The Bonsai Parties

The Bonsai Parties

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Small parties have historically played a key role as intermediaries for diverse interests within the Mexican political system.

They have often been considered mercenary actors implementing strategies aimed at perpetuating the status quo.

Prominent examples include the Green Party of Mexico and the Labor Party: the former with a deeply questionable track record, while the latter illustrates the serious contradictions between social liberalism and Maoist ideologies.

Paradoxically, these actors represent part of the commitment to building democracy that drives the second phase of the Fourth Transformation.

In the complex Mexican political landscape, it is difficult to escape the veto power that small parties have acquired.

Their influence, though discreet, has become considerable.

During the years of the hegemonic party, they were mere satellites at the service of centralized presidentialism.

But in the neoliberal era, they acquired disproportionate power, becoming arbiters that facilitated the executive branch's ability to govern at a considerable cost.

The big question now is: what will their role and political price be in the face of challenges posed by phenomena such as imperialist Trumpism?

There is no doubt that these political forces have perfected a form of blackmail that could be harmful to society and even to the political systems of Mexico and its northern neighbor, the United States.

The virtual tie in the struggle for hegemony and the inability to reconcile the country's main socioeconomic currents reveal a serious problem of factionalism and a lack of political understanding.

It is crucial to find ways to overcome the gridlock represented by these empowered small parties.

One necessary alternative would be the implementation of a runoff election for the main public offices in Mexico.

While the phenomenon known as ephebocracy highlights one of the current ills of politics; However, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that "political dwarfism" is even more damaging, as it fuels private interests at the expense of the common good.

Both the Green Party and the Labor Party have demonstrated a remarkable ability to capitalize on their manipulative capacity, thus becoming decisive vehicles for shaping the country's public agenda.

This raises a troubling question: could these small parties be the force that, as General Porfirio Díaz feared, would ultimately weaken not only Mexico but also the United States? History teaches us that the greatest cataclysms often stem from a lack of attention to detail.

Perhaps, after all, the great transformation lies in the seemingly modest interests of those who see themselves as small-time reformers.

Another Stripe on the Tiger

 Another Stripe on the Tiger

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Mexico is at a breaking point institutionally. The most recent report from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, one of the most respected global authorities in measuring political systems, has reclassified our country. Mexico is no longer considered a democracy, but an electoral autocracy. This diagnosis coincides with the warnings that political scientist José Antonio Aguilar Rivera has issued regarding the erosion of Mexican liberalism. The decline is not an isolated event, but a seven-year process.

According to the assessment, the deterioration began after the 2018 elections and has accelerated under the current administration. The data is conclusive: Mexico now ranks below nations like India, Peru, and Senegal in its democratic standards. The world, in general, has regressed to levels of freedom comparable to 1978, but the Mexican case stands out for the speed of its transformation.

An electoral autocracy is a regime where elections are still held, but the playing field is so skewed that competition is artificial. Recent reforms are blamed for this regression. The reform of the judiciary to elect judges by popular vote is seen by experts as the capture of the last independent check on power.

By politicizing the courts, the balance of power disappears.The report details that freedom of expression is the first domino to fall.

Harassment of the press and attempts at censorship place the government among the top global offenders of the last decade. Differences and conflicts with civil society are also included in this category of curtailment of freedoms. The absolute control that Morena exercises over the executive and legislative branches has allowed it to dismantle the institutional framework that took decades to build.

In the words of experts like Aguilar Rivera, we are not returning to the hegemonic party system of the last century, but rather facing a new model that uses the legitimacy of the ballot box to suppress pluralism.V-Dem's warning is clear: when a democracy begins to autocratize, it is far more likely to collapse completely than to survive.

The democracy of the INE does not combine with popular democracy

 The democracy of the INE does not combine with popular democracy

Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero

Liberal democracy does not have a good strain in Mexican society due to the colonialist caste system; even this is known by its defenders who represent not a social class but the vertex benefited by the pigmentocracy.

The IFE/INE was a failure from the beginning, but it constituted a new space for negotiation between the political parties and the PRI, between the clerofascists and the populists, to carry out concessions and graduate the radical democratic impulse of the masses. The electoralist pact constituted a form of Spanish canovism, that is, trading power alternatively, as had been done before within the Revolutionary Family.

Democracy in Mexico, due to the nature of its social relations, is generated outside of the political parties and the INE. Even outside the government. It is corporate, neighborhood, populist, neighborhood, small-town, union, cooperative and school. Ordinary people develop spaces for collective action however they can, because the different levels of government do not attend to them. Society understood that "democracy via competitive elections" was the game of the PRI members turned defectors and accepted by the PAN and PRD.

While the powers that be, partisan institutes, the media, liberal intellectuals and aspirational bureaucracy; defends the INE thinking that Mexico is Denmark or the United States, Mexican society survives the governmental orphanage of all political parties and autonomous institutes.

Jacobo Molina's motu proprio resignation shows that the INE was a space of looting and corrupting neoliberalism, it does not even have the capacity to defend itself. Where are the “true democrats”? The INE self-destructs because it never defended democracy or developed a civic culture. The factions that controlled the institutional electoral environment are coup leaders or cheaters; even both. They go to direct confrontation with the presidency of the republic because, as Lorenzo Córdova said, they are not equal; They are worse.

Pablo González Casanova has insisted for several years that Mexican democracy does not go through political parties, the government and much less the INE. Participatory, collectivist and mutualist social mechanisms exist independently of all. May it continue like this for the good of all.

Woldenberg, Presidential?

 Woldenberg, Presidential?

Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero

The march in defense of the INE generated varied perspectives on the behavior of civil society and the conservative opposition in Mexico. One of the points that stands out is the proposal to place José Woldenberg as one of the candidates to lead the opposition candidacy for the presidency of the republic. In addition to the many significant errors that the march for the INE generated, this idea of ​​launching Woldenberg for the conquest of the federal government is a sign of the bias of the PRIANRD alliance and its affection for the Americanist referees.

During the final stage of the PRI's hegemony, the IFE developed more than a citizenization process, a stage of withdrawing control of the elections from the federal government. However, if one is to be honest, this reality never happened. The different governments, of the different parties, of the different administrative levels, get into the kitchen of the elections and nothing can be done to prevent it. Citizenship was a mask, cotton candy full of poison, to hide the truth, that the political and oligarchic class does not allow society to participate in the free election of its rulers. Even the ill-gotten citizenship was followed by the prosecution process that -as every Mexican knows- only benefits lawyers. In this last sense, for example, if legal intermediation has been more successful as an alternative mechanism to solve public and private legal problems, we already understand what judicialization means: corruption.

José Woldenberg did what he could, which was very little. It is true that independent elections were achieved that allowed alternation. But it didn't help much, democratic quality in Mexico never existed and the elections only allowed PRI members of all political parties to govern us.

Woldenberg's departure from the IFE ended up revealing a stinking and corrupt institution where the moches for the elections were arranged. It is not Woldenberg's fault but those who followed.

So, then, what could Woldenberg do now? Any. As he did in the nineties. Gradualist changes that never achieved something positive for Mexican democracy, there are the indicators of the three decades of democratic transition via competitive elections. The Mexican transition lacked democrats and the IFE/INE is the one that needs it the most.

Worse still, according to Maurice Duverger's elitist theory regarding Real and Apparent Bosses. The march in defense of the INE revealed the inner circle that rules over Woldenberg, you don't need to be a great political scientist to understand that they are using, corrupting, the figure of Woldenberg to implement his disgusting interests. Woldenberg in the presidency would be a puppet of the worst Mexicans.