Guillermo Valdés Castellanos
It will remain a matter of speculation why President Sheinbaum decided to send the constitutional electoral reform, the crown jewel of her authoritarian regression project, to the slaughterhouse. No one believes the story, least of all her, that it was to satisfy the people who were clamoring for cheaper democracy. The question remains whether her plan B is the same as López Obrador’s, which consisted of turning constitutional changes into legal ones so that her absolute majority in both chambers could approve them. But, unlike three years ago, she has the advantage that the opposition parties do not have 33% of the legislators to initiate a constitutional controversy. If they do manage to get it with the Green Party (PVEM) and the Labor Party (PT), she has the bogus Justices at her disposal so that the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation can issue a ruling equivalent to a tumultuous violation of the Constitution.
In short, since no one can legally reverse their chicanery, the 4T and Sheinbaum can assume the political costs, believing they will be irrelevant. Let’s reflect a little to see if they will be. The first is the severe deterioration of the country’s international image due to the weakening of democracy to its minimum expression. The mask of democracy will remain in place because elections will continue to be held—very similar to those in Venezuela, but elections nonetheless—but they will not convince democratic governments or the world press, which generates opinion and consensus among leaders and multilateral organizations. Mexico will consolidate its position in international rankings as a country with a failed democracy. President Sheinbaum will also pay a price in terms of her international image, as the democratic mask slips; she will be remembered as the one who hammered the nails into the coffin of democracy built by AMLO.
Remember that the countries attacked by Trump so far have authoritarian regimes, and he did not do so because he wants to restore democracy (nothing could be further from his primitive militaristic imagination), but because, as dictators, almost no one comes to their defense or sheds tears for the fallen. In other words, Mexico becomes more vulnerable.
Secondly, it will add a few more degrees to the cauldron of political polarization in the country, not only with the opposition parties (ignored and vilified once again), but also with its two former allies, increasing the conflict within the official coalition. This polarization will increase substantially next year, when, given the loss of legitimacy of the electoral processes, disputes over close elections turn into serious conflicts that could lead to violence. This will be compounded by the now traditional political violence resulting from the involvement of organized crime in the electoral process—illegal financing, threats, murders, and kidnappings of candidates, intimidation of populations, etc.—since the electoral reform did not include any strategy to curb it.
With such polarization and degradation of politics, how can we think of calls for unity in case of need in the face of an increasingly uncertain international environment and a more aggressive and unhinged Donald Trump, who never tires of reducing Mexico to a country of drug traffickers?
Thirdly, modifying the electoral framework by overriding the Constitution is a brutal message of contempt for the rule of law, reminiscent of and updating the famous and defining phrase (of a former president and his movement): “Don’t come to me with the gibberish that the law is the law.” The direct consequence of this contempt is called arbitrariness.
Trust and certainty derived from compliance with the rules and norms that govern coexistence are required to prevent everyday relations between citizens, between citizens and their rulers, and the millions of economic exchanges that take place daily, from descending into chaos and ungovernability. But when the authority responsible for enforcing the laws proclaims itself above them, what it is saying to citizens and businesses is that it will act as arbitrarily as it sees fit in its own interests. And since it is in its interest to remain in power indefinitely to be able to act arbitrarily indefinitely, the certainty and trust required in social and economic relations will gradually deteriorate.
The most serious manifestation of the erosion of confidence in the government’s adherence to the law is the decline in private investment, which slows and limits the country’s economic growth. This is the natural individual reaction of thousands of entrepreneurs to the uncertainty generated by the arbitrariness of the state: public policies based on whims (rent freezes in Mexico City, the latest arbitrariness, courtesy of the Batres family), unfair tax persecution, a politicized judiciary; widespread corruption in the bureaucracy for any procedure; rigged public tenders for the friends of officials, etc.
With the electoral reform, the message that Sheinbaum and Morena are sending to businesspeople is this: this arbitrariness will be forever, or at least for several more six-year terms, because they will no longer be able to remove me easily through the electoral process. Is this how the government wants the economy to grow by more than one percent?
It is a pity that we have such a short-sighted business class that has been unable to intelligently and courageously defend the interests of companies, namely the conditions that promote and facilitate economic freedoms, productive investments, youth entrepreneurship, fair and effective regulation of monopolies, and the denunciation of widespread corruption in public procurement. As long as there is no intelligent business strategy to defend all companies and the economy, it is not a question of businesspeople becoming a political opposition, but rather defenders of the conditions for generating wealth, as that is their task and responsibility—the inertia of an increasingly weak economy will continue. In contrast, the large consortia close to the 4T become richer—nothing new on the horizon.
This piece was published in Spanish by laaurorademexico.com.
Further Reading: