Luis Rubio
An old joke has it that a candidate offers the electorate the option of heaven or hell. The voter first visits heaven, finding everything tranquil and in order. Later the voter passes by hell, where he comes upon lovely gardens, tables laden with delicious foods, beautiful music, and an infinity of distractions in which its inhabitants take great delight. Back with the candidate, the voter tells him, “I don’t believe what I’m going to say, but I cast my vote for hell.” As soon as the voter says this, the panorama changes radically: hell becomes, well, hell: agony, pain, oppressiveness, suffering. What was once joy now becomes torment. The voter says, “I don’t understand; this is not what you showed me before.” “Well, the politician responds, that was the campaign; now you’ve voted.” Such has been the evolution of President López Obrador.
Criticizing former President Vicente Fox, a little more than three lustra ago, López Obrador devoted a memorable speech to explaining his philosophy regarding the presidency: “A president cannot be a factious leader. The President of Mexico should conduct himself as a man of State, as a statesman; he should not behave as party head, the head of a faction or a group. The president should represent all Mexicans. The president should be an element of concord and national unity. The president cannot utilize the institutions in a divisive manner nor to help his friends nor to destroy his rivals.”
I ask myself where that candidate is who promised Nirvana but who instead delivered hell. In line with another time-honored witticism affirming that being the barkeep is not the same as being the drunkard, the President has gone in the opposite direction: as the latter passage illustrates, when he was a candidate, he vowed redemption and respect for the institutions; once in the government he has dedicated himself to dividing, polarizing, attacking and placing in doubt the stability of the country’s relationship with the neighboring power to the North. Instead of evolving toward the responsibility that entails being the owner of the establishment –the barkeep in the tale- he comports himself like the drunkard archetype who entertains no compunction on disturbing the peace and destroying what exists if he embodied no responsibility whatsoever.
The phrases that define him speak for themselves. In contrast with the notion that “the President of Mexico should act like a man of State, as a statesman,” at the beginning of the pandemic, he stated that “this crisis fits us like a glove for securing the purpose of our transformation.” Pledging not to be a schismatic leader, he just wrote to the Chief Justice that “it would be deplorable… to continue permitting abuse and arrogance with the excuse of the rule of law.”
“It is not only his interference with the Judiciary, says Verónica Ortiz, but the express propensity that the judges have in deciding not on the merits of an injunction, but on who puts it forth.”
Statesman or factious leader?
The heat of the public square –and the early-morning press conferences – inevitably tend toward discursive excesses, but in President López Obrador, these are not slip-ups; they comprise a strategy of confrontation and permanent disqualification. The president, who earlier criticized his predecessor, now employs the same tactic to divide the population: Manichaeism as strategy and revilement as a system. One should pose whether this method allows him to advance or whether he is running and remaining, in the best of circumstances, in the same place.
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that there is no contradiction between a political leader’s successful action in health matters and his popularity. Instead, the syllogism works backward: while the heads of government who committed themselves body and soul to combat the health crisis without conflicts of agenda are held in high regard by their populations, those who ignored or politicized the crisis live in growing discredit. The president can glory in his high popularity numbers. Still, these in no way compare with those characterizing Chancellor Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Ardern of New Zealand, or Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan.
Some weeks ago, on the day formally marking the last stage of the German Chancellor in office, the entire populace appeared in their windows and on their balconies to applaud her for six very long minutes. People from the Left and the Right were recognizing in this manner the triumphant labor of the one who led the country in turbulent times that included such complex challenges as those of wars in the Middle East, the Syrian migration, Trump, and the pandemic. In place of reviling, the German Chancellor took the bull by the horns and the result is there for all to see. How does López Obrador vie with what is beyond compare?
Mexico lags in all the indicators. Although it would be convenient to blame the pandemic for the economic regression, the reality is that the Mexican economy was already in a nosedive in 2019, the first year of this government. The corruption of the past continues to engage with the same impunity as always, but now there are innumerable examples of corruption in the present administration that enjoy impunity and are likely to remain so. The relation with the U.S., key for the functioning of the economy, is in “let’s see” mode and prospects for the upcoming years wax anything but encouraging.
This is the time of the Supreme Court. The ministers have, literally, Mexico’s future and freedoms in their hands. It is also up to them to compel the president to act as a statesman.
@lrubiof