Antonio Navalón
Next June 5, the ballot boxes will again speak in six States of the Republic that will elect a series of positions, including the respective governorships of each of the entities involved for the next six years. This is a crucial election since it converges all the data of the new Mexican reality that has been imposing since the incredible event that the election of last July 1, 2018, entailed. It is an election that takes place after the first mid-term elections, and that will probably say a lot about what may happen in 2024. But what has happened in the midst of it all? Everything has happened. It’s no longer about being a different country – which can always occur in an electoral process – it’s about being a country looking to change legally and politically.
We have reached a situation in which surely Antonio de Padua María de López de Santa Anna would have envied the fate of the man who currently not only serves as President but also acts as a preacher. Through the mañaneras (morning press conferences), a man has managed to turn the country into a one-man country. A country in which he is the only one who truly defines and decides the political, social, legal, and other situations in Mexico.
After the upcoming election and what happens in the next few months, it will be possible to say that what happened was already foreseen. It could be said that it was all part of a preconceived plan, that the Chavistas were not an overnight event and that the Morenistas followed a plan and succeeded. But at the same time, it can also be said that the opposition was disastrous. That their failure was total. That even though they still had the conditions to oppose, confront and win spaces to ensure a political balance in the country that would move it away from authoritarianism, they could not achieve it.
The right to change is something that rulers have. Moreover, societies that evolve for the better do so through transition and not through revolution. However, in Mexico, we have a hazardous mixture between revolution, transition, and, above all, destruction of the axes and pillars that have been the foundation of the last thirty years of the country’s life.
Of all the elements at stake – regardless of how far and for how long the role of the opposition or the definitive profiles of a party with a unique vocation such as MORENA will be played – what is on the table are two fundamental facts that will not only change our history but will also determine the country we will leave to our children. The first is related to the state and future of the National Electoral Institute. Whichever way you look at it, the endearing element, the tangible sign of the victory of democracy in our country, is in the doldrums and is an element to be beaten. It is an institution that is at risk of disappearing simply because it does not meet the conditions of the new codes of the dominant power. We have an administration in which everything is managed according to the principle of ninety percent loyalty and ten percent effectiveness.
Since the nineties, Mexico has been a country ruled by the success of what it meant to create the Federal Electoral Institute, which later became known as INE. Even this revolution in the form of transition that is the 4T was approved, applauded, and crushed by the excellent functioning of the National Electoral Institute. So, why destroy it? For a very simple reason. Because in the new times – where what matters is poetry and lyric, beyond the objective data of the exercise of governing – it is essential to have poets when interpreting elections. It is unnecessary to have scientists or control systems that prevent an emotional state from dragging down the little we have left in terms of institutional stability.
The second fundamental element, the elephant in the room, is embodied by the Armed Forces of the United Mexican States. This institution, still appreciated by the Mexican people, has become the main revolutionary instrument of the 4T. Every time the civilians lose an area – either due to ineffectiveness or to the everlasting corruption – the military gains it, expanding dangerously the role they can and should play in the organization of our society. By definition, the Armed Forces are a vertical organization that converges on its head, Commander in Chief. From the first night they spend in the Military College; they are taught to obey orders. They are not trained to think, ask questions, or see – other than in the broadest patriotic sense – what are the best elements to preserve the independence and national unity.
A military man is not a politician. Although in our country’s recent history, the so-called group of the generals of Sonora – composed of Adolfo de la Huerta, Alvaro Obregón, and Plutarco Elías Calles – gave birth to the consolidation of the revolution. It took a statesman, such as General Lázaro Cárdenas, to follow the work of another statesman named Plutarco Elías Calles to definitively consolidate the end of military rule and the birth of the Mexican State. A State that Miguel Alemán Valdés initially shored up.
The military vote as individuals but are prohibited as an institution. And yet, with an accelerated consumption of the opposition, with a loss of identity and being nothing more than a strike force to occupy posts, positions, and political dialogue in the government party, every day we are witnessing the spectacle that the military is less military and more civilians. And I repeat, they have neither the elements of control nor the game’s rules that the others have.
I do not know how long it will take to have a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Mexico who is military. I do not know how long it will take to have a top official responsible for the country’s infrastructure, which is part of its armed forces. I do not know how long it will be before politics ceases to be of three colors or flags and all of it becomes olive green. But it is essential not to make a mistake and be clear that this was a decision taken – and history will show its consequences and costs – by the President. However, it was also a decision that was made possible due to the incapacity and ineffectiveness of an opposition that does not know how to be an opposition or that has not been able to make enough out of the many mistakes and failures of the current government to give the country another political orientation.
I do not know who will win next June 5. However, I do know that it will be a critical election. The polls say that it will be a new success for the ruling party. But, above all, and given what has been seen, the next elections will prove the collective failure that this time has meant. On the one hand, neither the opposition nor the government, on the other, have been able to generate an agenda of national interest that unites us. And in the end, the only element that seems evident in the panorama before and after June 5th is the preeminence of the Armed Forces over the whole electoral process.
From this moment on, it is vital to take note of what instruments we are going to use to continue building the country and, above all, what kind of country we will make. Because if the opposition disappears or is diminished, the majority party -within all its separations, its contradictions, and considering that it has no other axis than the indisputable personality of the President of the Republic- the only stabilizing element that we would have left in the middle of the political crisis, would be to expand the game and the significant role that the men dressed in olive green already have today.
All this delegation of powers and disarmament of the Mexican Army cannot prevent us from remembering that the primary task of the Armed Forces is to maintain the security of the country in all aspects. The way things are going – considering that while they are disarming, the narcos are arming themselves and forming the nuclei of a new public order around them – we will have to make a vital decision consisting of either we become the perfect narco-state, or we return the military to one of its primary functions, which is to safeguard and guarantee the security of the citizens and of the state itself.
With this asymmetry between organized crime and military power, it is difficult to predict what institutional solution may await the country. Meanwhile, it is important not to forget that Hugo Chavez was a reference of the worst that could happen in Venezuela; however, in Mexico, we have long since passed that moment. Now, the worst that may occur is that the country may only have a warlike solution to separate itself from the situation in which it lives.
