Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The end of the year and the beginning of the new one is a period in national life. A period that represents the fulfillment of the ritual of dates, but it is a transit that, in essence, does not mean any change. Instead, there is a continuum between the year that ended and the one that begins.
The change of dates does not affect economic dynamics, except that taxes go up, disguised as “inflation adjustments”. The new year brings the threat of a recessionary process and a continued decline in GDP. But these data are part of the legacy of 2022 and do not represent a new dynamic. They are the continuation of economic weakness resulting from federal government policies that affect private investment by threatening abrupt changes in investment rules and the rule of law.
Therefore, the problems in the negotiation between the USMCA/CUSMA/T-MEC partners remain the same in 2023 as in 2022. The energy dispute will come before the panel in a matter of days. The issue of transgenic corn was postponed so that Lopez Obrador could throw the problem to the next federal government.
The selective and ideologically guided interventionism of the 4T in the affairs of other countries continues as a foreign policy that does not seem to have an end, quite the contrary. The attacks on the United States regarding its interventionism in Latin America will continue, as confirmed by the agenda of points for the meeting with Biden published by the Office of the President of the Mexican Republic. In the bilateral meeting with the United States, Mexico will accuse in a moralistic tone of the application of the Monroe Doctrine by the United States. At the same time, Mexico will continue in contempt of its own Estrada Doctrine, with interventionism at full gallop. Obviously, this political schizophrenia is an ideal recipe for having few friends abroad, to the north and the south. And Mexico clearly loses moral and political authority in the world.
The government’s social policies will remain the same, with increased support for the elderly. But material poverty continues to rise in Mexico. In other words, government policies will continue to keep people in poverty. Since the government understands the condition of poverty as a historical fatality, it does not undertake policies to solve it but simply to attenuate it. The poor in Mexico are doomed to remain in their circumstance until the end of all time, at least as far as the 4T is concerned. The current administration dissociates itself from possible solutions, such as creating employment policies and productive and secure investment. It argues, in essence, that Mexico’s poverty is the fault of others, and it is up to them to solve it.
The policy of assaulting autonomous bodies is still alive and kicking to redouble its attacks on anything that smells of independence. CONACYT, IFAI, and INE, in addition to the regulatory bodies of the oil sector, are in the crosshairs of presidential wrath. The government rejects all accountability and hates transparency as much, if not more than the autonomy of regulatory bodies. It will redouble its budgetary and political aggressions against them. It does not want accountability, nor does it like the electoral bodies, INE and TEPJF, to interfere in its assault on power in 2023 and 2024. Between 2022 and 2023, there will be no change in the government’s practices to take the bodies as bastions of its enlarged power.
The change of the President of the Supreme Court of Justices of the Nation deserves a separate mention. López Obrador publicly campaigns in favor of Yazmín Esquivel, the plagiarist, demanding submission. Regardless of being a plagiarist, she is an obedient pawn of the President, who wishes to exercise absolute control over the SCJN to advance his agenda in the year and months he has left in office, in addition to protecting himself after leaving power due to lawsuits against him for corruption, abuse of authority and organized crime.
In 2023 there is no possibility that he will change the security policy. The Guacamaya Leaks made it clear that the army spies and knows the President’s dirty secrets regarding his complicity with drug trafficking. It has him trapped in its plot of financing and sustaining Morena in governorships where organized crime operates. The army is playing the President’s game, letting organized crime grow while he prepares to take power in 2024 or beyond; it doesn’t matter. But it knows it can govern the country without the corrupt civilians who spoil everything. 2023 will be more of the same, while the armed forces acquire knowledge and practice in public administration management.
For the time being, drug trafficking, violence, and corruption reign in Mexico. 2023 promises to be a year not only of more of the same but where the territorial occupation of organized crime in Mexico accelerates. Compromises demand payment of bills as the end of the six-year term approaches. It is obvious that there will be a dynamic of more significant decomposition and violence instead of the desirable decreases in everything that destroys the social and democratic fabric of the country.
The morning press conferences (mañaneras) will be longer and more frenetic as the country’s political, social, and economic conditions deteriorate. As López Obrador once said: “If I stop the mañaneras, they will knock me down”. He seems to think so; he really does. The only public policy in which the President strives is the mañanera. As the army says in the Guacamaya Leaks, the President rests for the rest of the day after giving his press conference every morning. He devotes himself to his medical treatments and massages.
And to keep the country busy and thinking about something else, he spends the mañaneras launching invective against his enemies. Polarization is his central political strategy to keep the country tense and worried. In 2023 this strategy will not only continue but will be radicalized. It will be more of the same, but worse.
The good thing about the end of the year is that we can rest a little. However, we cannot fail to recognize that the coming year presents us with even greater challenges than the year we are leaving. And 2024 goes without saying.
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