Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
AMLO promotes polarization in his every word and deed, sure that it suits him to maintain power. He thinks first of himself and his family and then of the needs of Morena to prolong his stay in power. He is not thinking about what is best for the country or Mexicans.
Faced with this implacable and unstoppable presidential behavior, the Mexican crossroads is defined as follows: build the fabric and the proposal for social reconciliation or resign ourselves to confrontation and polarization among Mexicans to the point of destroying the nation and its viability.
Each of the President’s statements is oriented towards constructing his own peculiar vision of what is happening in situations that could well serve as a factor in reconstructing national social harmony. Take the most recent case, Supreme Court Justice Jazmín Esquivel, and the flagrant plagiarism of her undergraduate thesis. Faced with the discrediting of the Justice for his plan to take over the presidency of the Supreme Court, López Obrador launched a philippic on national television to minimize and justify the illegal conduct of his candidate. He then sought to discredit those who denounced the fact with unfounded lies, insults, and baseless accusations, even adding people who have nothing to do with the matter, such as Enrique Krauze. In other words, he used the podium of the state to launch invective against his enemies and hide the illegalities of his Supreme Court Justice ally.
The method is the same in all cases. To make those he considers opponents or enemies (writers, intellectuals, doctors, journalists, citizens, parents, feminists, ecologists, economists, and more) as angry as possible to cover up some act, situation, or corruption of some of his own.
His verbiage knows no bounds, as the following sentences he issues regularly contradict what he has just said. That is why those who punctually follow his morning press show (mañanera) can affirm that having held 1,000 press conferences, he has issued 94,000 lies because he tells 94 in each one. It is noteworthy that Trump was doing the same, as a political tool not to bring governance to his country but to destroy the very fabric of democracy and its instruments of conciliation in an attempt to seize power altogether. We will probably never know whether the two Presidents colluded in their attempts to prolong their stays in power or whether it was simply a curious coincidence between a right-wing and a left-wing populist. But the fact is that both have governed with the same method: provoking polarization in extremis to win the game and destroy those who trust in democracy.
And the cases keep piling up. The wholly artificial and unnecessary conflict with the Peruvian government has now been escalated by AMLO accusing Biden of being the promoter of the “coup d’état” in that country, hiding the fact that the coup leader (failed, it must be said) is his incompetent ally Pedro Castillo, now imprisoned precisely for that reason. What is AMLO’s purpose in bringing Biden into the issue? To construct the false narrative that the conflict in Peru is the product of US interventionism when the real interventionist is himself, his foreign minister, and his unfortunate ambassador. He distorts everything to create an alternative narrative that may or may not coincide with the facts, but that is the least of it. The important thing is to conceal truths, even invented facts in the mañanera style.
Faced with the President’s method of speaking and acting that leads Mexico directly to a social clash with consequences that are impossible to foresee, citizens’ organizations must promote an alternative route. This route should offer, encourage and build social reconciliation in Mexico. It will have to perform the Herculean task of convincing the majority of the country’s citizens that the nation’s future depends on the country adopting the path of reconciliation, rejecting that of polarization.
The focus here is on citizens’ organizations rather than political parties for a specific reason. The parties are going through this period obfuscated by their internal problems, the obstacles they face in constructing a vision with a historical horizon beyond their immediate political-electoral interests, and because they have very low social esteem.
Moreover, it should be remembered that the two most relevant political-social events of the opposition during the current six-year term were promoted for citizens’ organizations: firstly, the unity of three parties, creating the Va Por México alliance in 2021, and then, more recently, calling for the grand march in defense of the National Electoral Institute (INE). In both events, the political parties were forced to participate, initially reluctantly. Even the Movimiento Ciudadano party has refused to be included in these processes. It is betting on an uncertain social epiphany to dig itself out of the small hole in which it finds itself.
This social-citizen leadership has come about, among other things, because it does not have the burden of heavily vested interests; citizens’ organizations can think and analyze more freely about what to do in various possible scenarios, imagining new paths, which is something that political parties, neither the ruling party nor the opposition, are not allowed to do. Speaking of decrepitude, it is remarkable how old Morena has become in its practices and bureaucratism, like a rheumatic elephant, despite its few years of existence.
But it is also irrefutable that citizens’ organizations, however creative and ingenious they may be, also require the assistance, support, and accompaniment of political parties. In other words, citizens’ organizations are necessary but not sufficient for building the new narrative Mexico needs, which is the demand for national reconciliation.
What is national reconciliation? The elimination of the polarization model that takes everything to the extreme of total victory or defeat and the annihilation of the opponent. Reconciliation does not mean eliminating differences, which must always exist in a democratic society. It requires the consolidation of a solid culture of democratic institutions that allow opponents to settle their differences through dialogue and, when this does not work, through the vote, where losers and winners accept the verdict of the ballot box without claiming fraud and deception. This requires an electoral system created by consensus, not a system imposed by one side of the debate, let alone dictated by those in power.
A healthy system of national reconciliation requires autonomous mechanisms to ensure that the parties abide by the rules of the game and obey the law. With its checks and balances and accountability mechanisms, the rule of law is essential to ensure that society can permanently settle public affairs, respecting majority and minority opinions in credible and legitimate contests.
Citizens’ organizations should work to advance the platform of social reconciliation and call on political parties to join and even champion the cause of reconciliation together. Make it the centerpiece of their political work.
The idea is to confront the two competing national projects: reconciliation or polarization. These are two radically different concepts of society. I am certain that a large majority of Mexicans choose reconciliation.
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@rpascoep
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