The problem with the political-electoral reform proposals that, from the one in 1977, swarm about the scenario after each election is that their motivation is not constructive but rather arises from a spirit of revenge and impotence. Revenge for not having won, impotence for being unable to win. From there, the contents of the initiatives that emerge and that are being discussed at present have little to do with the problems facing the country, those that require solutions and actions to advance in both the political arena as well in the economy, and that respond exclusively to the relative positions of the actors at this moment in time. Consequently, it’s no accident that every reform that there has been in the last decades has tended to make the governing of the country more difficult instead of easier.
The 1977 reform proposed broadening the legal and legitimate space of the political contest (or, at least, the representation thereof). From then on, the reforms, all of them, have been oriented toward skewing the results, weakening the presidency or making the electoral and legislative process more complex, respectively. None focuses on the sole undertaking that is important: to construct a functional political system with accountability to the citizen and one that makes a beeline toward prosperity. As simple as that.
Mexico’s problem is one of essence: how is it going to govern itself. That’s the issue that should be tended to and that should transcend the prescriptions being floated around. In their most minimal expression, the necessary actions would have to deal with the structure of the presidency and its instruments, the capacity to construct legislative majorities and the equilibrium between the two branches of government. However, the existing reform proposals deal with the immediate point in time: how to weaken the adversary and strengthen oneself. When the PAN was in the presidency, the PRI proposed fortifying the legislative; today it’s the PAN that’s driving this very proposal. Everything is short term and dedicated. There is no long term vision.
Implicitly, all of the parties recognize that the essential problem is one of governance. Were this not the case, none of them would have endorsed the Pact for Mexico. The Pact is a proxy that makes up for the inexistence of a mechanism that facilitates the construction of legislative majorities, a condition necessary for the approval of relevant reforms as well as for imparting stability and viability to the government of the day. There are societies that, for historic or cultural reasons, expedite this path, but ours not only rejects it, but also stigmatizes it: that’s how the neologism concertacesión (i.e. conceding rather than compromising) came into being. To negotiate, to forge a pact, to reach agreement among different political groupings is not something exceedingly Mexican: any agreement is viewed as capitulation, hence out of the question. Thus, paradoxically, instead of advancing reforms susceptible of changing reality for the better, everyone prefers an absurd consensus whose only benefit is that the costs are shared. But, deep down, there is also a lesson here: lacking a functional institutional structure, the need for consensus is a form of recognizing that what exists is not adequate and that other mechanisms are required to govern effectively.
In this context, the Pact is a new breed of consensus: while not perfect nor resolving the internal conflicts within each of the political forces, it empowers a partial functionality. Not surprisingly, the decision has been made to process prickly matters, such as those of energy, outside of the Pact, another indication that the problem is one of governance and of the lack of institutions to achieve it.
Mexican politics confronts two challenges: governance and accountability. Neither can be fixed with a second electoral round nor, by itself, with reelection. Governance requires a strong government as well as a limited government, thus the reform must respond to these issues or it will become another of the many that are approved once they have been duly “tropicalized”, watered down and submitted to a consensus. This to not affect any special interest or to exert any impact on the reality other than that of extolling the proponents’ vanity (while, of course, complicating political life even more so). The alternative would be for the reform, a true reform, to be advanced from the power that everyone else wants to dilute, that is, from the presidency.
At the heart of the question of governance lies the system of government that was constructed for an era that in no way resembles the current one. At the end of the Revolution, Calles structured a system that consolidated all of the power in one person who, within the context of a population that was relatively small, very controlled and isolated from the rest of the world, permitted some decades of peace and prosperity. Today, the Mexican population is a diverse and disperse society, very large in size and totally integrated into the commercial, technological, productive and criminal circuits of the world: from the modest Chiapanecan Indian who lives in Chicago to the Querétaro-based supplier of auto parts for the most modern car that is about to come off the assembly line at a factory in Yokohama, but also including the businessman hounded by extortion who lives in Torreón. The country requires a system of government that is appropriate for these new realities, distinct as they are from those of long ago.
The problem with proposals like those of the PAN-PRD is that they do not pay heed to the central matter. They limit themselves to their own interests without recognizing the essential. Contrary to the heart of their proposal, Mexico calls for a strong presidency, but this must be limited by effective mechanisms of accountability. One of these mechanisms, the most important one, has to be the legislative power, which also must be reformed to facilitate the construction of majorities (which would render the Pact unnecessary), not by artificial means such as modifying the “governability clause” of the current electoral law (that confers an automatic legislative majority to the party that wins more than 42.8% of the vote), but rather through incentives that satisfy another of the requisites of a functional political system: that politicians render accounts to the citizen and not to their political party bosses. Reelection could be a way to achieve this.
A true reform will only be effective the day that the country lives under the rule of law, which implies one very simple thing: in the words of Fukuyama, “that the individual holding political power feels bound by the law”, that is, that he cannot do “whatever he so desires”, but that his power is limited, which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have it or that he cannot employ it to govern effectively in order to generate prosperity. A reform with a spirit of revenge or impotence at its source will never achieve this.
The opposition parties appear to be decided on conditioning their legislative support to the approval of another electoral reform. It would be much more transcendent if the president himself were the one to propose a real, transformative political reform, one that would give the country viability for decades and not only until the next revenge, I mean election.
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