Antonio Navalón
Never have so many people been at the disposal of so few hands who really care about so few things. Approximately 60% of the world’s population living under a democratic or similar system will go to the polls this year. It is difficult to remember such a concentration of being able to choose, to cast one’s vote – with the conditions of secrecy and freedom that go with it – that can compete in numbers with what will happen this year. The first rule of journalism is that what matters most is what is around the corner, what is happening closest to whoever is responsible for writing the story. We all judge the world according to how we are doing. We all have an impression, a motivation, an interruption, or a dynamization of our lives based on what we are living or what is given to us from the day we are born.
In North America, it is known that every twelve years, Mexico and the United States – the two most populated countries in the continent, also share not only the three thousand one hundred and fifty-two kilometers of border but also the ever-increasing and worrisome migratory flow – coincide in electoral dates. The issue of migration – which involves and potentially affects the more than eleven and a half million Mexicans who officially reside in U.S. territory but also affects all the families who receive remittances – is one of the critical points of the upcoming elections. But the issue of migrants who have decided to cross – legally or illegally – is not the only one that has significant relevance. Still, it is also necessary to pay attention to the millions of people, both Mexican and American, who cross the border daily either for personal or work reasons and who could be affected in this turbulent electoral process and what happens from here on.
An uncomfortable reality for this U.S. electoral process is that one of the critical issues is Mexico, and not in a good way. Little, unintentionally, and as President López Obrador has understood, even though the laws clearly mark a temporary space of months so that nothing can be changed before the election, the migrant vote and the weight it will have on the electoral result will make a much more understandable position towards the mechanisms required and demanded to our compatriots to be able to exercise the right to vote. If they are the ones who support us – taking into account that in 2023, there was a flow of remittances for 63.3 billion dollars – their relevance in the next elections is high. Regardless of the expressions of opponents of the 4T that one part of the remittances is sweaty and the other is full of money laundering values and seasoned with drops from business and systems from organized crime, the truth is that, if they can support our people, our hunger and our citizens, having the network of consulates in the United States, why are we going to prevent them from exercising their right to vote?
“Do not come to me with that the law is the law”. Undoubtedly, this will be one of the favorite phrases of the six-year term that seems to end on June 2. In reality, everything has been done so that it can continue, if not in a physical way, then in the spirit that animated the significant transformations of this regime led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. If candidate Sheinbaum wins, President López Obrador’s work will not end – since he will continue to directly or indirectly dictate the country’s future – but he will be able to sleep more peacefully.
In the United States, everything burns because at the end of the day – as he demonstrated at the party he held at his Mar-a-Lago mansion – Donald Trump is not only the most popular but also the strongest. He is not only the one who can bring Ted Cruz or the Florida senators together at a party, but he is also the one who can point to the immigration issue as the main issue heading into the next election. He is also the one who, upon seeing that his Republican Party – or rather the Trumpist Republican – is going to reach an agreement with the Democrats, decides to interrupt, reverse, and change that agreement. Since Roman times, it has always been bad for one man to be above the law. But what can you say about someone who – also in another country very close to the United States – does not care about the law, but what matters to him is his own interpretation of the law?
Amidst all this, the commercial made by Tucker Carlson in the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin is a lesson in how to hold on and not lose your temper. While everyone is nervous and worried about what to do, Putin, who is the one who has the war declared in the form of a special military operation, despite the Russian soldiers who are dying on the Ukrainian front and the economic punishment – although with minimal effect – from the nations that make up the G7, can give lessons in temperance, faith, and self-control in an interview that in part was also a kind of commercial for his desire to be reelected in the next presidential elections to be held in Russia in less than a month. Putin is so intelligent, has so many information services, and can guess the pulse of his people that although he does not know the exact percentage by which he will win, he does have the peace of mind that his leadership is not in danger.
Putin’s prediction that Donald Trump will win the U.S. election deserves special mention. Suffice it to recall that in 2016, Russian intelligence services and Putin himself played a vital role in the election campaign. This year, amid the mismatch and the absence of programs, why not concentrate everything to make a leader win who, although controversial, has proven his ability to lead? In that sense, Trump’s new victory and his return to the Oval Office will be, in a sense, a shared victory that will open the doors of the White House wide open to a Putin eager for this to happen.
Democracy is in danger of extinction. In the upcoming elections, it is necessary to go out to the polls and vote, but, above all, it is essential to institute a clear set of values that will sustain that democracy. It is not just a matter of going out one day, taking a ballot paper, folding it, and putting it in the ballot box, but behind that vote, there is a whole decalogue of democratic values currently in grave danger.
The year 2024 will be the year in which the most significant number of people can vote. The year will surely bring a series of autocrats, as it has given us since the 1930s in Europe and Russia and as a consequence of Mao’s victory in the Chinese Civil War. It is a year that will mark a before and after in the modern history of democracy, but, above all, it will be a year that will reflect whether societies are truly capable of setting their own limits or whether they prefer to remain at the beck and call of those who lead them.
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