fact that he was legitimately able to situate himself as independent of Fox. The worst of all worlds for Calderón would be that in which he persists in nominating and in making his candidate the winner of the election, only to end in defeat and permanent ostracism himself. It would be better for him to pledge his future to something transforming that, ironically, could be salubrious for his party.

The alternative would be to imitate the manner in which Ernesto Zedillo conducted himself during the second half of his presidential mandate. Instead of devoting himself to the PRI political grid or fervently espousing a determined candidate, Zedillo opted for a great electoral reform, in which he assumed himself to be Head of State, and not a PRIista. This distinction was key to the success of the 1996 reform, which led to the successive electoral and political transformations experienced by the country. Zedillo was able to accomplish this because he decided that the country was more important than the PRI, and this allowed him to negotiate with PRI party members with an endowment of freedom and credibility that no individual committed to a short-term electoral result could confer upon him.

The theme for Calderón would not be electoral in ilk, but the dilemma is exactly the same. His alternative lies in being solely one more PANista come to naught and perdition, or in becoming a Head of State who drives political and financial reforms that permit him to bequeath a transforming, generational legacy that anchors the future of the country to a new stage of opportunity. The problem is that both things cannot be done, because he would not possess the credibility necessary to achieve robust negotiation of the radical changes that the country requires in the political-institutional dimension, as well as in that of income and expenditure. Both are transcendental matters of power that do not coalesce well with short-term party partisan interest. It is decision time.

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In one of the great battles of history, at Cannae in southern Italy, Hannibal the Carthaginian general almost defeated the most powerful and disciplined army in history, the Roman legion. His army, stationed a few days from Rome, could have easily gone on to conquer the city, but Hannibal hesitated. At that, Maharbal, his best general and cavalry commander said: “Hannibal, you know how to achieve victory but you do not know how to use it.” In recent months, the same holds true for President Calderon.

The country is at an impasse that calls for decisive action. Yet our political establishment is paralyzed. Those in charge of deciding and acting are not doing so. Those who are responsible, given our system of separation of powers, of assessing and ratifying or changing the proposals put forth by the executive are going to great lengths to criticize what exists without providing any alternative susceptible of unlocking the current gridlock. The milieu we live in is full of great ideas and suggestions that none of those that are in a position of authority are prepared to push forward. Myths dominate and interests and privileges are the glue that keeps them together. No country can function like this.

A complex time for our economy such as this, both national and global,  a time in which opportunities and threats to the country’s development are being forged,  all we get from our politicians is constant bickering over the budget and the tax snafu that consumed the Legislature for months during last year. While the country needs answers geared towards the future, the perspective of our political leaders is rooted in the past: on what the country was but can no longer be.

Even though large resources were spent (e.g. at the beginning of this decade the governors consumed more than one hundred billion dollars of additional revenue due to high oil prices), very little of this has had a positive impact on the growth rate of the economy as a whole. Instead of investing in the future, our politicians -government and opposition, but most especially the governors- consumed our resources with unusual gluttony. They spend and waste, and the only aggrandizement they can show for is their own self image (and sometimes not even that). They have used government resources to promote themselves and not to improve people’s livelihoods.

The country urgently needs investment, the development of new engines of growth and a strategy that enables both. While the dream of promoting growth through credit and deficit spending is swarming the environment, the truth is that there is no alternative to private investment. Even if it were desirable for the country to go into debt, credit is not available in the amounts that would be needed to jump-start the economy. Moreover, deficit spending would mean more demand which, as we’ve seen over and over in the past decades, would quickly exhaust installed capacity, thus lead to more imports, which in turn would generate a currency crisis. In any case, the government –the current one and all since 1970– has shown a complete inability to generate growth through spending the public purse. Investment will come from the private sector or it won’t come at all.

Investment can come from two sources: from national capital and/or from abroad. The engines of growth can only result from two types of sources: large investment projects promoted by the government for private investors to develop; or those that might result from a new type of association with the new leading sectors of the U.S. economy, those that become successful from the ongoing structural transformation that the U.S. economy today. The strategy to make this possible should include three essential features: a) the open, active and determined promotion of private investment; b) the development of major infrastructure projects that generate domestic sources of demand, especially in the country’s poorest regions; and c) the organization and negotiation of a development agenda with the United States that opens up development opportunities and activates sectors and economic activities to satisfy the demand generated by the American economy. This could include health, education, transportation, technology, energy, and the whole regulatory apparatus required to implement this strategy. The opportunities are there. The question is whether we are willing to turn them into sources of growth, and that depends entirely on us.

As long as this does not happen, until we do not eradicate the myths and sources of permanent distrust and misunderstanding that paralyze us, we will have to limit ourselves to what we have and this, as we know well, does not yield positive results. There is no reason to expect that things will change by themselves, without a fundamental shift in the way our politicians think: ahead and towards the future. An anecdote recounts that when the president visited China he mentioned to the prime minister that our government was very interested in Chinese investment in Mexico. Smiling, and very gently, the prime minister replied: “…they always confuse us, Mr. President, we are Chinese. The kamikaze are Japanese…. ”

Nobody will invest in Mexico while we continue doing all that is needed to repudiate investment. Nobody will take us into account until we know what we want and the politicians succeed in bringing the people behind them. Nobody will see us as more than a lost cause until we are ready to build the scaffolding needed to focus towards development. As the anecdote illustrates, nobody is willing to invest where there are no opportunities, where taxes change daily, where insecurity, both physical and patrimonial, is so high, and where politicians live off the treasury without ever worrying about the country’s development.

If we want to get ourselves out of the rut we are in we must begin to break down the myths that paralyze us. For example, this would entail rethinking the energy issue (including, of course, oil) as a source of opportunity and not as a museum piece at the service of the union and inefficiency. It would also imply the  need to begin privatizing government-held assets that do not contribute to national development. Above all, we have to acknowledge our own paralysis and the fact that it is not the fault of one person, as important as he or she may be, but of all the political interests that are more concerned about protecting privileges than making ours a viable country.

The start of a new year is always a good time to reflect and zero in our batteries, and this would be a good place to start.

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One of the things that impresses me most of the legislative and political processes in all societies is the inevitable contrast between solving problems, finding solutions and the programs or enforceable laws that result from the tortuous process of negotiation. Typically, at the beginning, the proposal or bill tends to be coherent and directly aimed at the issue being addressed, but once it goes through the negotiation process it ends up being less coherent and, in many cases, often falls short of fixing the problem. Sometimes, when the architects of a project try to anticipate critics or opponents, even their first proposal becomes incoherent, tortuous and too complicated. Perhaps there is no alternative, but I keep asking myself what is the point of alleged solutions that have no chance of solving the problem.

Examples abound: we have the highly commended energy reform that has neither a chance to improve the oil monster’s performance or its productivity. There is also the project for a new refinery without it being obvious that there will be oil to refine or that in any case, it would be a profitable venture.

The same could be said of the proposal to reform the Mexican political institutions that the PRI has brought forward in the Senate, starting with the idea of reducing the number of sits by proportional representation in the lower house of Congress. In a system of popular representation, what should exist is a proximity between the representative and the represented. The reform proposals that are beginning to be discussed in the Senate include the possibility of reelection, which would seem to support that purpose. However, to preserve the system of proportional representation, what is advanced on the one hand is backtracked on the other, even if the total number of members of Congress diminishes. The hybrid that characterizes us (what we have right now is 300 by direct representation deputies and 200 by proportionality) hinders accountability and creates a distance between the citizens and the so called representatives. Unless this is the ultimate goal, it would be better to have a system of pure direct representation with redistricting so that all parties have a reasonable chance of achieving presence in the legislature or, in a less optimal scenario, have a system of full proportionality. If the objective is in fact to find a solution, it would be best to get it right from the beginning.

Many of the proposed solutions do not address the underlying problem. Although the rationale is to strengthen institutional structures (certainly a laudable goal), many of the initiatives assume that there is institutional strength rather than attempt to accomplish precisely that. For example, no one can object the proposal to ratify some key members of the presidential cabinet. However, when our main problem is institutional weakness, this proposal would only further weaken the presidency and, therefore, the country’s governance.

Perhaps the main issue at hand is that there is no full recognition that, following the defeat of the PRI in 2000, the country experienced a radical change in the reality of political power, and there has not been an institutional reorganization that meets the new realities. Once “divorced” from the PRI, the presidency becomes flimsy, not only viewed under our own historical standards, but even compared with other nations similar to ours. In the same vein, the actual structure of power has placed state governors at the center of the system, along with the leaders of the political parties. The initiatives being proposed do not seek more than a further weakening of the presidency without improving its ability to act and to govern.

In a country lacking strong institutions that are credible and respectable (and worse, a country prone to undermining those that come close to this paradigm), the notion of incorporating such figures as the referendum and the revocation of mandate, while both politically correct, entails an almost personalized inscription that can always backfire on the promoters of such initiatives. In any case, the latter are clearly instruments of power and not visionary proposals for institutional strengthening. They assume that all political actors would behave in an honest and institutional fashion in a time of crisis. As citizens, we should be very skeptical of such an approach: after what we have experienced in the past decades, at least from 1994 to the present and without forgetting the year 2006, can anyone construe this is as a valid assumption?

At heart, the problem is not the specific proposals or the prospect that in fact realistic and reasonable solutions are put forth. The problem lies in the fact that the frame of reference continues being the struggle for power and not the construction of a new political system, a system that turns the development of the country as a whole into a viable option. We are talking about an introspective and interested vision rather than a broad and ambitious approach of a generation of politicians thinking about the future.

Many of the proposals contained in the draft entitled “the eight Rs of the PRI” touch the core issues, but the approach taken is not meant to build a modern country, but to distribute power in the here and now, along with various specific retaliation schemes against concrete political enemies. Framed like this, the project is not conducive to strengthening the political system or the transformation of the country.

What is wrong is the approach and the apparent ulterior motive, not the concept itself: focused in a different way, the same concepts, or many of them, could become transformational.

For example, one could think not in weakening the presidency but in building a new presidential institution with the attributes that a modern country requires and with a view towards achieving effectiveness in government together with a system of checks and balances. Along the same lines, one could revise relations among the three powers of government, define areas of responsibility, and create institutional, and effective, dispute-settlement mechanisms. The use of money, one of the most contentious issues in recent years, could be framed within a new institutional context where an autonomous entity reviews the budget and creates mechanisms to make the executive (at all levels of government) accountable. The autonomous and independent entities also require upgrading, but with the aim to strengthen them as sources of balance, not as sources of submission.

In other words, the same core project could become a development factor if only these projects focused on building a trans-generational approach. The beginning of the year is a good time to start.

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Nobody can ignore the social inequality that Mexico suffers nor scorn the human cost that it represents or the huge missed opportunity that its sheer existence entails. Inequality goes hand in hand with poverty but it is not the same: they coexist and are the result of structural and historical circumstances. Although it is impossible to change history, the experience around the world is that there are means to combat poverty and to mitigate, if not quite eliminate, the causes of inequality. In fact in recent decades, poverty has diminished by more than 80% around the world. Although something similar has also taken place in Mexico, it is quite obvious that its absolute dimensions are still enormous.

From an analytical standpoint, there are two ways of conceptualizing the problem of poverty and inequality: one is blaming the problem on history and the other is building mechanisms that can in fact reduce it. Both approaches were clearly exemplified in the 2006 elections. In that race it was clear that the country has a contradictory perception of the way in which these ailments have to be addressed. Some take a moral perspective and seek to solve their qualms with historical complaints (along the way attacking the foundations and wisdom of the economic policy that has been pursued in recent years), while others seek ways to correct problems, reduce social costs and attack the more severe manifestations of poverty and inequality.

What is clear of the last several years is that poverty can be reduced, but the obstacles are formidable, not because government policies have been unsuccessful but because the number of obstacles to their implementation are enormous. While it is possible to imagine different ways to tackle social ailments like poverty and inequality, there are proven mechanisms that allow us to discern between quackery (such as increasing public spending or imposing trade restrictions) and appropriate policies to address the problem (including macroeconomic stability and a targeted social policy).

Education is by far the most important mechanism to combat inequality. The experience in this area is overwhelming and quite obvious: children from poorer and disadvantaged families lag behind and have no access to good teachers, the educational programs are not the right ones and what is often called “education” is not much more than a veiled mechanism aimed at controlling people and preserving a system of subordination. All we need to do is compare the overwhelming differences between rural and urban, and public and private, education to recognize a source of abysmal inequality. Many countries face serious problems of inequality; the difference between those that are developed or actually moving in that direction and those that are still relatively poor and backward is that the former have created educational mechanisms so that any child, regardless of social or economic background, has the same chance of making it in life.

The issue is not just Mexican. In his recent book, “The bottom billion,” Paul Collier analyzes what has happened in the world lately. A professor of economics at Oxford, Collier studies the evolution of poverty and inequality in and concludes that a group of countries that endorsed globalization achieved dramatic reductions in poverty. These countries implemented mechanisms aimed at increasing access to education, extending the reach of the most modern infrastructure and procuring equalization of opportunities, an improvement that benefited more than 80% of the world population. The question Collier asks is why the remaining billion people have not improved in any way. His focus is on sub-Saharan African nations, but his analysis can be extrapolated to other nations suffering from similar problems.

According to Collier, the central problem in nations where poverty persists is the political struggle between reformers and corrupt leaders and bosses: where the latter win poverty increases. His analysis shows that the causes of failure in these nations becomes evident in the form of development traps, myths built to protect vested interests and, often, a strong dependence on natural resources. A bit like Lopez Velarde (a Mexican poet of the 19^th century), Collier argues that natural resources tend to distort a nation’s economy and facilitate the longevity of bad governments. A bad government may consist of just that (corrupt officials), but sometimes it has to do with all the factors involved in preserving the status quo that hinders a direct attack at the root causes of poverty.

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Despite his orthodox economic approach, Collier’s book has the great courage of defying both Tyrian and Trojan. For the economically unorthodox he argues that their solutions (stop paying the debt, engage in high public-spending programs, or link inflation with growth) are counterproductive and potentially catastrophic. Any Mexican who was aware at least of the 1995 crisis could not doubt the veracity of this assertion. But Collier also chastises the orthodox: for him, trade, despite its huge overall benefits, is unlikely to benefit the poorest, whose commercial skills are limited. That does not mean, he goes on, that trade should be constrained; rather, his point is that there is a need to seek other means to attack poverty.

Education is particularly prominent among the proposals that Collier advances. An effective government must be able to break the hindrances –social, cultural and political- to ensure that the poor have the same opportunities as the rest of society. The author also proposes a much more aggressive intervention for the poorest nations, including the imposition of European Union sanctions (including direct intervention) to guaranty that measures are implemented against corruption and respect for property rights

One conclusion that is inescapable from this book is that there are no easy ways out for poverty and inequality, but that success in combating these evils is not impossible because the strategies for achieving this are known and available to anyone truly willing to seek them out.  Poverty exists because of political interests that benefit from the status quo. The devil’s holy scriptures of Lopez Velarde end up meeting with Lampedusa (who argued that everything much change so that everything remains the same) to create a corrupt system designed so that nothing changes.

Stalin once said that people who place their vote in the ballot box do not decide anything. According to the Soviet dictator, the true decision makers are the ones who count the votes. The reconfiguration of the IFE (Federal Electoral Institute) in the mid-nineties sought to respond to a quasi-Stalinist reality: the hypothetical Mexican democracy conveyed no certainty to the contenders. With the integration of a citizen-led IFE, Mexican democracy began to flourish in the electoral arena. The IFE achieved what seemed impossible: win the confidence of the electorate. But Mexican democracy was not designed for the citizens.

In current Mexican politics, sovereignty lies with political parties. It is there where the current wrongs we are now experiencing were first shaped. Electoral processes did not need repairs or adjustments because they were fulfilling their objective: the campaigns worked, the media abandoned the historical bias that characterized the system for decades (indeed, the election of 2006 was the most equitable of our history), and vote counting was impeccable, as shown by all the assessments done after the election that year. Regardless, in 2007 the parties launched an electoral reform aimed at controlling the IFE, punish the media and regulate even the most modest procedures in electoral matters.

The 2007 reform would have made Stalin proud. The IFE’s autonomy was left astray, while public debate, electoral propaganda and the freedom to express opinions regarding the election would also be severely restricted. The IFE went from being an independent arbitrator to become a mere audit tool. Now, the IFE’s concerns are no longer centered on the fairness of the election but on the content of the political messages, the duration of spots and the imposition of fines and censorship to a growing number of political actors. In fact in another Stalinist outburst, anybody can now be prosecuted for electoral crimes. Many party leaders themselves have begun to worry about the Frankenstein they had created.

In fact, we are only reaping what was sown. The problem is that those who seeded were planning to regain control of the electoral process and maintain limited access to power, i.e., reduce the freedom of both the IFE and the public. And that is the underlying issue: in Mexican democracy the citizen is nothing more than a mere spectator. Instead of being the heart and raison d’être of politics and elections, its role is to legitimize the outcome, not to use the vote as an instrument, influence the way legislators act or decide who their representatives should be.

Seen from another perspective, the successive electoral reforms may have been inadequate, misleading or awkward, but they were attempts to respond to a complex reality: the old presidential system was dying and Mexico was in urgent need of institutions capable of replacing its functions. A strong presidency made it possible to compensate the onslaught of special interests (including what is now, in the post-presidential system, known as “de facto powers”) and kept at bay various potentially risky players (from guerrillas to drug traffickers). With this I don’t mean to suggest that the presidential chair of that time was infallible, benign or just. But in retrospect it seems clear that the inherent strength that accompanied it served as a counterweight to the institutional weakness that was really behind the appearance of strength vis-à-vis the rest of political actors.

In the absence of that old presidency, the country has to start shaping new institutional mechanisms to restore control over criminal organizations, counter the excesses of governors and make everyday politics viable. In short, Mexico’s real vulnerability lies in the fact that the institutions we have are inadequate to the deal with the formidable challenges they face and too weak to enable effective governance. The PRI dreams to return to the presidency but aside from having better skills for political leadership (no small feat), they could only reconstitute the old centralized system of control that they long for through a set of fundamental institutional reforms. In other words, it is not an issue of an individual’s ability.

This is the main issue: gaining control of the IFE is part of a process designed to recentralize power. It is an attempt to go about building the scaffolding of a strong government capable of decisive action. Along these lines, surely some initiatives consistent with this objective will be seen in the coming months and years. What is not obvious is the feasibility of the re-centralization of power.

The electoral reforms that led to the establishment of an autonomous IFE in the 1990s were not the product of the goodness of the PRI’s political system or the generosity of a president, but more or less ambitious responses to a tangible reality. Specifically, the then opposition parties had managed not only discredit the PRI and its presidents, but jeopardize the government in every election. The electoral issue is just one example of the gaps, increasingly more frequent, between the national reality and its institutions. Mexican society (citizens and interest groups) was challenging the PRI’s legitimacy; the pressures exercised by the governors were undermining presidential power; and local and regional conflicts made it increasingly more difficult to control the country.

The substantive point is that the old centralized structure cannot be reconstituted. Just as centralized power in the old Soviet Union was dismantled, the Mexican reality forced the dismantling of the old presidential power. Just like the political parties and the self-serving electoral reform that they passed, in Russia today one can see the restoration of centralized government, not as powerful as the old one, but certainly more than the one witnessed at the end of the Soviet era. Despite the apparent success in those latitudes, the members of the PRI and the PRD that dream with recreating the old system cannot ignore that Putin without oil is like Lopez Portillo in 1982.

Mexico requires institutions that safeguard the country and afford it functionality, not regulation and control mechanisms founded on a rear-view contraption of a not very glorious past. Above all, the country needs means for the citizens to actively work on mechanisms that limit the propensity to abuse that was at the core of the last electoral reform.

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