Antonio Navalón
We live in times of confusion and, in many ways, of scoundrels. It is one thing to abuse and makes true the old maxim that power always corrupts and another thing to destroy, not change, the legal order under which coexistence is possible within countries. For this reason, it is essential to establish a clear distinction between the barbarities committed by leaders and the consequences they create.
As time goes by, we have patterns of behaviour that – however, they are expressed and however the government sells them – are increasingly difficult to understand. In Mexico, with each passing day, the doors to the world are getting narrower and narrower. The international commitments – as if on wet paper – that the country has made are increasingly worth less and less. With each passing day, we care less and less about what other countries and societies think of us and how this thinking directly relates to the development of our commercial, diplomatic and other relations. and all different kinds of relations. Above all, it is becoming less and less relevant to all the repercussions this has about a specific project, which is also the future of the region we are part of, called CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC.
Democracy is in grave danger and not only in Mexico. In Mexico. In a month, it will be three years since the assault on the US Congress, which made anti-democratic barbarity fashionable. – which is not the only place to discuss the legitimacy of an electoral result. Hence what is happening, the sickness of democracy, the abuses of power, the insensitivity of some leaders, and the consequences of their actions leads us to call things by their name: it is democracy that is in danger.
No more marches, or at least not for now. Now the need for clarification begins. It is time to start calling this regime for what it is. In reality, up to this point, no one knows what the 4T is. Hence the need to start asking the fundamental question of what this movement is or what it stands for. What is the 4T? The time has come to question where we are going, what we want, or the meaning of all that is happening in the country. Irrespective of the automatism, of the numbers, of the Congress of the Union, we need to know that laws only serve and only matter when they are accepted by a majority of the people and their representatives and when their enforcement is essential or relevant. I’m afraid I have to disagree that all this erosion of the INE should end in a failed attempt to change a law for lack of a certain number of votes. From here on – especially in the 2024 election -the National Electoral Institute (INE) will be a deeply discredited body and an arbiter that the ruling party and the nation’s next president have questioned and questioned its existence. We have been replacing INE’s epic vision of answering and responding to popular and electoral concerns of society with the idea that pretends to reflect a body that spends a lot of money and which has representatives – and the President is right about this – who are capable of defending institutional representation at all costs.
INE is not perfect. Like any human work, it can be improved. But, above all, INE is a victory for civil society, a triumph of several generations of Mexicans who went from the fall of the systems to the guarantee, or at least to the difficulty of stealing or altering electoral results. It seems that what happened in 2006 will continue to be the justification for those who seek to undermine the authority and performance of the Mexican electoral body. It also gives the impression that the marginal result that gave the victory to Felipe Calderón was able to the presidency of Mexico – no matter what – is an event that will be with us for a long time to come, at least as long as the current protagonists of the movement that governs the country are still alive as people and as a movement.
INE is dying not only because of the expenses but not because of what the board members are paid. INE is dying basically because it can never be forgiven that it was – even though at that time there were neither the current board members nor those in charge – the element on which was what Andrés Manuel López Obrador saw as the theft of the 2006 presidency. For López Obrador, this event condemned the country’s political development over several years. Let no one make a mistake; the fact that the electoral law formally remains as it is today does not mean that the law has the essential thing that law should have, which is social consensus and, above all, a pact to be able to comply with it. As there is no unanimous and complete willingness to abide by this law, with or without electoral modification or not, for the moment, we are without an electoral arbiter and what we have is a guilty arbiter.
In the eyes of some, the INE is guilty of spending, of protagonism, and of having a genetic structure that makes it easy to manipulate – according to the President and his party – so as not to be able to guarantee electoral results. INE is much more than revenge. The destruction of the electoral body means placing the country on the edge of the precipice and causing the next elections to no longer have a referee to regulate them. And if we have no referee and no code of behavior, then tell me, when legitimacy begins to break down – through the use of power – where will we look or to whom will we turn?
Dear reader, I won’t waste your time or mine explaining that Andrés Manuel López Obrador is today the most-voted President in the history of this country thanks to this INE, which does not want it and that he seeks to make it pay for what happened in 2006, in 2012 and for all the alleged errors attributed to it. It aims to make all the board members responsible for pay because, in the past, the institution had a leading role that, for him, was excessive and because they represent an embodiment of the dignity of the institution they represent. Therefore, this, like so many other things, must be put to the credit of the regime and President López Obrador. The problem is that as the list of what he has achieved grows longer, the question inevitably arises: Is the country better off or worse off with all that he has done?
Will López Obrador stay out of the next presidential elections – in keeping with the responsibility that his position merits? Will he respect the spirit of the Mexican Revolution? Will he ask the “corcholatas”, part of his close circle, to also respect the upcoming elections and allow the conclusion of the political cycle that should culminate in 2024? Although the latter, I have always suspected that this select group surrounding the President is destined to be cannon fodder and time bombs that will explode sooner rather than later.
I do not doubt the President’s affection for the Chief of Government of Mexico City. I have many doubts that, in the final adjustment, President López Obrador’s choice will end up being Claudia Sheinbaum. No one can guarantee the denial of her person to defend the President’s political vision of the 4T, which, except for him, no one knows precisely what it is.
We still don’t know, and I don’t know how long it will take to understand how significant the change is in the minds and hearts of the citizens that judge politicians as if it were a court of fact through social media. This has inevitably changed the electoral mechanics or election techniques and, above all, the sentiment by which we live and work. The feeling by which we live and react to power. React to power.
In 2024 there will be presidential elections in Mexico. Ballots will be distributed – we shall see under what responsible body or method – ballots which will not have the face of President López Obrador on them. Although it will be an election in which, indirectly, we will again elect Mexico’s current political leader through whoever he finally chooses to succeed him, not before testing the candidates’ human condition and the voters’ intelligence capacity. In Mexico, we have already had similar experiences in which the current leader appoints or designates who will continue on his path, which we seem to have forgotten.
In a couple of years, the National Palace may be related to the official residence of the President in office, but – as in the mandate held by Plutarco Elías Calles in his time – whoever governs lives across the street. If the current elements of political life continue over time, tomorrow, one president, the one who will genuinely govern, will be living in the ranch “La Chingada” and the other in the National Palace.
Twenty years after the attack on the Twin Towers, after removing the barrier that existed between power and the citizen through the attack via social networks, it is essential to restore the creation of legality in the models we are living for us to have a better guarantee of being able to survive. We should ask those in power, knowing that we will all die at some point; their duty is to prevent us from dying more quickly and in worse conditions. One way of doing this, for example, is to join efforts to combat the undeniable climate change.
The games are over. Time is running out. There is less than a year and a half left before we will have to make a real choice, first in the internal process of the parties and then at the ballot box. This is also the work of the opposition, which has to stop being a testimonial opposition that is content with a few votes and a limited presence but which is not really hungry to win. What kind of country do we want?
President López Obrador will have a little difficulty choosing his candidate. He will have to select a profile that is not bold enough to turn against him, nor is he capable of going against his design. Although it is indisputable that it will no longer be enough to put forward one man, the one-man rule will end in 2024. And it should be remembered that not even Antonio de Padua María López de Santa Anna – despite having been President of Mexico on thirteen occasions – did not ever have as much power as the citizens of Mexico legitimately bestowed on López Obrador on July 1, 2018.
Further Reading: