Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The most eloquent sign of the end of the six-year term is when the President’s threats no longer frighten society. The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation advanced in an independent position in its relation with the Executive Branch, breaking with its previous presidency. The Court is preparing for the most important agenda in many decades. It must decide what to do with Minister Esquivel, who plagiarized her undergraduate thesis, most likely in economic complicity with the work supervisor. And it will have to decide on the challenges to Plan B on the INE reform (not an electoral reform) endorsed by Congress, with the opposition against it. Two immediate tasks that will define, for the future, the nature of independence that should exist between the Powers of the Mexican State.
Then came the attempt to cover up the failures in the administration of Mexico City. Singularly, in the face of the recurring crises in the operation of the mass transportation system known as Metro.
The last accident caused one death and dozens of injured. To cover up the fundamental failures resulting from the lack of budget in the maintenance of the system and austerity in spending, which are the direct fault of the current administration, the city government moved into the realm of accusations. Alleging “suspicious occurrences,” it irresponsibly suggested the existence of terrorist events in the Metro to damage the local government. In other words, it washed its hands of any responsibility for the “incident”.
Then, more than 6,000 members of the National Guard were assigned to confront the “terrorist threat” designed to derail the presidential pre-candidacy of the head of government. This would be the alleged plan of the recently uncovered plot. But what is important is the response of repudiation by Metro users. Feeling aggrieved, there have been demonstrations of rejection of the presence of the military in all the Metro stations.
The citizen response to the militarization to cover up the actual perpetrators is what irritates and moves society to protest, sometimes violently, against the practices of a government that thinks that militarizing problems is the way to solve them.
The militaristic logic is one that, in itself, contains its own defeat. To think that militarizing institutions will reduce social resistance to the problems that arise during the life of a government is entirely wrong. Along with this process, resistance simply grows. And the hypocrisy of the government becomes more evident every day.
A case that illustrates the above is the case of the black box of the convoy. The government reported that “it had found it in a van, to be hidden from the authorities”. Paranoia, pure conspiracy. The Metro Workers Union clarified that this was not true. Following the protocol for these cases, the workers removed the black box from the crashed train and loaded it into a Metro System van to be taken to the workshops for analysis.
To cover up its mistakes and improvised management, the government invented a story of plot and terrorism. Why did it do so? Because the accelerated times towards the end of the six-year term have already uncovered the serious failures of government management. They dedicate more money to winning the next elections than to taking care of the health and safety of the citizens.
By the way, we run the risk that, due to such desperation to cut the ribbons before the end of the six-year term, all aspects of safety, construction with suitable materials, and the technical feasibility of works such as the Mayan Train, the Dos Bocas Refinery and even the AIFA and its accesses will not be taken care of. The next government may be handed over dangerous, poorly constructed, steam-rolled works and, therefore, a danger to human life.
The anguish caused by the relentless ticking of the clock of this six-year term makes the reactions to the various situations increasingly hysterical on the part of the President, his “corcholatas” (favorite precandidates to succeed him) and Morena, the party of a six-year term. In the coming months, this ruling bloc will likely promote an increasingly bold, reckless, and challenging attitude to the rest of society, seeking to intimidate and provoke a reaction of fear with their threats.
But it is already too late for that. Not even the rattling of sabers will silence a society increasingly willing to resist the imposition of a sui generis populist regime, barely a mockery of mediocre Bonapartism and incapable of designing effective public policies.
The President has lowered the technical, cultural, and intellectual level of the entire state bureaucracy of the country to be on par with him. The deprofessionalization of the Mexican State is surprising and worrying to all.
This new level of poverty of thought was observed in all its crudeness in the Mexico-United States-Canada trilateral meeting. The Mexican President was not even able to articulate sustainable proposals or to speak with synthetic coherence about what Mexico wants, mixing the press conference with a domesticated mañanera (daily morning press conference).
Obviously, the situation is conducive to many disorders: disarticulating public policies, discretionary handling of public resources, and a notorious incapacity for technical resolution. Hence the temptation to turn any conflict or situation into a political issue or indecipherable conspiracies to cover up the regime’s mistakes and inabilities.
In this environment, like an open sore for all to see, the President’s ability to propose, convince and intimidate society and its organizations is reduced. The diminishing credibility of the Federal Executive and his party directly impacts their self-confidence.
And this provokes the coming reaction: a President becoming more aggressive, fantasizing, bold, and threatening by the day. Because he knows that the weight of popularity is no longer working.
The militarization of the Metro is the most recent example that illustrates how society does not accept his threats and says it directly to his face.
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