Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The opposition must demand the government’s respect for the rule of law in the face of the USMCA crisis. While it is a matter of interpretation of the letter and spirit of the most important international treaty signed by the government of López Obrador, adherence to this signed commitment requires Mexico to be consistent with its word. Respecting the agreement in its terms is the only acceptable way.
Trying to politicize the issue, to turn it into a matter of ideological confrontation, is out of touch with the reality of the debate and is a useless rhetorical resource in the context of a dispute that is, obviously, both legal and commercial. The oil belongs to Mexico, as do the natural resources of any country. The issue is how they are managed.
Contributing to the strategy of politicizing the ongoing negotiation process, President López Obrador has announced that he will use the September 16 parade as a backdrop to make a political, but not legal, defense of Mexico’s sovereignty over oil and, therefore, its right to a free interpretation of the contents of the USMCA.
He did the same last September 16 parade in 2021, allowing Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel to speak before members of the Mexican army when, two months earlier, he had used his armed forces to repress and imprison Cuban citizens who were peacefully protesting against the high cost of living and demanding democratic freedoms. One thousand Cubans are still in jail for having expressed their opinion publicly in the streets of many Cuban cities.
It is evident that López Obrador will defend his actions in the energy sector by political means, not legal ones. He wants to turn the challenge made by the United States and Canada on the energy sector of the USMCA into a domestic political mobilization. He obviously intends to seek the historical eternity gained by Lázaro Cárdenas with the oil expropriation. His obsession with his political legacy leads him to provoke conflicts with allied countries in order to make domestic policy.
The question is: will this conflict be enough to alter the image of his failed government?
The failure of its social policies, with more poverty, disease, and hunger in the country (according to INEGI) and complicity with organized crime (according to world security agencies and Morenistas such as Porfirio Muñoz Ledo), is added to the failure in economic management and international relations, as Mexico has lost its regional leadership and its world reputation.
At the same time, he heads a government that questions and evades applying the constitutional rule of law daily. It has become the king of violence against the nation’s laws, from the simplest to the most important content of the Constitution.
Knowing all this, the opposition faces the challenge of posing this conflict in terms that will give credibility and political correctness to its position. And that positions it correctly for the future conflicts to come, both political, legal, and constitutional.
Rather than taking a particular position on the USMCA interpretation conflict, it is necessary to make a generic approach. To call for respect for the rule of law and to insist that this is not a political problem but an economic and legal one. That is to say, to press on the defense of the constitutional and the international rule of law is the only way to ensure a solution to the dispute on objectively legal grounds.
Obviously, there is a debate about the possible economic consequences for Mexico in the case of an adverse ruling. But it should be clear that should this happen, it will be the sole responsibility of the Lopez Obrador government. But the opposition must bet on a strictly legal solution to the dispute and reject the politicization of the case, where Morena will try to turn it into a process of polarization between “corrupt foreign interests and ours, of national purity and our sovereignty”.
It is not the case for the opposition to enter into the false debate instigated by López Obrador between sovereignty and corrupt foreigners. Nor to bet on any of the contenders on the panel. We must bet on the law and the rule of law.
This position is relevant because of the many other cases that are being processed internally. Notoriously, there is the case of Morena’s attack on INE and its desperate attempt to disappear the autonomous electoral body.
The official party is campaigning to disappear INE. We are facing a war against INE in several stages. Morena has attacked the electoral body since it was IFE and now INE. It has made a culture of discrediting the body when they lose an election and praising it when they win. It is, constitutively, a sore loser and, therefore, anti-democratic.
The problem with the virulent campaign against INE now is that it is applying the laws they promoted when they were out of power. Now that they are in control and desperately want to prolong their stay in power, they criticize the straitjackets they put on all parties when they were also in power.
They have powerful reasons to remain in power beyond their presumed conviction of representing something different (“we are not the same”, they love to chant). Morena’s corruption is rampant. They will not be able to explain, much less justify, how they spent billions of pesos from the national budget, much less how it is that so many of their members today boast new personal fortunes.
The motivation for survival is overwhelming. For this reason, and knowing that Congress will not approve its proposal to disappear INE as it wants, it is already designing an anti-INE strategy for 2024. If Morena felt it could won the presidential election, it would not dedicate so much time to the destruction of the electoral body. But uncertainty is the mother of violence and desperation. It is preparing for the worst.
The previous step is to make a “crowd disobedience” against INE. Everyone, from the President to the last Morenista, is summoned to violate the Constitution and the laws emanating from it in electoral matters. Not even Trump dared to do so. That is to say; they are challenging, from now on, the rule of law in electoral issues.
The seminal idea is to denounce the partiality and inefficiency of INE if they lose the election in 2024 and refuse to hand over power. Same as Trump. They are willing to create a “national security” crisis where AMLO will try to prolong his mandate until he and the Armed Forces conclude that the threat to national security has been “resolved”. This may take several years.
The parallels between this method of settling the electoral process and what López Obrador intends to achieve about the USMCA conflict are striking. The key to everything is to throw the law in the trash and resolve the disputes by force and with de facto action methods. That is to say, using imposition.
In the end, there is no possibility of any surprise whatsoever. López Obrador is a dictator’s apprentice. The opposition must act with cleverness and intelligence without getting carried away by their emotions. Ice coldness and a burning heart to defend the rule of law as the best instrument of attack.
[email protected]
@rpascoep