Luis Rubio
1982. Mexico finds itself in a difficult situation. The public finances have deteriorated due to the gambles that the outgoing government has taken throughout its administration, betting that, in the end, everything would translate into economic growth. While that was happening, the presidential election continued along its course in normal fashion. The month of July arrives, and Miguel de la Madrid wins. The circumstances are not optimal, but the president-elect is a sensible individual, stable, exceedingly circumspect, and armed with experience in public administration. Despite the complexity of the financial moment, the environment is promising because a government saturated with corruption and frivolity is about to come to an end, anticipating the advent of an austere and measured administration. But September 1 arrives, the day of the 1982 Presidential Address to the Nation. Instead of recognizing his last opportunity to tranquilize the population, the outgoing President, José López Portillo, opts for exacerbating the circumstances by announcing the expropriation of the banks, thus throwing open Pandora’s Box. With this action, he divided the country and condemned his successor for having to deal with a nation in crisis, near hyperinflation, and constant deterioration. The new government, inaugurated three months later, was born destined to battle with its predecessor’s dire consequences: rather than “manage an era of abundance” as previously foreseen, it ended up extinguishing fires. The action of the departing president changed the country, destroyed his image (never stopping being the “Dog”), and damned the country to a decade of ups and downs and continuous perils.
The great American writer and humorist Mark Twain said, “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” Might it be that President Lopez Obrador, who is taking his leave in 2024, would repeat the dirty trick of 1982, provoking a radical change of direction, above all, after such a successful election?
President López Obrador finds himself before this tessitura: Should he leave the country in a reasonable situation, saddled with the normal difficulties and challenges but without an uncontainable critical situation so that his successor can begin her era in a promising manner, or risk its future—his personal one, that of his successor and that of the country—for the sake of saving his image and his pride?
The notification of the processing of the twenty legislative initiatives he announced last February 5 constitutes a threat to his successor because it recasts the lay of the land and would create conditions rendering it impossible to govern. Who wins in such a scenario?
While it is evident that an administration does not terminate until the day that the president delivers the mandate to his successor, the (Mexican) political reality is that the government concludes on election day, and what constitutes conducive behavior is for the outgoing president to contribute to ensuring an uncomplicated transition to magnify his successor’s probability of success. Particularly when the president has achieved the foremost milestone of his administration, which is being widely endorsed by the electorate in the form of the election of his candidate. Placing her at risk would be a supremely irresponsible act or, as the 18th-century statesman Talleyrand (supposedly) said, “more than a crime, it would be a mistake.” With less restraint than the diplomatic language of the Frenchman, the Hanlon Razor principle states, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
In effect, in terms of Mexican political logic, the citizenry currently finds itself in the transition process in which the already de facto new administration is now commencing. The president ending his term of office must recognize that not only has his time as president concluded, but that, as spoken by the voters, the supreme judgment of all, his success is undeniable. Any change in the path going forward would do nothing other than complicate the panorama for his successor. Suffice to exemplify this with the date AMLO canceled the Mexico City airport months before being formally sworn in as president. His cycle is coming to an end, and it is time for his successor to decide what is next and how to achieve it.
None of this has to do with the substantive part of the president’s legal proposals. The package of twenty reforms, eighteen of these constitutional, that the president proposed entail an extensive variety of matters, some of much greater transcendence than others. Given that the composition of the Congress that is finally confirmed will be the same in September as after the inauguration of Dr. Sheinbaum on October 1, there is no reason for the precipitation that the president expected when he launched the process at the start of the year. A serious-minded country does not rush things but instead processes them, debates them, socializes them, and reconsiders them according to the circumstances. In addition, the small show of force that the financial markets put forth when the absence of the counterweights that produced the electoral result became clear should be pondered with enormous seriousness. The president flaunted, once and again, the solidity of the peso, and it would be an act of superlative obstinacy and temerity to tempt fate in this manner.
James Carville, Bill Clinton’s famous electoral advisor, once said, “I used to think that if there were reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” The risk of going ahead with the reforms package is superlative—and wholly absurd—because it is unnecessary and, above all, dangerous.
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