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The sense of nonsense
It is assumed, and it is a lot to assume, that politics must order political life itself, offer it meaning, direction, horizon. Or at least make discernible the problems and possible solutions, the challenges and dilemmas that are faced. And when politics is democratic, the different diagnoses, priorities, proposals that must be confronted and embellish the public debate emerge. These are all assumptions of a productive policycapable of generating collective causes that can make life in common better.
But of course, policies can be unleashed that negate all of the above. Self-referential policies, meaningless, nebulous, degrading public life. We have been in these situations since the ruling coalition itself announced the useless expedient of revoking the mandate. Let’s go by parts.
The president was elected to serve for a period of 5 years and ten months. So in principle if his opponents haven’t lifted a finger to displace him the whole exercise is unnecessary. He can and must fulfill his term because he was elected for it.
As anyone knows, it was necessary for the Legislature to lend itself to a reforming operation that violated two fundamental principles of any normative change: that it should not be retroactive and less ad hominem. It should not be retroactive because a new law should not be applied to anyone that modifies, ex post, the assumptions under which they were appointed or elected. Do you remember the sad case of the governor of Baja California who wanted to extend his government term once he had already been elected for two years? Well, in the same way, the conditions of the election of AMLO “following the atole”. In any case, the new provision should have entered into force for the next government. But no. The reform was not only designed with retroactive effects, but also had a transparent dedication and petitioner.
But beyond that flagrant anomaly it is already in the Constitution. It is assumed ( once more) that this provision exists to build an eventual exit route when a popular outcry is unleashed for the head of the Executive to leave office. And what have we observed? That both the collection of signatures to request the revocation of the mandate and the campaign to participate in the aforementioned referendum are carried out by supporters of the president, who have deployed human, logistical and financial resources, as if it were an epic, while the opposition they look from afar and without much fuss at the traveling circus. An unnecessary mobilization. A capital nonsense because if the promoters of the consultation had not made an effort, López Obrador’s stay in the Presidency was guaranteed.
Are they or are they made? It would be the most basic question. But no. The sense of nonsense resides in the president’s ambition to align once more and once more a massive, differentiated society, overloaded with political nuances, in only two sides: with me or once morest me, which according to him means with the people or with the enemies from town. A crude and primitive construction, incapable of assimilating what Mexico is, but useful to continue feeding a mechanism that is not only unproductive, but highly destructive of what the country managed to build to offer a civilized channel for the coexistence of the plurality that animates it. (Well, it’s also a formula for the president’s beefy ego to expand a bit more.)
Professor at UNAM
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