Antonio Navalón
In Mexico, our leader does not allow himself to be trapped by that vulgarity for the weak, which means that the Law is the Law.
It is known by all that in politics, the one who gets angry loses. For many years now, cannibalism against opponents, the conversion of adversaries into enemies, radicalization, and making every act of political life a supreme act of disqualification and persecution have been disloyal practices but, above all, dangerous. At the zenith of the current administration, a legion of traitors to the homeland has been publicly exposed, something that, unfortunately, is already part of our history. It remains to be seen what consequences it will bring with it.
Some years ago, Jesús Reyes Heroles said we had to be careful not to wake up from the bronco Mexico, which had been asleep since the Mexican Revolution. That fear was latent and lasted for generations. No one wanted the tiger to escape its cage since the consequences were already known in the collective memory. The practice of killing each other is something that, unfortunately, is neither new nor something we can avoid. And the fact is that the tendency and inclination toward violence is part of the Mexican people and all the peoples of this world.
The facts are simple. We have a President who, with every proposal, draws the line and defines who is with him and who is against him. We have a leader sustained by the more than thirty million votes obtained in 2018 and who is someone who does not allow himself to be cowed by the laws. We have a ruler who has not understood that, given his political power, the trick is to use legality to change the laws he does not like. However, the time has come when – in the face of procedural disregard for the game’s rules – our President has leaped into the void, proposing that what he suggests and thinks should be done immediately. And he does so as a safeguard of the supreme truth of the Nation’s interests, playing a role as if he were a kind of custodian who watches over the good of the people and protects us from all evil. In Mexico, our leader does not allow himself to be trapped by that vulgarity for the weak, which means that the Law is the Law.
The result of the energy reform is important, above all, because the President wanted it that way. It is also important because, in the face of the deceitful failure resulting from said reform, Lopez Obrador was able to enact and reverse the reform to the Mining Law. All this has brought us to a point where it is fundamental to answer a key question: what Mexico does the President want to live in and, what is worse, what Mexico does he want to lead us to live in? And the fact is that – regardless of whether they voted for him or not or whether they are part of his movement or not – the President of Mexico constantly makes moves where he, directly and indirectly, disqualifies, condemns, and criminalizes those who do not think or who disagree with his proposals.
No one forced the President of Mexico to sign the USMCA. In fact, at the time – in the face of the difficult negotiation – he acknowledged the great work done by the then Secretary of Economy, Ildefonso Guajardo. Later, once in office, López Obrador even recognized Jesús Seade with the Miguel Hidalgo Award for his participation in negotiating the trilateral agreement. In the end, the President was presented with a text that he agreed to sign. And it was not written in that text, nor could it be deduced that the game’s rules could be changed. However, sometime later, the President discovered and decided that a sector as important as the energy sector was above and beyond the constitutional order, and it was possible to implement the changes he wanted.
The concept of traitors to the homeland cannot be underestimated. Publishing the photographs – as if they were criminals from the Old West – of the deputies who dared to vote against the President’s proposal is dangerous, might be criminal, and may one day lead to demand for higher liabilities. If they are, why are they not in prison? If they are not, why are we destroying the concept of self-defense and the common good? And here, it is worth remembering that the votes that elected the President are equal and have the same legitimacy as those that elected his opponents.
As for the energy reform and its non-fitting within the clauses and guidelines stipulated in the USMCA, the President chose to find a way to give his reform greater force than the international treaties to avoid problems and avoid obstacles. In this case, it is essential to remember that, according to Article 133 of the Constitution itself, international treaties and constitutional laws have the same normative hierarchy and are of mandatory compliance. Having said this, what happened with the energy reform – regardless of the catastrophe of having turned upside down a critical sector for development- the fact of not creating the conditions for investment and not having the money to carry out the necessary works to guarantee the so-called independence and national sovereignty – calls into question something very worrying. In Mexico, signed treaties have as much validity or importance as the President decides. It is enough that a presidential witticism or national sovereignty is in dispute for compliance to cease binding.
What is happening is dangerous for the world. Hazardous for us Mexicans. It is perilous to call a member of Congress a traitor to his country simply because he votes for a law contrary to what the President deems. It is also dangerous that those same potential victims are not initiating the corresponding processes that would force them to either substantiate the accusation or simply drop it and ask for an excuse. This is not the twilight of a political figure or a regime, it is the sunset of a way of life that affects us all and where in the end, the questions in the face of complex issues are straightforward, but the answers are not that obvious.
Which world do we want to belong to? Who are we willing to respect? Whoever does not agree with the thinking of those in power must disappear or die? Where is the minimum protection against those who do not have the majority of the votes? It must not be forgotten that that electoral majority can be won or lost in every election. We have reached the end of the dream; things do not change because we want them to change. Things change when we have the intelligence, strength, and ability to change them. We find ourselves without change, but we are also in the midst of the most extraordinary political, ideological, and technical turmoil the country has gone through in many years.
This is not the dusk of a presidency; it is the twilight of a country’s way of life that has to decide what it is willing to swallow and what it is not. Meanwhile, security – that concept so essential to life – is either part of something nobody cares about or in the hands of the enemies of order and the Law. And those enemies of order and the Law are in charge because they have been the first to understand that in Mexico, the Law is only something annoying, and its compliance is not mandatory.
“…in Mexico, the Law is only something annoying, and its compliance is not mandatory”.
If tomorrow one of your deputies appearing in the “Wanted” posters were to suffer an attack or someone -following the logic of the accusation- were to go from words to deeds, who would be the guilty party?
