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For many decades, the US capital has been the silent witness –and sometimes even a participant– of great changes that have been consolidated throughout the planet. That storms break out in Washington is normal, after all it is a place that, after 240 years of being a free and independent democracy, has had to deal with more than 200 wars or conflicts. It is true that many of these conflicts, especially those that have broken out since 1945, are confrontations that the Americans have lost. Today, the United States is facing two of the most decisive conflicts – not exactly armed – in its recent history. The first of them is the one that is being unleashed within its own territory. The second is the conflict of not knowing what to do with his neighbor to the south, a neighbor who is becoming more uncomfortable every day.
He got it. Since the time of Antonio López de Santa Anna and Samuel Houston, Mexico and the United States have been the protagonists of a relationship doomed to confrontation and forced –by the divine work of our location– to find solutions at any price. Today, after recent events, Mexico has managed to occupy a place on Washington’s agenda almost as important as Ukraine. And it’s not just because for the first time a Mexican president – with a report on human rights in hand issued by the US State Department – has said to stop politicking and even called them liars. It is not only for that, but because, curiously, President López Obrador has managed to get the Democrats and Republicans to agree on one thing and have a joint concern.
For political, personal and social reasons, concern about what the possible disappearance of the INE means is growing more and more. Lorenzo Córdova’s visit and tour of Washington, visiting different think tanks and meeting with such important figures as Brian Nichols, who serves as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, was – in my view – a serious political mistake. Although for the moment, and as you have already mentioned, his intentions are outside the political sphere and in reality he did it to highlight and demonstrate the serious danger that the institution that he still presides is suffering, then in that sense the visit can be considered a great success.
In addition to the hugs and the cartels, Washington is making use of recent events in Mexico to make two fundamental points. The first, that the guarantee of the electoral process has disappeared. The second, that the third power, the Judiciary, and the system that emanates from it is in serious and fundamental questioning due to the campaign of harassment and siege against the Minister President of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, Norma Lucía Piña Hernández.
The conflict is served and what is a key point is the fact that our President is not willing to engage in politics with the United States. López Obrador is willing to go down in history as the president who most expensively and most frontally stood up to the empire in difficulties in relation to the demand for respect for national sovereignty. It is a pity that the data does not accompany our President, since, in terms of intention, it is very difficult to disagree with him. Of course we agree to ask for dignity in treatment and respect for our principles of sovereignty. However, the problem is that the fundamental economic data, the country’s security data, the threading data –beyond the T-MEC, better levels of development–, these data do not accompany the brilliance of the dialectical positions that we adopt. All these data do not match or agree with what, morning after morning, the Mexican people have heard during the last five years.
Nothing is written. No one has won the elections yet. We do not know who will occupy the White House in 2024. But, although it seems that everything has been decided, the worst thing is that we still do not know who will be in the National Palace in 2024, or wherever it is decided to put the Presidency from now on. In the meantime, let’s not forget the fact that many fundamental elements of our economy and our peace depend directly on the United States. We are not hostages or colonized or dependent, but we do belong to a world and to an economic, political and social order that pushes us –as our geography does– to coincide or, at least, to match interests with the great republic of the north.
It is very easy to make demagogy discussing or saying that the political destruction that is being perpetrated in our country leads to questioning the result of the next elections. And that is just as legitimate as thinking that behind all this false war against the INE and its privileges, there is also the intention to make the loser win. Or, what amounts to the same thing, that the ground is being prepared so that any claim or questioning of the validity of the result completely stops political stability after the next elections.
From here it is very difficult to know how to articulate a way out when the political alternative is laminated and when the policy emanating from the dominant regime is increasingly selective, more violent and difficult. Through deeds and words, every day it becomes clearer that there is no real intention to continue being a country with a clear and efficient separation of powers. We are interested in justice, but we are not interested in the law. However, it is impossible to have justice without law. Without a true and clear respect for the laws, any democracy is doomed to fail.
At this moment we are touching the central neuralgic nerve of the democratic system and all this is being done through a political articulation based on the morning of each day. A series of speeches that previously had the mission of producing the monopoly of the truth, which was the truth of the regime, and that now has the mission of increasingly producing a path without alternatives for both Morena and the other players -a despite the fact that, at times, it seems that they do not exist– of the political alternatives.
Regarding the visit to Washington of the almost ex-president of the INE, Lorenzo Córdova, I would like to make just one comment. He is the leader of the highly attacked, both personally and institutionally, INE. However, in addition to the fact that the law does not allow it –since two years would have to pass after leaving office–, the electoral leader is not, nor in theory could he be, a clear political alternative. The steps that he is taking in his last days as head of the INE take him away from being a clear figure of the opposition. And if he doesn’t want it, he has to know that the best contribution he can make to the institute that he still presides over, and which, in my opinion, he has done with great efficiency and effectiveness, is to conclude his term by leaving through the front door of respectfully and without seeking confrontation, despite the fact that the other party does not think the same.
Despite the fact that the legal framework does not allow it, in today’s Mexico anything is possible and just as someone can destroy or try to destroy the public credibility of the highest electoral and judicial institutions in the morning, in the same way the administrator of the highly prestigious INE can simply become the solution of the political alternative of our country. If it happens, it is worth mentioning that this would be an unprecedented event, which would also lack a clear plan on continuity and without respecting the time necessary to solidify a change of this magnitude.
In the midst of a system that is going through a political crisis characterized by wanting to deliberately dispense with the laws, the difficult thing here is to define how to continue. We must clarify how we can sustain the fact that –to give an example– a law can prevent a person from being a presidential candidate, as is the case of Córdova, but that the legal framework does not prevent the violation of that same set of laws had to be stopped dead on a Friday afternoon by freezing plan B. During this time there is one thing that has not been understood or has not been wanted to be understood, which is that in order to change constitutions, regimes and laws, it is necessary to do it from law to law. Otherwise, the result may be similar to what we are having in Mexico, which is nothing more than nonsense. Plan B sought to be the beginning of the end of the INE, however, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation -for the moment- has decided to suspend its application.
From now on, just as it cannot be said that the laws only work for their own benefit, the current regime is forced either to open a constitutional process seeking to produce a complete change -not only dialectical through the insults said in the morning, but from the legal structure – or to accept that this is their biggest political defeat since July 1, 2018. And it is all due to a simple reason, which is that we cannot be a one-man country. Also, we are not alone. Without going any further, next door –although in crisis– we still have the remains of the largest empire that has ever existed on Earth.
