Antonio Navalón
It is not witchcraft. It is not a miracle. It is an insight into the closest reality, knowing that there was a time when the separation of powers and the so-called bourgeois democracy was the picture painted on the wall of the history of the people as if it were a work of the Renaissance. That picture animated them and made them aspire to feel, first, sensitively and respectfully governed and, second, to safeguard the rights of citizens and, subsequently, the rights of governments.
What has happened? Since the end of World War II, since we started playing with nuclear weapons, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, since the limited and apparent victory of capitalism, and since what Francis Fukuyama defined as the end of history, everything has happened around the world. But, above all, one thing has happened that is fundamental to understanding the blows of history. The governance and the model of what we offered, what we promised the people, and what the democratic deal was all about has failed. The people are not better managed. The world’s political class is no more honest and, worse, not even more capable. Disappointment and loss of popular confidence in the systems are the only things that have really taken hold definitively in the people’s sentiments.
On a surprisingly pleasant visit, I had the opportunity to make a short trip to Venezuela, where I could see two fundamental phenomena. First, revolutions have a beginning and a culmination, and then -if they are lucky- they do not disappear, but they can reincarnate. There are revolutions -except in the Cuban case- that the greater the challenge, the greater the strength they acquire. Secondly, revolutions must be backed by a sufficiently large or prolonged weariness that no external or internal element can undermine. That was the atmosphere I could see and breathe in Venezuela. We will see what will happen when citizens go to the polls on July 28.
Extremes and polarizations are the two characteristics that can best describe the current democratic and political systems of the world. People no longer dream of the masterpiece of democracy, which was establishing the system of separation of powers. Moreover, when a political class member asked me what happened last June 2, I replied that Andrés Manuel López Obrador had managed to remove the head from the democratic equation. The separation of powers directly linked the stomach and the vote.
What matters and what moves people who are not clear about what they step on, what they sleep on, what protects them from the rain, or who do not know what guarantees the filling of their stomachs? If they are unaware and do not have clear answers to these questions, what could they care about ensuring a democratic system where the separation of powers prevails?
What is happening is not a Mexican, American, Spanish, Dominican or Venezuelan failure, it is a global failure. That is why, when one looks at Europe and sees that, for example, England has dusted off compulsory military service and Germany has also reconsidered the possibility of requiring military service for its citizens, the ghost of disaster looks out and waits for everything to reach a breaking point. In the era of the conquest of the LGBT community and the era of the global crisis of governments, it seems incredible that the world is once again awakening to the need to demand military service from its citizens. Putin did so, and the consequence was to provoke the most significant number of exiles and refugees from his country since the time of Comrade Stalin.
The world continues to be astonished in the face of the spectacular, resounding, and unobjectionable democratic triumph of the fourth transformation that Andrés Manuel López Obrador began to lead when he was elected president of Mexico on July 1, 2018. However, by now, people understand two things. First, people have become aware that governments do not serve them in their current state. And if they do not serve them and the problem is to stop the rain that wets us and guarantee to have the tortilla that feeds us, the dream of having a political system that guarantees freedoms when it is not able to ensure the right to adequate food, decent clothing and the protection provided by having a roof over your head is over.
In my opinion, that is what happened on June 2 of this year, and naturally, whoever does not want to understand and, therefore, whoever does not want to be aware that people are no longer moved by ideal scenarios that have been repeatedly unfulfilled for more than a century, will not be able to understand that the system of governmental election has wholly changed. Today, leaders are not elected with the future in mind; they are elected with a view to the short term and without considering any elements other than those that ensure the immediate survival of their people. There is a Chinese proverb that says: “Give a man a fish, and he will eat today. Teach him to fish, and he will eat for the rest of his life.”, well, today, people have shown that they would instead vote for the one who gives them the fish than for the one who could teach them to fish.
In politics, it is essential to take into consideration the chatter, the rumors, the gossip, and the different contexts. You have to understand that things never happen by chance; to prove it, close your eyes and analyze what it means in a country like Germany to reinstate the possibility of making military service compulsory and a law authorizing the mass deportation of migrants. Goodbye Angela, goodbye forever. Goodbye to the millions of refugees who have come to find hope within the borders of the German and European Union thanks to the efforts made by Angela Merkel. In France, they are about to inaugurate a government in which the center-right and the extreme right will cohabit. In England, the Labour Party is about to have the most important success of its career since George Bernard Shaw.
It is well known that revolutions end when stomachs are empty, but not only revolutions; political systems also end when this happens. This regime that is ending and that will start its second floor by the hand of Claudia Sheinbaum promised to fill the stomachs of its citizens, something that -at the cost of a very high price- has so far been achieved. It remains to be seen how the person who, to this day, is not only the most-voted person in the country’s history but also the first woman to achieve the highest position of leadership and power in Mexico will perform.
The current context leaves us with a scenario in which, apart from the revolution of stomachs in Mexico, the only possible revolution taking place would be brutal for Dr. Sheinbaum not to take advantage of is the revolution of gender. She is the first woman who can and has all the right to create a government whose preeminent part is the feminine touch.
The gender revolution. The conquest of being able to demonstrate, through facts, that the difference between women and men when it comes to exercising power is that women never forget that they have the absolute guarantee of the continuity of life in their hands. Therefore, women’s capacity for destruction is infinite – as in every human being – but with elements men do not possess.
Meanwhile, the battle between yesterday and tomorrow continues. We still do not have all the information about the characteristics and conformation of the political control and the executing arms of the new six-year term. This policy of announcing the presidential cabinet in convenient terms has left three fundamental unknowns in the air. These are nothing more and nothing less than the definitive unveiling of who will lead the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of National Defense, and the Ministry of Public Education of Mexico, the latter being the institution that was the great victim of the six-year term. Today, education is hugely damaged in the country; we will see if whoever is appointed can repair the path. In some cases, the contenders seem to be clear, although it must be remembered that there is always room for surprise.
With exactly three months until Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum’s inauguration, the real essence of power is still to be defined. But it is not negligible that the decision has already been made that, whatever happens, the road to 2030 has already begun, and the intention is clear: to reach that moment with all the power in hand.
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