Federico Reyes Heroles
Mexico’s democratic spring eclipses. On the 24th, the masquerades fell. The last act is terrifying. The authoritarian culture lives days of apogee. It is on many fronts and has had different impacts, but the result speaks.
Signs of authoritarianism surfaced in the PRD when a disbandment leaped to Morena, lured by the spell of power. Later, even PRI members would follow suit. The birth of the new option was marked by a caudillo reminiscent of those that Calles pursued. They cheered “to hell with their institutions”, the very ones that Mexicans had established. The authoritarian mood emerged: first, the people, then the caudillo, and finally, the laws and principles, all betrayed.
This threat already announced the intention to bury the scaffolding that took decades to build, and that -what a paradox- opened the doors to the left. We are witnessing the burial. The heirs of the benefits of proportional representation are now proudly suffocating it to grab as much power as possible. Those who shouted in defense of plurality nowadays are now going wild with arguments to defend the monochromatic country. After 35 years of life, the PRD loses its national registry.
The life of political parties is part of our history. The monopoly of the left in the hands of Morena announces the substitution of an ideology of social justice for an authoritarian apparatus of control and vote buying, similar to the one they fought against but worse for the amounts. Nothing was democratic in concealing money in the PRD administration in the capital. It was another announcement. Death to the National Institute of Access to Information (INAI) is the message. In addition, with a stroke of a pen, about a decade of information accumulated in the Compranet has disappeared. There is nothing democratic in the multiple declarations of works as “national security” matters. It is the same end: opacity is their form of government. It is pure authoritarianism that members of the Armed Forces have shown by accepting assignments that, by law, should be in the hands of civilians. Violating the protocols of the Armed Forces for internal succession was authoritarian. Pure authoritarianism is to advocate for the National Guard to remain under military command. In the democratic world, civilians take care of civilians. The military has other duties. Incredible, those who claim to be the heirs of the victims of 1968 in five years led Mexico to a militarized regime.
The defenders of the division of powers today fight to establish a monstrosity in which politics devours judicial professionalism. Authoritarianism in the Senate is achieved by not appointing the magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal to facilitate possible manipulation. Authoritarianism in the Tribunal, by not attending to the complaints of PRI members about the illegality of the assemblies called by their leader, actual assaults to appropriate the acronym. Be that as it may, there are around six million votes behind the PRI. Naked authoritarianism, if the General Council of the National Electoral Institute (INE) and later the Tribunal accept the twisted interpretations of Article 54 and the maneuvers for the coalition in government to keep an insulting over-representation. Down with all the criteria that guided Mexico to the democratic “little summer”. The real Mexico has accepted the coup d’état of the almost consolidated successive tract. With a bent INE and Tribunal, with a shameful over-representation, the possibility of recovering the democratic course looks distant. It has been a collective work. How do you define them: high and low-intensity “coup plotters”?
Those of high intensity govern. The low-intensity ones are at home, keep silent, and feign dementia: they support and forget everything. Authoritarianism is also in the minds of businessmen who put their businesses above the risk of a confrontation. But they will inherit an authoritarian country as a package to their children and grandchildren. Real good businesses—in the long run—only prosper in democracy.
Perhaps they are coup plotters?
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