Federico Reyes Heroles
Frenzied is perhaps the word: exalted, agitated, excited, hectic, mad… crazy, the Academy tells us. Frenzy is what sailors call a marvelous and cruel spectacle simultaneously. Some minor species in great abundance, perhaps sardines, provoke the madness of others: pelicans, dolphins, cormorants… The crazed devour beyond the necessity for the simple joy of abundance.
They break the law of life. It is barbaric. Today, toxic abundance is power. Mexico is the victim of a frenzy.
Madness has accompanied this administration since its birth. Senselessness that benefited no one. Today, many corpses -metaphorical and concrete- surround the country. Why throw away more than 300 billion pesos, burying an airport, Mexican people’s money, and the potential business that would have brought benefits… to this government? An absurdity. Why obsess with Pemex by giving it 2.1 trillion pesos that will be irrecoverable? Vaccination collapses because it lacks a thousandth part. The traces of the crazed march -to remember B. Tuchman-reveal a central drive: the disdain or fear of merit. The enlightened do not tolerate this earthly formula of ascent. Merit limits the territories of power. Step by step, the same is true in a school, an orchestra, or counting a pilot’s thousands of flight hours. That is why the rejection of figures (and the disappearance of the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy) reveals the successes and mistakes of those in power. Hence, there is a phobia of independent educational evaluation and PISA. Thus, there is a need for “other figures”. How can we refute them without the National Institute of Access to Information? Radio and television licenses, among others, will go to the hands of an unconditional who can threaten to control criticism. Hence, there is contempt for a career in diplomatic service. The aversion against merit has poisoned everything. Hence, the National Electoral Institute appointments, not of career, and the agronomist in Pemex were anomalous.
In the madness of frenzy, like hyenas that eat ostriches and reptiles, trapped in their intoxicating whirlwind, they go over plurality and the administration of justice. The warnings and criticisms have been going on for months, but unhinged, they do not listen or read reality. The peso is weakening, and international newspapers are calling attention to the seriousness of electing the Judiciary. But they continue stampeding like buffaloes. Thursday 22nd: the ambassadors of the United States and Canada say it with all their letters: “… the direct election of judges represents a major risk for the functioning of Mexico’s democracy”, K. Salazar. “…my investors are concerned; they want stability, a judicial system that works…”, G. Clark. Conclusion: Judicial reform risks the commercial relationship in the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC. But for the enlightened, there are no risks; their visions, they -in themselves- are a guarantee. They play with fire. We are months away from the beginning of the review of the treaty, the backbone of our economy. The fight against transgenic corn, as warned, seems lost. It will harm many, and the consequences will be severe.
It is not true that they want to inherit continuity. Inheritance is already the return to the origin: a nonsense: to destroy the Judiciary. Continuity would mean not continuing to poison apples. With weak public finances, an insecurity that scares all and sundry, a growing international discredit, and an institutional territory devastated by the systematic destruction; if they really wanted to help Sheinbaum, they should, at least, freeze the reform to the Judiciary. In this way, they would gain time to study what they did not study. Let the administration of the first President be born well. Facilitating the start-up would be continuity. But this seems like a boycott, a temptation of collective shipwreck.
The cost of the frenzy has no referents—it’s mortal nonsense. Why impose the reform? Or maybe they need judges of the narcos. Cutting the roots of the democratic and judicial scaffolding throws us into the authoritarian abyss. And the way out is not a luxury but a necessity that we must urgently address.
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