When civility, politics and law are the exception, then impunity, corruption and cowardice are the norm. These days, teachers and holders of large government [telecommunications] licenses insist on supporting negative values as a rule of the game where they are involved. Both trust that by using these, which gets them such good dividends, the government will fold, yield to pressure or reduce the depth of the reforms proposed and, if not, throw them a life preserver or offer a parachute. What matters to these teachers and licensees is keeping their privileges and not sharing the terrain where they interact with the State.
Thus, between blockades and caresses, between un-achievable demands and juicy financing, between flexing and relaxing muscles--canceling, of course, the use of the brain itself--they delight in the exercise of threat or blackmail, taking hostage wide segments of society in their competition. These teachers and licensees understand politics as a cave dweller's job or as a commodity subject to buying and selling, as the flexing of muscles, tendons and ligaments without the desire to destroy anyone but wanting to be the other. So we have the art of seducing politicians by promising to have them join the firmament of the [Televisa] Channel of Stars.
Some appeal to the use of force without saying so; others to the power of seduction or of the checkbook. Some disguise the use of force as a legitimate resource in their struggle; others long to find the right vein to the heart of politicians' ambitions. Both sides apply the resources at their disposal in the common purpose of overthrowing the reforms.
There is so much exacerbated use of State force to end any hint of dissent that now the [police] club has become the consummate symbol of repression. Denied the right to a hearing for hours, days or months, the blockade of a public plaza or a highway is now seen as the legitimate means to open the door of this or that public office.
So great was the failure of the political class and the government's practice of not exercising power that jumping into the arms of this or that de facto power became an act of survival to the sacrifice of this or that policy. Such was the delivery of the political class to these powerful interests that now any action is considered daring when its consequence terrifies political wimps or the politicians of the moment.
So badly is public force used that now the thought of removing a sit-in terrifies them and so badly is politics practiced now that any action requires being agreed on in secret, because open debate or discussion is to condemn it in advance to failure. From this perspective, the education and telecommunications reforms--keys to rethinking [the nation's] development--go far beyond the areas that they directly affect.
If it is important to you to dismantle privileges in order to build the law, it is no less important to redefine the boundary and scope of the State and to defend politics as the exercise of negotiation, understanding and agreement, and not as the practice of extortion, blackmail or horse-trading.
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In the reforms undertaken so far, and they have scarcely begun, the means are just as important as the ends.
Certainly, the areas of education and telecommunications matter, but no less than restoring civility, politics and the law. To give up the reforms because of their interference in order to avoid conflict and bask again in the glory of getting something but not what is needed, would put the country in a worse position than that in which it now finds itself. To bow, now, would be more of the same. Having made the decision to undertake the reforms, there is no turning back, unless for months of tying up the government the reforms are declared to be failures.
After winning the election, the name of the game for Peña Nieto's team, is winning the government. Not to aspire to power, but to exercise it. To let go of the notion that the function of the President is to manage problems, instead of resolving them. At stake is not only education and telecommunications in the country, what is at stake is the government's ability to strengthen the rule of law and remove the barbaric layer, criminal or not.
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It is to be understood but does not give justification that those affected by the reforms might try to boycott, corrupt or abort them. Only a handful of powerful unions and big businesses understand that social well-being, balance and social development guarantee their own interests. The majority of them--and if not the majority, then definitely the most powerful--found in the weakness of the State an opening to strengthen and expand their privileges, ignoring the wrong committed against the society in which they operate. Their resistance is as understandable as it is unacceptable.
Without justifying this attitude of the counter-reformers, it can be understood. But what cannot be understood is the attitude of the supposed professional politicians--read, for the moment, the governors and Calderón left-overs--who, inadvertently or deliberately, put themselves in their [counter-reformers'] service. Some of them are betting on the failure of the reforms because they have always found profits in scavenging in the rubble or, at least, [they have found there] the conditions for survival. Others have just not accepted their defeat and, in their myopia, their goal is revenge, control of the party or the next election in whatever state or municipality. And to still others, it is just the terrible anguish of being the opposition and not opposing everything.
It is understood by those who drive the counter-reform, but not by the politicians who, without fear of ridicule, support them believing that, with them, they are going to survive.
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Clearly, if the government and party leadership hold to the decision to promote and carry out the reforms, strong shocks and complex negotiations are coming, scandalous or muffled. However, neither shocks nor negotiations nor meticulous regulation must either pervert the meaning [of the reforms] or alter them to the point of vanishing in order to leave things as they are. They must not, because the counter-reform would not leave things as they are, they would leave things even worse and, then, we would be forced to elevate impunity, corruption and cowardice to constitutional status.
*René Delgado is Editorial Director of Reforma.
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