Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The physical and political walls surrounding AMLO’s outgoing government are contradictory. They are both expressions of strength and weakness. The walls that López Obrador has built contain a group of people who feel oppressed within them and another sector voluntarily entrenched within them by choice. They reflect a regime that lives in constant internal and external tension and fails to resolve the inherent contradictions of its existence.
The fact that a government supposedly close to the people decides to wall off the National Palace, the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, and the Ministry of the Interior with fences more than three meters high projects a national and international image that speaks of fear and weakness of the government in the face of protests by broad elements of society. It illustrates a government that has refused to engage in dialogue and political agreement with opposition forces and thus concludes the six-year term. There was no dialogue and no agreements.
Furthermore, it has applied the “pause” strategy in international relations with countries traditionally allied with Mexico, such as Spain, the United States, and Canada. He closes the six-year term of office distanced from broad sectors of Mexican society and leaves the international community perplexed and doubtful about the government’s reliability as an appropriate interlocutor for resolving controversies. Investors hesitate and retreat.
However, the internal political walls surrounding the regime are hard and almost impenetrable. The political control exercised over the fringes of society that unquestionably support the leader, without hesitation, is relevant. At the same time, the Executive and Legislative Branches are institutions totally submissive to the government. Now the regime is determined to bend the Judiciary.
The armed forces’ high command is totally aligned with AMLO’s leadership, a product of an agreement oiled by fabulous and persistent corruption, allowing him to exercise multi-million dollar contracts, constructions, and new businesses with the public budget totally free of any accountability. And, as a cherry on top of the cake of the political wall that surrounds the regime, is its alliance with drug trafficking, even though it already contains signs of serious instability among its active actors that do not necessarily ensure the discretion that such an agreement requires to remain useful and effective.
The presence of “Mayo” Zambada in New York is a harbinger of great turbulence in Mexico. The document published these days about Bartlett and his alleged participation in the death of DEA agent Enrique Camarena appears surprisingly there.
These walls that crown the six-year term of López Obrador bring with them a curse. It is the curse that does not allow for a normal transition between an outgoing and incoming government. The normal thing would be for the incoming government to distance itself from the mistakes of the outgoing one to build its image and promote the new government project with its own stamp. It does not even matter if it comes from the same political current. A new government should be able to count on a renewed spirit and leave behind the previous government’s mistakes.
However, AMLO has not only not allowed Sheinbaum the freedom to have her own grasp on power but has also imposed on her a cabinet and a government program to be a replica of his. That serves so that every day that dawns, the regime’s followers think: “It is AMLO who rules, she is his assistant…”. It is to ensure the indelible seal of his presence in every government act and every gesture of decision or confrontation. The problem with this is that this imposition is not hidden and denigrates the successor.
The recent confrontation with the Spanish government reflects this very clearly. The President of the Spanish Government suggested what everyone thinks: that the decision not to invite the King of Spain to the inauguration of the President was a decision imposed by AMLO. Who answered to the Spanish President? AMLO, not Sheinbaum. It is the beginning of the new President’s government with a serious diplomatic conflict that is not of her making but inherited. In normal times Sheinbaum would have invited the King, assuming that AMLO’s conflict with the King of Spain was their business, not hers. But these irrational times mean that she has to buy, manage, and continue all of AMLO’s conflicts, confrontations, ineptitudes, and hatred.
The same happens with the United States and Canada. AMLO imposed a “pause” in the relationship “with the ambassadors”, but those countries took him seriously. For them, the relationship is “on pause” with the U.S. and Canadian governments, not with “the ambassadors”. Hence the disguised low level representation from both countries at Claudia’s inauguration. They are representatives with no decision-making capacity or say in the matter. This is an unseemly representation, not because of the people, but because of what they symbolize: the “paused” relationship with Mexico.
AMLO, having appointed at least half of Morena’s deputies and senators and therefore counting on their loyalty and sympathy, was able to impose the biggest headache that will haunt the new President during her six-year term: the demolition of the Judicial Power to create a new, disfigured, and disheveled Power, which will be the booty of politicians and narcos alike.
AMLO followed the advice of Evo Morales, the former Bolivian President, in the popular vote model to appoint especially the Supreme Court of Justice. Today in that country, we see the result of the model. The masses of Evo are fighting in the Bolivian streets against the masses of Arce, the current President. What is their struggle? To force the Supreme Court of Justice to decide which of the two can be presidential candidates. Because they both have their Court ministers financed to get the popular vote, they have their support in a wholly politicized and partisan Court. The Bolivian Constitution does not count, and the debate is not important.
That is Mexico’s near future when it comes to the voting of Ministers, Magistrates, and Judges of the Mexican Judiciary. We know what will happen in Mexico just by looking at what is happening in Bolivia. There is no excuse for not looking at this disaster in a country called Bolivia.
The demolition of the Mexican judiciary before the beginning of Sheinbaum’s six-year term is equivalent to AMLO’s decision to cancel the Texcoco airport before taking office. However, there are two relevant differences between the two cases.
The first difference is that in the case of Texcoco, it was AMLO’s decision, but the demolition of the Judiciary was also his decision. Claudia did not make the decision; she simply assumed it. What’s done is done.
The second difference is that the decision to demolish the Judiciary is much more serious and harmful to Mexico historically than the cancellation of the Texcoco airport, even though it continues to cost the people of Mexico economically. To destroy the Judicial Power is to destroy the democratic fabric of a Republic. It is to begin the road to autocracy first and a dictatorship later—exactly what happened in Venezuela. The airport was a serious economic mistake.
Finally, the great unknown remains: will the new President continue to strengthen and govern with those walls imposed by Lopez Obrador, or will she have the strength and fortitude to tear them down?
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