The electoral reform in Mexico. Will Win?
Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero
The proposal of the Fourth Transformation to renew the Mexican electoral system has ignited a singular debate to reconsider the democratic consolidation of the country. With everything and the polarization regarding the procedural and contentious sphere, the electoral institutions in Mexico have plunged into total disrepute. Organizations and courts that were configured as spaces to develop citizenship, legality and democratic political culture; they finally appeared like any other cacique corporatism space. The greatest seriousness corresponds to the onerous costs and the corruption of the legal-electoral structure in a society with so many deficiencies. Without wanting to admit it, the INE is one of the main institutions responsible for the Failed State, it negotiated to impose the worst rulers of all time.
Despite the cacique interests in the electoral fields, this has not been an obstacle to the development of intelligent proposals for many years. The history of electoral institutions is very interesting; however, it depresses how little influence it has had. Manlio Fabio Beltrones's contempt for Giovanni Sartori, for example, constitutes the constant of the invisible power that controls bureaucracies, budgets and progress of the INE/IFE/OPLES. All the effort to study the Mexican elections never served for anything, the Beltrones always prevented any attempt for a serious debate regarding the electoral system that Mexico needs. And there they remain. A few years ago, Denise Dresser terribly lambasted the INE, and now she defends it. What power do the Beltrons have to force someone like that?
Woldenberg, Reyes Heroles and hundreds of other electoral studies have pointed out the importance of Proportional Representation and the Second Round in Mexico. Multiple academics, study centers, thinkers from the different parties, have pointed out that a system of competition and proportionality is more important than the arbitrator. The country has always had excellent scholars of comparative electoral systems, but the political class does not listen or pay attention to them. They are good for student, doctrinal, training courses; but until there. The astonishment of the PRIANRD is ridiculous, they also had a formal academy in this regard.
Reinventing the electoral system in the country is essential to revive political parties and inhibit the promiscuous, turncoat and primitive alliances that the current state of affairs has led to. If the INE is not refounded, if the electoral system in the country is not changed, the political parties run the risk of becoming extinct and that the cacique de facto powers take the free rein of the country.
Political parties in Mexico are entities of public interest, they constitute the peaceful way to fight for power and the agonistic channel so that our differences flow, feed each other and learn. Without parties there is no democracy. The civic education schools are the parties, not the INE.
The political crisis in France is a scenario that must be taken into account for the Mexican case: without parties, any criminal can be president. Who is Macron? What does Macron represent? Nothingness, interventionism, imperialism, inside and outside France. French suicide is a reality and nobody does anything.
The INE must disappear so that the political parties return to their leading, partial, differentiated, intelligent, purposeful role. It is unfortunate the state of all the political parties in the country and to see the way in which the Cacique has closed the door for new party institutes.
Hopefully the debate and the conservation instinct of the political parties manage to design and implement an electoral reform that is right.