We will never know what the future of Mexico would have been if a very long “state election” had not culminated on June 2 in which Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his Morena party, for a long time before, during and after the electoral campaign, They openly violated the rules established since the electoral and judicial reforms of 1994-1996. These reforms had given Mexico both an independent Judiciary and the conditions for clean and fair elections.
For years, the president and his party undermined the independence, integrity and budget of the National Electoral Institute (INE) and, when it reprimanded them, they responded with rejection, ridicule and contempt. Without any decorum, he saw to it that an apparatus for co-opting voters was set up – pure and massive clientelism – with government resources diverted from social programs, while his electoral campaigns and mobilizations were financed, above legal limits, with public and private resources – the latter, who knows who and why.
Against the letter and spirit of the electoral laws, López Obrador used the instruments that democracy had given him to destroy it. I insist: it will always be a mystery what would have happened if López Obrador and his people had respected the Constitution and the institutions of the Republic. What is indisputable is that its candidate won an election in which, thanks to the mechanisms created by the reforms of more than a quarter of a century ago, the votes were counted correctly. Thus, as of October 1, Claudia Sheinbaum is the first president of Mexico.
The question now is about the path she will choose in this fork in Mexican history. Be president of a democratic nation or simply be the face – never the real power – of a political regime that threatens to turn Mexico into a tyranny?
Claudia Sheinbaum has not given any indication that she is going to opt for the first path, as she has insisted ad nauseum that she won to continue López Obrador’s project. In his own words, he will focus on building the second floor of the “Fourth Transformation” (the 4T).
The grotesqueness of this imposture of the 4T becomes clear if we examine “the foundations and the first floor” on which the new president offers to build what concerns her. The pieces of that structure are already there: on the one hand, promotion of the cult of the leader; clientelist abuse of social policies to co-opt the will of citizens with the resources they transfer to the treasury; appoint a family member as your commissioner for the control of your party; tax terrorism that silences dissent and finds allies in the business sector; control of the spaces available to the mass media for the purposes of deception and propaganda – in certain cases in exchange for business with the Government -; basements with a multitude of trolls on social networks to anonymously and massively attack critics, free journalists, opposition politicians and anyone who dares to dissent; a Basic Education system far below what it received, in which the priority is not to educate but to indoctrinate.
On the other hand, and much more serious, is the institutional destruction that López Obrador has obsessively carried out. Its greatest trophies will be the devastation of the independent Judiciary, whose place would be taken by an armed one, through a farce of elections, to serve political power and with the risk of being manipulated by organized crime; the expansion of informal preventive detention, which means leaving people in prison while the corresponding judicial investigation is completed, an abominable practice that violates the universal principles of justice; the replacement of the autonomous electoral authorities by bodies controlled by the party in power that, if necessary, may behave as in Venezuela, where the dictatorship has just lost the elections and was immediately falsely declared the winner; openness to the influence of organized crime on electoral results; the co-option of our armed forces – historically exemplary in Latin America for their legal and functional subjection to civil power – not only by handing over the National Police to them – which has only happened in non-democratic countries – but something perhaps more sinister, leaving them exposed to become an interested party in the preservation of an authoritarian and corrupt regime. This, by the way, betrays and eliminates the principle, which has been in force since the Constitution of 1857, that the armed forces can only perform functions that have a rigorous connection with military discipline.
Also in process is the abolition of autonomous institutions in matters such as transparency, competition, energy regulation and telecommunications, which in today’s world are essential to support the development of nations and prevent the abusive and authoritarian use of power. governmental.
As few had done in Mexico’s past, López Obrador made his arbitrary power felt from the beginning in the most abusive ways possible. The total cost of this absurd arbitrariness has never been rigorously estimated, a calculation that should include not only the cost of that construction and its demolition, but also the enormous compensation incurred, and other direct costs, but also what the company has lost. economy of the country and potential users for not having that infrastructure.
As a mere presidential idea, other works were undertaken that have involved and will continue to represent very high costs, far above the benefits that could reasonably be expected from them. A monumental case is the Dos Bocas refinery, whose construction was approved without feasibility or environmental studies, with improvised and incomplete construction projects, to obtain products that have great idle capacity among traditional suppliers in Mexico, and with the precedent of being a sector in which Pemex has lost a lot of money.
The so-called Mayan Train seems to be the greatest pride of López Obrador’s construction projects, if one considers the number of mentions and propagandist visits that he has dedicated to it. It is also another great example of irresponsible improvisation, technological obsolescence, waste, opacity and very serious and irreparable environmental damage. As in other cases, without serious studies on unmet needs, engineering, cost, and environmental impact, among many other essential aspects, its construction began. To prove the magnitude of this failure, it would be enough to refer to its cost, more than three times what was said at the beginning, to the very small number of passengers that it now serves in its best days, and to the numerous violations of laws and regulations committed for its construction.
Unfortunately there is a consequence that has not yet been properly assessed and that has no solution. This is the destruction of an important part of the wealth and natural capital of that region of our country. Among the many damages is the deforestation of 2,500 hectares of jungle with the felling of more than 10 million trees, enormous losses of the habitat of its fauna, including that of the already scarce jaguar; immense damage to the enormous system of caves and cenotes of the Yucatan Peninsula, contamination of aquifers, destruction of vast CO2 sinks and serious damage to archaeological areas. The due quantification of all these losses of Mexico’s natural capital should be done rigorously and credited to the arbitrariness of López Obrador.
However, the greatest example of incompetence and lack of interest in truly serving the population of Mexico occurred with the government response to the covid-19 pandemic. Although the government has worked hard to hide them, the most serious consequences of its great irresponsibility in the face of covid19 have been duly studied and quantified by independent experts. Specifically, when measured with the fatality rate – deaths in relation to infected people – Mexico had the worst performance in the world. That rate was 9%, several times higher than that of any country. We also suffer the dishonorable distinction of achieving the highest rates in the world of morbidity and mortality of healthcare personnel: doctors and nurses. It is estimated that the number of deaths from covid-19 in Mexico exceeded 800,000 people, well above the figure that was officially reported to the WHO.
This human tragedy was accompanied by an economic one. In 2020, the Mexican economy suffered a contraction of 8.6%, one of the three most serious among OECD countries.
The dimension of these disasters, far above what happened in any country with a level of development similar to ours, was not fortuitous; It was a consequence of the negligence and lack of empathy with the suffering of Mexicans, on the part of López Obrador and his collaborators.
The supposed “republican austerity” did not prevent it from continuing to be spent on the white elephants of López Obrador, who, from beginning to end, exhibited a painful indolence in the face of sad events. Tragically memorable is his mocking exhortation to the population that, in the face of the epidemic, people resort to their religious cards and amulets, as well as his total absence from the facilities to at least morally support the personnel who cared for the victims of the disease. . It did not help that just before the outbreak, in another unjustified and arbitrary decision, the government had dismantled the public system for the provision of basic health services and the acquisition of medicines, as always, claiming that everything done in the past should be discarded.
Thus, it was not surprising that without any serious justification, programs aimed at supporting the poorest in the country were eliminated. In addition to the damage caused to the health system, which disproportionately affected the poorest population, the government simply eliminated a program specifically designed to address both extreme poverty and promote the education and health of the poorest families. from Mexico.
He also ignores the fact that the gross domestic product per person, at constant prices, has not grown at all during his presidential term. A stagnant economy will make it more difficult to correct the other economic problems that it leaves to its successor, such as the largest fiscal deficit in 30 years, and of course the very serious problem of public insecurity and violence, which as expected did not even temper its policy practiced until the ignominy of “hugs not bullets” to organized crime.
Only time will tell why and for whom, during the last weeks of his presidency, López Obrador undertook the disastrous task of destroying the foundations of Mexican democracy – independent judiciary, fair rules for electoral competition, impartial electoral bodies and professionals, autonomous bodies in charge of critical tasks for development, and apolitical armed forces.
Let us hope that the reconstruction and improvement of those bases will occur soon. It would help if President Claudia Sheinbaum imitated her predecessor exclusively in one thing: not fulfilling what she promised. If applicable, continue with the “Fourth Transformation.” Don’t let him comply, please.
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