Reforma: Rene Delgado*
Translated by Joel Cloke
Today, the political restlessness and the tranquility are reduced to an absurd thing: that the administration might end its term of office without provoking a widespread collapse and the rise of presidential aspirants [for 2018] doesn't make the situation more complicated. There’s nothing more.
The word has been devalued to the point where it means the opposite of what it expresses. The presidential statement, just last August-presuming that, with the changes being made in the cabinet, they were entering an era where they were going to work “with much enthusiasm and more strength”, today translates to working “with little enthusiasm and less strength”. An administration with their arms by their sides. No matter how much it’s said that they want to "move Mexico" [Peña Nieto's election slogan], today the country simply does not move about [reference to restrictions prohibiting each auto from circulating one day a week in Mexico City due to pollution].
If idleness in the face of impunity and corruption broke the will of “transforming Mexico” [another Peña Nieto slogan], then it wouldn’t be bad to stop insisting in that the administration's original propositions remain unscathed. Many of them are already an unsustainable myth, fables overrun by reality. Reaffirming them without first making them concrete only adds to their lack of fulfillment, the feeling of being the butt of a joke or trick.
Among these propositions turned into unsustainable myths would be the following:
MV Note: All of the propositons discussed below, except the issue of marijuana regulation, were part of a "decalogue", actually fourteen propostions, that Peña Nieto made in a major speech on Security and Justice, on Nov. 26, 2014, after the attacks on and disappearace of the Ayotzinapa normal school students created a major crisis for his administration.Promoting, respecting and promising human rights: Although there are government officials determined to add content to the propostion, periodically an event or complaint destroys the supposed intention. The video of the soldier and the police officer torturing a woman in Ajuchitlán del Progreso, in Guerrero, is the new bead on the black pearl necklace woven throughout the six-year presidential term that once again hurts the country. This pearl was added to the string a day before the U.S. State Department’s human rights report, that for a third consecutive year condemns the constant violation of those rights. The administration does not correct the behavior of the Armed Forces condemned both inside and outside of the country, it confirms it.
Ajuchitlán is added to and gets to know Tlatlaya (June, 2014), Iguala [Ayotzinapa] (September, 2014), Apatzingán (January, 2015), Tanhuato (May, 2015), Tierra Blanca (January, 2016), Papantla (March, 2016). Seeing as that, in every case, the responsibility of law enforcement vanishes or is minimized when it’s covering up or glorifying-Eruviel Ávila [governor of the State of Mexico] applauded the bravery of the army in Tlatlaya-it would more worthwhile to stop suggesting a profound respect for human rights...trampled on.
Forming a national anti-corruption system: Starting with the legislative practice of guaranteeing in the Constitution what is denied or what regulations make difficult [secondary laws implementing constitutional amendments often contain obstacles to their actual application], it would be better to stop reiterating the proposition. The administration and the party’s resistance to contribute comprehensive details to the proposal is evident. The regulatory laws have been watered down and nothing else is left to do but to trade the appointment of the new public prosecutor for anti-corruption for choosing the new Mexican ambassador to the United States.
The official resistance fighting against corruption is not only seen in the legislative gibberish that is brought forward as a temporary solution, but also in the concept the president has of it and which his attendant, the secretary [of Public Administration] Virgilio Andrade, repeats like a parakeet. It’s even more notorious in the idleness in reponse to those cases that could be punished with legislation currently in force. However, the complicity of the political elite group in the matter is such that attacking it would be like cutting off one's own hand...and, of course, no one wants to be an amputee in these so productive of days.
Promoting transparency, accountability, access to information: Under the idea that nothing can be done without reforming laws, this hypothesis is a type of unachievable fantasy. However, starting with the ethics of responsibility that do not require a code of four thousand articles, there are big and small governmental acts for which there should be a rendering of accounts.
A recent example: the firing of Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S., Miguel Basáñez. Who and why they decided to remove him after only seven months after having appointed him: the U.S. State Department, the secretary of foreign relations, or both in mutual agreement. Who decides the representation before the powerful neighbour of the north. Or was everything a product of a Salinas’ whim [supposed influence of former president Carlos Salinas on Peña Nieto], expressed through chancellor’s Claudia Ruiz Massieu Salinas de Gortari mouth [niece of the former president]?
Debating the legalization of the consumption of marijuana: Five months ago, President Enrique Peña Nieto instructed Secretary [of Government Relations] Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong to organize a broad debate on the topic. If the summons was an idea in order to get out of the predicament that the amparo [injunction] given [by the Supreme Court] to the Mexican Society of Responsible and Tolerant Consumption [aka SMART, allowing them to grow marijuana for personal consumption] placed on the government and, at the same time, to take advantage of the meeting about drugs in the United Nations-about to be carried out [Special General Assmebly, Apr. 19-21]-, then faithful to their spirit, the administration put into practice the principle of getting out of a problem by creating another one.
Now one day the president’s attendance at the U.N. session, which was called by Mexico together with Guatemala and Colombia, is announced, another day it’s denied and on the third it's confirmed. Why so much hesitation? Does it have or not have a proposition for there? [MV Note: A few days ago, the Office of the President announced he would not attend the UN General Assembly Special Session on drug policy, April 19 -21. Friday, it announced he would be going.]
Other fallen propositions could be added to these: 911 [national emergency phone number], passenger trains [high speed train that was cancelled], an exact and disciplined budget, single police force in each state, an all purpose ID card…, in brief, even the propostion that “it’s time for us to break, together, the myths and paradigms, and all of that which has limited our development” [quote of Peña Nieto] is already an unsustainable myth. Spanish original
*Rene Delgado is a journalist and diarist who has specialized in political matters since 1978. His column “Sobreaviso” (Advanced Warning) dates back to 1989. He is author of La Oposicion: Debate por la Nacion (Opposition: Debate for the Nation); Crimen en Vispera de Elecciones (Election Eve Crime), and the novel El Rescate (The Rescue).