Mexico? The resurrection of the PRI?
By: Beatrice E. Rangel - 11/09/2024
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Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has carefully prepared the end of his mandate. He successfully crowned the regional and departmental elections as well as those of the parliament by establishing Morena as the majority force in Mexico. The political control obtained by Morena in the elections is only comparable to that instituted by the PRI and exploited for almost seventy years. Lopez Obrador comes from that stock and as a ruler he has strived to replicate the model that Mario Vargas Llosa described as the perfect dictatorship.
It is a model with a façade of democracy in which the people vote but do not elect and all powers are controlled by the presidency, which constitutes a sort of super power that absorbs the command functions of the rest of the institutions.
This model, which is a hybrid between the Aztec system of government and the centralized planning system of 20th century socialism, has little chance of surviving in this 21st century, in which the forces of the economy are promoting decentralization and civil societies around the world have begun to take on the republican role that was conspicuous by its absence throughout the 20th century.
In the case of Mexico, the restoration of the model of government designed by the founders of the PRI faces additional obstacles. The first and most significant of these is the culture of the leader who will take the reins of the country as of October 1 of this year.
Ms. Sheinbaum is an academic and highly respected environmental engineering professional. Half of her life has been spent under the democratic reform rules that made Mexico a true republic. Her rise in society has been sponsored by the economic traction created by the free trade agreement with the United States. And before entering politics she was a successful businesswoman. All these characteristics lead one to think that Ms. Sheinbaum has not been part of the totalitarian framework that preceded the free trade agreement with the United States and therefore will hardly replicate it. Furthermore, as a businesswoman she understands the dynamics of wealth creation. This dynamic is based on clear and stable rules, of universal application and freedom to carry out production tasks. Hence her relative silence in the face of Lopez Obrador's final attack on the judiciary.
As for the strategic direction of her mandate, in various interviews given to leading media outlets around the world, Ms. Sheinbaum affirms that she will concentrate on taking full advantage of the economic advantages that Mexico enjoys through the industrial development strategy known as near shoring. This consists of locating manufacturing tasks in Mexico to serve the North American market from there. Near shoring represents a huge injection of investment to create new production plants. This creates jobs and, with them, frees families from poverty.
A focus on promoting near shoring presupposes the stability of the regulatory framework and respect for freedom of enterprise and private property.
An over-centralized command structure and an unstable legal framework are a recipe for aborting near shoring or reducing its size.
Politically, Ms. Sheinbaum's aspirations to develop a historic administration riding on the wings of near-shoring could become the turning point for Morena. Because for an important faction of that movement, the deepening of relations of any kind with the United States is anathema. This faction will try to change the president's plans in a futile attempt to develop the Mexican economy via the protection of the internal market. And when those efforts do not bear fruit, they will probably abandon ship. The other faction, which we will call the reformist faction, will follow the leader and very possibly become a modern democratic force in the style of many European socialist parties.
It would therefore seem that, despite the efforts of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to resurrect the PRI, the leadership elected by Mexicans does not seem to be interested in turning back the clock of history.
«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».