Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Claudia Sheinbaum won the election and will be the Constitutional President of the Republic. Unfortunately, many of us think that she won unfairly and by circumventing the law. However, this does not take away the fact that she won with 35 million votes against Xochitl’s 16 million votes. The fact that these numbers have been counted by citizens in 170,000 ballot boxes and reported to the National Electoral Institute (INE) is undeniable. Reality is reality.
But it is one thing to win an election -whatever it may have been- and quite another to be right on the substantive issues debated during the campaign. There can be no compromise on that. The projects are so different that the fundamental debate was not about alternating between one project and another or between one group of parties and another group. No. Far from that, the real discussion revolved around a regime change or maintaining the guiding principles of the current Political Constitution of the United Mexican States.
Many of us voted for alternation, but the proposal for regime change won. What is the difference between the two worldviews?
Voting for alternation means maintaining or changing the party in power. Still, it also implies maintaining the constitutional principles in force: three independent Powers constituting the Mexican State, with its rule of law in force, although susceptible to changes according to the provisions of the current Political Constitution itself. It also promotes the existence of autonomous oversight bodies to hold authorities publicly accountable for their decisions and actions in the exercise of their official duties. This is particularly relevant in the case of the actions and decisions of the President of the Republic.
In the alternation, transparency and accountability will continue to be the cornerstones of a democratic Republic, along with compliance with power and respect for citizens’ freedoms. The existence of diverse parties tolerated and incorporated into political activity is a fundamental part of the continuity and consolidation of a democratic society.
Voting for regime change implies discarding the current Political Constitution. Morena has a proposal for a new Constitution, where it proposes the disappearance of the Congress to create a unicameral Popular Assembly, integrated only by uninominal deputies, erasing the figure and presence of plurinominal legislators in national discussions and eliminating the expressions of real minorities in the decision making on public policies. With the results of the current election, eliminating plurinominals would turn Morena into the absolute owner of the Legislative Branch, well above the ⅔ parts to have a qualified majority. In this context, the judicial and legislative branches would be totally subordinate to the executive branch.
Under the new regime, the country will have a single centralized power without autonomous oversight bodies that would counterbalance and empower the citizenry by revealing the president’s actions and decisions. The proposal to subject the Judiciary to a popular electoral process makes it hostage to the country’s organized majority forces.
The regime change proposes eliminating the National Electoral Institute (INE), the National Institute for Access to Information (INAI), and any other body that could be uncomfortable to the Federal Executive Power.
On Sunday, June 2, voters voted for one or the other of these options. The majority of voters rejected the alternation between parties and chose regime change.
Consequently, Morena’s spokespersons postulated that when the new Congress takes office in September, it will proceed to vote on the legislative plans AMLO has touted, even in the last month of his term as President.
It is most likely that a vote will be taken in September and before the end of the current six-year term on two issues central to AMLO’s plan to crown the regime change he is proposing for Mexico. These two changes would be the transformation of the Judicial Power through a popular vote to define its members and the elimination of the figure of plurinominals in the country.
The first measure will destroy the only constitutional power that has resisted the onslaught of authoritarianism, impositions, and AMLO’s unilateralism.
The second will ensure the perpetuation of the one-party system in Mexico, emulating the political systems in Cuba, Russia, and China. By removing plurinominals now, Morena and allies will have 256 single-member districts, up from the current 300 districts. This is called a one-party system.
In essence, Mexico voted last Sunday to stop being a country whose political system is conceptually related to countries with a liberal, multiparty tradition that respects the alternation of power.
With its vote, Mexico openly assumes itself as a country with an illiberal, centralist, one-party, and conservative political system based on the traditional principles of personalistic and unique leaders with long government mandates and without a date for their conclusion, even though the six-year concept still survives.
Regarding foreign policy, Mexico is objectively distancing itself from the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC and its strategic association with the United States and Canada to assume itself as a strategic ally of China and Russia. This was also voted on last Sunday, and may it serve as information for those who overlooked the fact.
Hence, Mexico will be on Russia’s side in its invasion of Ukraine. It will only need to provide Russia with supplies for its war effort or even mercenaries to fight alongside Russian soldiers.
It will also make it easier for China to use our territory as a launching pad and back door to introduce its products (aluminum, steel, technology, and vehicles) into the U.S. market, evading U.S. sanctions on Chinese products. Mexico will consciously use the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC as an instrument of sabotage to the U.S. economy. It is a way of saying we are no longer partners or friends.
Could it be interpreted in Washington as a declaration of commercial, ideological, and political war on U.S. liberalism?
For now, in the face of AMLO’s proposal to accelerate regime change in September by voting to destroy the current Judicial Branch, the markets are exercising their vote. That vote can generate a severe economic crisis in Mexico simply by massive capital flight (there I go, Indonesia), currency devaluation, and accelerating inflation. However, AMLO is apparently determined to force a regime transition in a few weeks.
In any case, last Sunday, Mexico voted overwhelmingly for the regime change described here. It refused to perpetuate the constitutionalist and democratic regime that has existed to date.
I firmly believe that Mexican liberalism, rejected at the ballot box, is the best political system for what is and has been the history of modern Mexico. It is the system that allows discussion and debate on how best to govern the country without taking it to the precipice of authoritarianism, bipartisanship, and national monologue.
But the majority voted for this regime change. For me, this is the strongest proof that the majority vote can be wrong. Just as a majority of Britons today regret having approved Brexit and their economic distancing from Europe, I am sure that sooner rather than later, a majority of Mexicans will regret the vote given this past Sunday for regime change in Mexico without knowing, for sure, the true consequences of their proposal.
But we are already in the time tunnel of a historical mistake.
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