Transfuguism and Plot. The characteristics of the transition via elections
August 17, 2020Diego Martin Velázquez Caballero
https://www.semanarioelreto.com/single-post/2020/08/17/Transfuguismo-y-Contubernio-Las-caracter%C3%ADsticas-de-la-transici%C3%B3n-v%C3%ADa-elecciones
Why does Mexico continue under the electoral route scheme to build its democracy? Although political scientists called the model of the Mexican transition “Via Competitive Elections”, the data on corruption, fraud, vote buying and corporatism leave much to be desired about the importance of the Mexican electoral system. Rather, the electoral system becomes the judicial political arena where political factions resolve their differences. The Mexican transition should be called: Political transition via judicialized elections. And if it is remembered that the Mexican political system and the foundations of the Nation State were built by lawyers, perhaps this characterization is understood. Lately, the Mexican judicial system created mediation structures and houses of justice precisely to demonstrate the importance of reaching agreements due to the prolonged and rugged condition that judicializing things implies. The Mexican judicial system is corrupt, incompetent and incapable of providing justice. The judicial processes in Mexico are dark, onerous and long - if not infinite - that few decide and endure to maintain. Hence, “mediation” has been implemented as a cultural and economic way to accommodate reparation, but not justice, in litigation.
However, the creation of the Mexican electoral system generated a special section of the contentious sphere in electoral processes, few countries in democratic consolidation have special courts for electoral matters and political rights trials. In reality, these ways constitute spaces for collusion and a pact - not always honest or definitive - that tempers the radicalization of the actors.
Justice is unattainable and, therefore, perhaps these forms are the best possible in cultures such as Mexico. The electoral system of our country has not been able to combat the vices that characterize the political tradition, although citizenship allows us to recover evidence of improper acts or contradictions to inform public opinion in the way that the electoral course had, this is not a guarantee of a fair electoral process, power groups negotiate and the results can be convenient or immoral to society. In the end, it is the correlation of forces that determines the product of the negotiation. Democracy, then, becomes the marketing of the popular will.
Although this was proposed as an innovator in the creation of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), now INE (National Electoral Institute), in reality it happened within the Institutional Revolutionary Party and only with the sectors that made up the revolutionary coalition. The priistologists wondered about the mode of distribution of the candidacies in the PRI and the presidential succession, thanks to hermeneutic studies (Garrido, Ai Camp, Crespo), mathematical (Gil / Schmidt) and fictional (Castañeda and Álvarez Mosqueda), we found a negotiating table where the cliques made agreements and had radical measures to enforce them. The president of the republic was a “primus inter pares”, the great hegemonic elector; but, a mortal god. Every political succession involved this form of negotiations. The model was transferred to the Mexican electoral system in its judicial dimension and, now, instead of negotiating the PRI cliques, they negotiate the oligarchies of the parties - where, by the way, many PRI members were transferred.
Manuel Camacho Solís always held the idea of a change without rupture, which is why, perhaps, in the form of inertia, that has come to mean the Mexican electoral system. A romantic table of national reconciliation will hardly occur where a form of stony and eternal political order is defined. Spain, Chile, Greece, Portugal and the countries of the ex-communist bloc, built a form of political negotiation that consolidated democracy in a dynamic way unlike our country. The unfortunate thing about the Mexican case is that the judicialization-negotiation does not imply electoral justice or true democracy, but basic agreements to overcome political competition and where, as in the Mexican legal system, those who have more money to buy the judges and do the best show, they are what they manage to impose. The recent scandal of the oil company Odebrecht and its derivations reveal the way in which corrupt lobbying influences elections and the shaping of economic interests. Why haven't the political registration of the PRI and PAN been taken away?
Manuel Camacho Solís, one of the main political strategists of salinism and lopezobradorism, proposed the idea of "change without rupture" for the Mexican political system, since doing so would generate ruptures, breaks, fragmentations, could lead the country to catastrophic scenarios of ungovernability and dissolution. Like Jesús Reyes Heroles, time and reality have come to prove them right. Mexico still lives in the old regime and the more it tries to get out of that space, the more it ends up sinking and tying the historical knots of the Mexican political system.
The political transition consists of a historical break, a change of regime from the theoretical perspective that you want to propose. This phenomenon has not occurred in Mexico, the political alternations move under the protocol of the old regime.
With Morena and AMLO, the phenomenon of political participation occurred, which generated a massive vote to avoid fraud and electoral bureaucratic tricks. However, the pragmatic alliances of the National Regeneration Movement fill Q4 with contradictions and make López Obrador's campaign promises unfeasible. Despite the fact that President Andrés Manuel enjoys a broad electoral base, he has had to coexist with prianism and, even, admit radical ultra-right cadres into the public administration. In the integration process to reach state and federal governments, Morena included eminent politicians from Acción Nacional as well as Catholic nationalist groups and humanist businessmen, who had not found candidates in the PAN or were excluded. AMLO received, uncritically, a considerable number of intransigent integral Catholics linked, or not, to the reserved societies and who occupy important positions in the public administration at the federal and state levels.
The right is experiencing a process of disintegration of the party that traditionally brought them together. The PAN presidential candidacy and the 2018 electoral process generated a civil war of the right-wing factions that culminated in the departure of several cadres and contingents of the PAN to independent movements and the National Regeneration Movement.
Jean Meyer wonders how a government would have had from the synarchist perspective. By 2000, and twelve years later, Mexico could not to establish the government that the Cristeros imagined, nor that that the Christian democratic intellectuals proposed.
Neoliberalism was an economic regime that subordinated politics to its interests without contempt for who governs. Thus, then, rather than building a “Mary Help of Christians” throughout the country, what happened was the establishment of a series of pacts with various powers of the matter –particularly drug trafficking– to maintain governance. National Action could not make a regime change, a historical break; on the contrary, the electoral arena is the negotiating table, the Moncloa Pact, where the actors negotiate the interests of the citizens.
The PAN was characterized by taking the teaching corporatism and caciquil power to correct political alternations and, at least, know the public administration at the federal and state levels. Suddenly, they appeared as respectable PAN members, former members of the Revolutionary Family and the neo-PRI generations. During the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, a PRI administration of the country can be seen in the formulation of public policies such as "The Pact for Mexico" and the electoral negotiation-agreement.
In contrast to the Catholic nationalist politicians who went to MORENA, some more decided to integrate front groups such as FRENA (Frente Nacional Anti-Amlo) and, in an ambiguous way, radicalize their positions so that the yunquistas and Tecos, who are in the administration public of Morena, obtain better positions and charges; Or, to form a political position that - now - is concentrated in the Citizen Movement or in local political institutes that aspire to build citizen candidacies away from the progressivism that 4T represents and according to the development of the political crisis as a result of COVID and its effects . Also, abandoned from the PAN, is a religious right that opts for an apocalyptic discourse and points out the importance of Donald Trump being re-elected to contrast the war waged against Western culture by Asian countries - particularly China - and Islam - fundamentally the one developed in Europe. For this last trend, what is important is that a West is formed around the United States and that the Catholic Church is in charge of purifying Christianity based on the geopolitical model of Eastern Europe. The members of the apocalyptic right, even delegitimize the papal authority of Mario Bergoglio and opt for a Tridentine tendency close to Ratzinger.
The element that will define the behavior of religious rights is constituted by the North American elections. At the geopolitical level they will have to decide whether to support Biden or Trump, according to the hegemony of Russia and China to develop. The advance of Chinese civilization is more dangerous for uncompromising integral Catholicism since the current government is not distinguished by religious tolerance and respect for human rights that Catholicism has found in other societies, likewise, because within China, the Catholic Church is insignificant.
Hence, while Catholic nationalists within the Morenoite government advance and remain silent, radical Catholic groups in FRENA and Movimiento Ciudadano, rebuild the anti-communist rhetoric (Although they do not directly attack China) and seek to promote a crusade for Western civilization that approximates Donald Trump as the contemporary Saint George or Ronald Reagan.
AMLO has fallen into the vicious circle of Mexican-style negotiations. Catholic nationalism operates as it has always been doing. In a long-term perspective, the Empire of the Holy See seizes every opportunity. Morena is in detention and unable to fulfill her campaign promises. This is a point in favor of the groups that do not have the same flags as Morena and many points against those who voted for Morena and expected great transformations. Morena will deliver little of what he promised in the campaign and runs the risk of being a great disappointment.