Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Time is running out to reach the final duel on the existential definition of Mexico: a democratic Republic or country of a Supreme Leader. The dominoes will fall if the INE and the Electoral Tribunal approve Morena’s illegal over-representation in Congress in the next few days. That fact will pave the way for Congress to approve López Obrador’s Plan C in September. That Plan implies the destruction of counterweights to the Executive so it can govern without accountability. There will be no Judicial Power to review the legality of decisions, no autonomous oversight bodies to correct deviations and abuses of power, nor will there be plurinominal legislators, thus eradicating dissidence that could question the actions of the Executive and building an effective opposition.
Time is running out for common sense to prevail in making decisions about the country’s future. The de facto powers of Morenismo are hypnotized by their undisputed leader’s strength and sour look. They are ready to obey without questioning, without hesitation, without thinking what else is possible. They know they will vote for any legislative measure put in front of them. Although it would not be fair to say that they are robots, the truth is that they will do what they are ordered to do.
Nor does it matter that a major drug trafficker has said that the Morenista governor of Sinaloa was his puppet and obedient servant, elected to the post by the cartel. The governor denies it, and the President of the Republic and the President-elect acquit him of this federal crime, with his word alone, without judicial investigation, without doubts, and questioning because the President’s word is the law. Why? Because the law of the fatherland is blind obedience and, in return, the right to the veil of presidential protection.
We will see if the governor is still alive long enough to enjoy that veil of presidential protection and how much is enough for this situation. The President leaves, while the governor stays, and the narco stays, too. They remain in the same state of Sinaloa but under different conditions, because here there has been a beginning (or a deepening?) of the rupture of a set of pacts and agreements.
Sinaloa expresses that “Fatherland of the Supreme Leader” to which AMLO aspires so much and which Morena wants to give him. There is only a flimsy veneer of legality there. The rest of life is built on acts of force, social intimidation, and the necessary pacts so that the economy, such as it is, can flow with a certain normality.
It is a curious political coincidence that Mayo Zambada and his declarations have occurred just in these times, which are the prolegomena to the possible establishment of that ” Fatherland of the Supreme Leader” that Morena yearns for in the future of Mexico. Morena wants Mexico to be a replica of Sinaloa. That is the country where the leader negotiates the same with the head of drug trafficking as with the head of state of the United States, as Mayo Zambada did. For this maximum leader, everything is business and negotiable. He is the representative of the State where betrayal and murder are also legal resources for resolving disputes.
Time is running out to reach that moment in which Mexico will have to decide what kind of country it intends to be: will it be a democratic and constitutional Republic, with autonomous and independent State Powers, with autonomous bodies that exercise a corrective power and surveillance and transparency that binds the actions of the Powers, besides being linked to the world as a respected and honorable nation as a reliable player for the resolution of controversies between nations?
Or will it be the government of a Supreme Leader where his law and his unipersonal decisions prevail as an exclusive reference, even if they are the product of the correlation of forces between the de facto powers of society such as the Armed Forces, business friends, drug trafficking and select international relations, such as Russia and China preferably, and the United States as an inevitable obligation due to proximity?
This will be defined in a month and a half. Without pause, due reflection, and valid pressing reasons, the clock is ticking. But that does not matter. The leader demands, and the morenada obeys.
Time is running out.
[email protected]
@rpascoe
Further Reading: