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| From left, Gustavo Madero, Enrique Peña Nieto and Jesus Zambrano. Behind, center, are Luis Videgaray and Miguel Angel Osorio Chong Photo: Octavio Gómez |
Proceso: Álvaro Delgado
The Pact for Mexico, the initiative that has wanted to be a prescription for Mexicans as the national agreement that will bring the country out of its grave problems, originated in a series of political contacts among buddies. The method: surreptitious meetings, with the support of Enrique Peña Nieto. Sources consulted by Proceso help one reconstruct the plot and content of these secret conclaves. Two names stand out in all of this: those of the PRD member, Jesus Ortega, and the PRI member, José Murat.
The Pact for Mexico, which is experiencing a severe crisis as a result of complaints by PAN over the electoral use of social programs--the eradication of which does not exist in the reform agenda--was born of a conversation of two old friends: Jesus Ortega of the PRD and José Murat of the PRI.
Ortega conceived the idea and Murat proposed it to Enrique Peña Nieto, by way of Luis Videgaray, during the post-election dispute of July 2, 2012, when evidence emerged of the triangulation of funds to buy votes in favor of the PRI.
The meeting was held in late July, a month before the Electoral Tribunal of the Judiciary of the Federation (TEPJF) declared the election [of Peña Nieto] valid on August 31, and Ortega's argument was that Peña Nieto and the Institutional Revolutionary Party ( PRI) could not govern alone.
"As in South Africa, you need a national agreement", Ortega pointed out to Murat, who defended the triumph of Peña Nieto, although he accepted that PRI had not gained a majority in Congress. "Why don't you talk to Videgaray?", Ortega proposed.
After the two had dinner with Jesus Zambrano, chairman of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and a member of the New Left "tribe" or faction in that party, which Ortega coordinates at the national level, Murat had Videgaray meet with them.
The meeting was at Murat's house. He is a controversial politician since he was a propagandist for [President] Luis Echeverría [1970-76], three times congressman, senator and governor of Oaxaca, He hosted the meetings that lasted four months.
Videgaray, who was campaign coordinator for Peña Nieto and then would run the transition team and is now Secretary of the Treasury, was excited. He agreed that there would be little room to govern [without a congressional majority] and also with the discription of the country's situation given by 'The Mutts' [nickname for Zambrano and the leaders of the New Left faction]: A government without control of its territories, institutions in crisis, and monopolies controlling the economy.
They talked about the pacts that have occurred in other countries, such as Spain, Chile, South Africa and even Mexico, such as those convened by Ernesto Zedillo, in 1995, which soon became frustrated, although it managed the electoral reform in the following year, and by Vicente Fox, in 2000, also without success.
At the meeting with Videgaray, The Mutts insisted that, given the conditions of the country and the correlation of forces, a political agreement was imperative. Ortega recalled to Videgaray the example of the pact between Vicente Guerrero [liberal hero of the War of Independence] and Agustín de Iturbide [conservative who was a general from the Spanish army], in February of 1821:
"How was Mexico's independence achieved? It was through the embrace at Acatempan. Don't realists talk with insurgents? That was the first pact in Mexico."According to information gathered by Proceso from participants in the negotiations at different times, Videgaray promised to consult immediately with Peña Nieto. His answer came in hours:
"It seems very well good. Let's set up the negotiations."Ortega had already talked to Gustavo Madero, president of the National Action Party (PAN), who consented and who was joined from the beginning by Santiago Creel, Secretary of Government Relations under Fox and without whom agreements could not be reached.
Creel was a friend of The Mutts and he trusted Murat, since Murat had helped Creel resolve the first conflict he had as Secretray of Government Relations, in 2001, with the governor of Yucatán, Víctor Cervera Pacheco.
"Do you want to sit down with them? I'm in charge" said the former governor of Oaxaca, and Creel agreed.Twice an aspiring presidential candidate in PAN and rescued by Madero to be the technical secretary of the National Policy Committee, Creel joined the negotiations with conviction because he had suffered from a divided government [lack of a congressional majority].
"The PRI alone won't be able to govern. The system is a very perverse, because it doesn't produce stable majorities," he said.The negotiations were also joined by Pedro Joaquín Coldwell, then president of the PRI and now energy secretary, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong and Aurelio Nuño, at the time the political and education coordinators on the transition team and now Secretary of Government Relations and head of the Office of the Presidency.
Two other characters were incorporated: Carlos Navarrete, a New Left member and current Secretary of Labor in the government of the Federal District, and Juan Molinar, an advisor to Madero.
At the request of Peña Nieto himself, Murat became the executive coordinator of the Mexico Pact. His son, Alejandro Murat Hinojosa, entered the government as Infonavit's CEO [public housing program].
It was a cast of 12 ...
(Excerpt from the report published in the current issue Process) Spanish original