Finally Today the presidential campaigns will start and a whole cascade of disputes in more than 20 thousand popularly elected positions that will be at play. They are the largest in Mexican history, but they can also be seen as the most critical that we have experienced, as a nation model is put into play that will define us in the years to come.
The official candidate for the Presidency, Claudia Sheinbaumrepeats the phrase of his political boss, Andrés Manuel López Obradorwhich is the fourth transformation; Xochitl Galvezthe opposition candidate, is the voice of the many who think it is a fight for democracy against the dictatorship. In both cases it is exaggerated. There is neither a transformation like the Independence or the Revolution, nor will the dilemma between democracy and dictatorship be resolved at the polls.
What can be proposed as the underlying dilemma is how Mexicans want to be governed: power concentrated in one person, or checks and balances that prevent abuses and excesses, with accountability mechanisms. Transferred to political categories, the first case falls into the category of autocrats, who exercise power supremely, for which they destroy, colonize or neutralize democratic institutions (they are called illiberal democrats), and the second in the democrats. (liberals), which support a rule of law and freedoms.
Democracy is a system that bleeds heavily from a wound caused by people's dissatisfaction with the results promised just over 30 years ago, of a more just society, with fewer poor people and greater well-being, which did not materialize. A report by the Banco Santander Foundation on “the Crisis of Liberal Democracies” found that in 2022, a total of 42 countries, representing 43% of the world's population, had autocratic regimes, and 28% of the population lived in closed autocracies – close to the threshold of dictatorship -, against 13% of the population that still lived under liberal democracies.
The clash of the government model and the organization of society is not a challenge that only Mexico faces this year. This year there will be 76 elections that will mobilize 51% of the world's population – just over four billion people – where the most important ones, the United States, India, Russia, Turkey and Venezuela, will define what type of ruler they want. In two of the three elections already held this year, where the dilemma is posed, the autocrats won, Nayib Bukele, the Salvadoran president, re-elected overwhelmingly because voters preferred that he violate human rights in exchange for being able to walk without fear in the streets, and Prabowo Subianto, with a past as a human rights violator, who prevailed in Indonesia.
Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdoğan and Nicolás Maduro have a high probability of governing their countries next year, as in Mexico Sheinbaum, if the polls are measuring well the support for the official candidate and it is not a mirror response of the popularity of López Obrador, and Gálvez fails in his campaign to reverse the disadvantage. Sheinbaum, like the president, maintain that Mexico is in its best moment of democracy, although López Obrador's actions and the candidate's commitment to faithfully follow what she wants, preconfigure more of an illiberal democracy than a liberal one.
The question of what Mexicans will prefer will be answered at the polls on June 2. However, there are some signs about what we might expect. A study published this week by the Pew Research Center in Washington on the health of democracy in 24 countries reveals that in many of them it has deteriorated in the last six years. On average, 59% of people surveyed for this report said they were dissatisfied with the way their democracy is working, 42% said that no political party in their country represents their views, and 74% think that Officials elected at the polls don't care what people think of them.
For those who believe in democracy, the study results get worse. Mexico, among all those twenty nations, is where it has deteriorated most rapidly, and appears along with six other countries -Germany, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, India, Kenya and Poland-, where support for a leader of heavy hand increased. However, the greatest degradation of democracy as a system of social and political organization was here, in Mexico, where support for a democratic leader fell from 67 to 48% between 2017 and 2023, and support for the iron fist rose from 27%. to 48%.
Mexico also topped the list of 24 nations among those who think that an unelected leader is better than one who is elected, whose loss of trust went from 41% in 2017 to 25% in 2023, while the belief that officials Those who arrived through the popular vote are not interested in the people, it is rooted in 8 out of 10 Mexicans. If López Obrador is the archetype of an autocrat – with Sheinbaum as a carbon copy – then Mexican society is showing that that is what it wants.
His antidote would be in the polls. As Yale political scientist Milan Svolik wrote in a 2019 essay, “Voters in democracies have at their disposal an essential instrument of democratic self-defense: elections. “They can stop politicians with authoritarian ambitions simply by voting against them.” But what can go wrong?
“In highly polarized electorates, even voters who value democracy would be willing to sacrifice fair democratic competition and elect those who defend their interests,” he responded. “When punishing a leader's authoritarian tendencies requires voting for a platform, party, or person that his or her followers detest, many will consider it too high a price to pay.”
Are we at that point? Today, everything points to yes.
X: @rivapa
More from the same author:
#start #worse