Antonio Navalón
Every political campaign – even more so if it is a presidential one and a campaign in which hundreds of new public officials will be elected – is always made under the combination of what will be fresh and what is already known by the voters. In recent elections throughout Latin America – and many other parts of the world, as happened recently in the Netherlands – societies are demonstrating a tendency to change their electoral preferences and ideologies radically from one extreme to the other. The use, and often abuse, of mothballs and yellow photographs ends up being a constant about what was the immediate past of the country in question.
The two candidates aspiring to be president of the Mexican Republic, Dr. Sheinbaum and Senator Xóchitl Gálvez, have already presented their respective photo albums. Both have taken a series of people who, in the last 30 years, have played a significant role in the history of our country, and no matter how many hair dyes they have, what is certain is that at some point, they were – with different neoliberal regimes and of all orders – significant in what was the government structure of the nation.
It is astonishing and understandable that the future has to be built on the past. Although, in essence, the photographs of the last few days showing the teams of each of the contenders, which have been the subject of debate, are a good account of what has been happening in the last decades in the country. With a few exceptions, such as Xóchitl Gálvez’s decision to include her children in her pre-campaign team or the omnipresent Omar García Harfuch, who will join Claudia Sheinbaum’s ranks, there are very few novelties and contributions in both teams. The reason does not lie in the lack of a proposal for a change, but because that photo album is meant to explain to the Mexican people who will support them in shaping or formulating due government proposals. However, there is no commitment that they will be the ones to govern, much less that the proposals made amid so many mothballs and yellow photography may serve to structure the future of the country.
We must not deceive ourselves, and, above all, we must not mislead others. Being so close to the end of the year and minutes away from the beginning of the decisive year of the election, what is clear is that this is not the time to see, project, and play the polls or the placement of holy cards to determine who will win the presidency. However, this is the time to understand what the parties involved are playing at. President López Obrador, who has the same enthusiasm he had when he began his road to the presidency of Mexico, is very clear that what happens in Mexico City could affect his immediate future so much that he has come down to the arena. López Obrador is already articulating the strategy for his candidate, Clara Brugada, and her supporters to change the panorama once and for all and secure his continuity as the head of the capital city.
In Mexico, there are very few places where the organization and civil participation to achieve a change and be part of it is felt, as is the case of Mexico City. Deep down, all parties involved in one way or another in the race are aware that -beyond the presidency, which is the icing on the cake- there are political strongholds that are of utmost importance, among them the so-called CDMX. But this is not the only electoral objective that the parties have on their radar since – independently of the points of advantage that currently exist between one candidate and the other – they also know that the great electoral battle will be fought in Congress and on the road to reach the longed-for majority in Congress. While it is being defined who will be the winning candidate to get the presidency of the country, the bet is that it will be complicated for Morena to reach the absolute majority it had with López Obrador, and that is where they have to focus their efforts, something that from my point of view the opposition has been able to anticipate adequately.
Mexico – as in many other countries around the world – has a system of political checks and balances divided by powers. Becoming president of the country does not guarantee absolute power or free and unaccountable action. In our country, the ability to enact legislative initiatives and, more importantly, the power to approve them by a majority in Congress is one of the most critical elements to exercise and comply with the wishes of each ruler.
The immediate future of our country and almost all countries depends on the votes. These will make everything we have lived through in the last year – basically around justice – either take shape and consolidate the end of our system of separation of powers or, if it fails to secure the necessary number of deputies and senators to change the constitution, everything will remain a letter – in this case to Santa Claus – to change the country. Although, months away from the end of the six-year term, it is still not clear – beyond the increase in the numbers on violence, the abandonment of the country’s international positioning, or the elimination of the highest electoral institution – what was the real change that López Obrador and his Fourth Transformation sought to make in our country.
Although history indicates and has proven it, it is not necessarily a bad thing to be a one-man country. But what is true is that we must all prepare ourselves for an electoral battle in which, for the first time in many years – and contrary to what was the great victory of the people of Mexico – it will be disputed amid an institutional vacuum. Neither the National Electoral Institute (INE) today is what it used to be, nor is the structure for the legal defense of political positions what it used to be. The main objective to be achieved as the testimonial act of the end of the 4T in this six-year term is the change, above all, of the structure of the separation of powers. This is a principle that is not carried out, not shared, and not applied. There is no reason to separate the powers that are already separated; the one in charge has a left and a right lobe and, therefore, who are the rest of us to try to impose on them that their command be limited by a political, legal and constitutional structure that, after all, has been in existence for more than a century.
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