Antonio Navalón
Simultaneously, although with different scenarios and contexts, Mexico and the United States coincided in one of their most decisive presidential elections, if not the most. In the case of the United States, the actual impact and relevance of the fact that the controversial Republican candidate, Donald Trump, has already been found guilty of several charges, and it remains to be seen what resolution or conviction he will receive just days before the Republican Convention.
Trump affirms and maintains that nothing and no one will prevent him from being on the presidential ballot next November. Moreover, he promises that once he returns to the Oval Office – as if it were a surprise to everyone – one of the first things he will do will be to modify the judicial system. Sound familiar? It has already been said in Mexico, and everything indicates that modifying the Judicial Branch is a matter of time, given the latest conversations and meetings between the country’s present and future leadership.
During the last two years, President López Obrador has put much of his efforts into reforming the country’s legal framework at his convenience and according to his interests, with modifying the judicial system as one of his main objectives. The struggle between the Executive and the Judiciary has been controversial and exhausting in Mexico, although one side seems to be tipping the scales in its favor. The one who still leads the country’s Executive Branch has never allowed the law to be an obstacle to the achievement of his plans, and – in these last but decisive months before leaving power – he intends to leave us in a state of defenselessness and impunity without a Judicial Branch that enjoys certain autonomy or that has the freedom to act of its own free will, but rather that all its actions are linked and related to the will of the head of the Executive Branch.
Both presidents, the one who seeks to return to the White House and the one who is leaving the National Palace, have something in common: neither of them doubts that they are the bearers, the holders, and the essential executors of the authentic and genuine representation of democratic power. They are both perpetually against the decadent and outdated limitations of the world of rights and obligations, which, if they were situated in the 1930s, would be referred to as petit bourgeois weaknesses.
It has always been said, assumed, or willed that the only defense against the temptation of the banana republic was the social and political organization and the system of separation of powers of the United States. At this moment, to say that is a little less than adventurous; the American political system is as endangered as the Mexican or Costa Rican political system, or those that have long ago reached the point of uselessness of having a governance structure based on the separation of powers, as are the cases of Venezuela and Cuba.
There was a time when the novelty and the news to meditate on were the emergence or appearance of phenomena such as Donald Trump. At this moment, with Javier Milei in Argentina and Lopez Obrador in Mexico having won with such supremacy that we can only remember a similar event in Cambodia with Pol Pot and seeing the approach shown by Donald Trump in the development of his campaign, there is much to analyze and meditate on.
For the American people, the fact that Trump has been convicted – being the first president in the history of the country to be so – for ordinary crimes, far from distancing him from power, brings him closer to it. Trump is like an untamed cowboy before whom nothing – neither Indians, cows, nor climatic accidents – keeps him away from being the representation of the white man’s triumph over all that surrounds him. It would seem that the former president – and possibly future president – of the United States finds himself in a situation where the worse the panorama gets, the more he benefits from it. Now, I would like to ask myself again: What is normal? Looking at what is happening worldwide, I could say that exceptionality, the rupture of societies with their leadership, or the loss of popular faith in their systems of government has become the very definition of normality in these times.
We have focused on creating systems where the survival of power is sustained by the division of the same powers that make up the governmental structure. Neither Trump nor López Obrador believes in that organization of the State. Neither is willing to lose under any circumstances, not even for a conviction of a common crime. Neither López Obrador nor Trump thinks that there can be a better way of governing than the one dictated by their own thinking and understanding of what is best for them and what is best for their people, even if, in practice, not all members of their people are represented. For them, there is no greater will than theirs, and there is no better way of exercising power than the one they practice.
There is no organization or representatives – with or without robes, and I don’t know if with or without military uniform – sufficiently prepared, established, or with sufficient history and reputation to face what López Obrador and Trump have sought to establish in their countries since they began their path to the top of power. It is as if there is a divine yearning to fulfill a mission within them, but as if outside of them, the rest of us do not fully understand their need to destroy and divide everything to achieve their purposes.
Such is the situation and the panorama that surrounds us. Denying or ignoring reality is of little or almost no use. At this point, there are few memories left in my memory about how things should be. As for the teachings, legacies, and figures of characters such as Montesquieu or Jefferson, these now seem more like two figures of the past and more worthy of a house of horrors than the route to erecting pillars on which to efficiently and solidly support the structures of power.
The current realities of the United States and Mexico – and many other countries – demonstrate how dangerous and defining it can be when the will of one man takes precedence over the governing structure of an entire nation. If you don’t get used to it, you will find that you live in a bubble and have no chance of connecting with either the people or the stratosphere of power. But, what is worse about these times is that we have reached a point where, even if a leader or a ruler is wrong or acts only for his own benefit, the backing of the masses gives them enough legitimacy to continue doing and undoing whatever they deem appropriate.
In this time of changes and uncertainties, markets will be shocked. The peso and the dollar will fluctuate. However, it must be understood that this is nothing in the face of the determined will of history makers and that they – unlike you or me – never hesitate. They act according to what they believe is best. They don’t do it for you or me; they do it for them. For them, the personal good does not always represent the common good. They do it for what they believe and not necessarily for what they should be.
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