When asked by Enrique Quintana about the expectation of the presidential election, the Morena candidate was betrayed by her subconscious: “The only thing missing is the June 2 procedure.” Deep inside her, the presidential sash was hung on the day of the finger disguised as a survey, from the moment of her anointing as the face of Obrodorista continuity, to the moment she received the title of heir to the new six-year monarchy.
The anecdote reveals the reflection that Claudia Sheinbaum sees in her mirror. It doesn’t seem like a slip, nor a narrative stumble. The idea of the procedure is that elections do not involve chance or uncertainty. Surprises cannot happen here like in Poland or Argentina. Those unforeseen outcomes in the volatile configuration of majorities. Presidential approval, the mobilization structure with public money or the new clientelistic networks of social programs have already done their job: there are enough loyalties to win the election. The 30 seconds of solitude in front of the ballot box, the individual weighting of the voter or the volume of participation are contained risks. Our databases rule.
There is no episode in the campaign that paints more clearly that the existence of the democratic system, with all its imperfections and frustrations, is at stake. The symptoms are evident: the malicious interventions of the governments in the elections, the capture of the electoral institutions, the criminal stoning in the morning of a woman who dared to publish a criticism of the deceptions of the transformation, without the slightest respect for legality and public embarrassment. The systematic judicial persecution and political violence against candidates and opponents. Claudia Sheinbaum also tells us that the Mexico they have in their heads is the past of hegemonic presidentialism. The continuity they seek is the restoration of the times of the perfect dictatorship: authoritarianism with six-year votes. The Presidency as head of State, of government and of an unbeatable party by hook or by crook.
At this point in the election, to the danger of institutional capture by organized crime, we should add the autocratic reflex of the official party candidate and, in particular, her contempt for pluralism and essential political freedoms. There is no democracy without democrats, but neither is there without law that cultivates civic behavior. We are in the worst of all possible worlds. Those who see votes only as a legitimation procedure aspire to govern. The rule of law is seriously eroded by the willful disregard of its recipients. Nobody can be deceived. The pluralist democracy of the peaceful Mexican transition, of that system of rules by which López Obrador came to power, is on the ballot. That is the referendum we are going to: the survival or not of the pact of freedoms that still has us standing.
