Although we know very well that this cannot be done, the group in power assumes that it can. Also her candidate for the Presidency, Claudia Sheinbaum, and her close team have expressed themselves in very optimistic terms about what is coming for the country in economic terms. We are facing a favorable moment for attracting investment in the country due to the nearshoring, which is destined to be (with a little exaggeration) the new economic lever for the country. We can squeal with joy. The problem is that we want to eat pinole at the same time.
Eating pinole in this parable is putting too much power in a bite and weakening the mechanisms that regulate it. Morena’s candidate, at least in her speech, is shaping up to continue with a legislative agenda that is consistent with a project of concentration of power (or deinstitutionalization of it, however you want to see it) that can undermine the essential counterweights in a democratic regime. And without the most basic guarantees that power will not be voracious in affecting basic rights, the nearshoring It will be a lost opportunity and the country is heading into a difficult situation of authoritarianism and economic deterioration. We have to decide if we want to whistle or eat. This is one of the dilemmas that the candidate and eventual president will have to resolve if her votes favor her.
In these years of AMLO at the head of the Presidency, the fantasy has been created that you can be crazy and eat without consequences. Key institutions have been pushed towards ineffectiveness, others are captured or weakened and despite this the country functions, the economy grows, stability is sustained and investment arrives. There is still no signal for economic agents, especially high-profile ones, that will make them leave in terror or that will dissuade them from making a significant investment in our territory, because despite being tremendously imperfect, there are institutions that maintain a basis of certainty in the country. Those affected by the changes in electrical laws were still able to go to court, litigate their case and in some cases win. That basic floor that gets thinner every day is what keeps the country functioning, generating that fantasy. A few more steps in that direction will make that floor collapse. But no one stops them.
It is very important that the candidate is aware of this because if she has an alternative project or at least nuanced with respect to that of her predecessor, she will not be able to develop it in an environment of institutional dispossession. Her political boss, the President, more or less freed her because we had the momentum of NAFTA and various conditions that gave oxygen to her six years of government. What lies ahead is more difficult because the margin of action is much narrower. The President ate it almost completely.
It is inevitable to think that our evolution in the last decades runs like a video in play and then rewind. We are advancing very slowly in a process of institutionalization of power (I include NAFTA in this) and now we are going in reverse. To point zero where the political model made the economic model unviable. That is, we could return to that point of stagnation and cyclical crises if we insist on reforms that soften or tame the institutions that put limits on power. This week the modification to the Amparo Law was approved and those of plan C of the presidential package are still pending, which await as menacing as the sword of Damocles.
For me it is very difficult to elucidate what Claudia Sheinbaum’s project is and what is the margin within the party itself to advance it, to win. Because the president left his legacy sealed in bill initiatives that are already in the legislative forum and that are assumed as a culmination, but also continuity to his project and around which this political group feels cohesive. It would have to be like these escape artists who manage to maneuver themselves out of their shackles and chains to free themselves. And they say that the first movements are key to achieving it. Simulating as if it were on the same route, but making key decisions that will mark the turn.
I wish we didn’t get crazy and eat at the same time, because we won’t be able to count on one of those.
