Protests against Enrique Peña Nieto as well as his administration have once again become relevant due to a recent wave of discomfort perceived within social networks. This time, the public outcry attempts to scrap the controversial initiative included in the Law of Telecommunications and Radio Broadcasting that the President sent to the Senate at the end of last month (and apparently, he was successful with this task). In its original drafting, the Executive proposal sets out a discretionary censorship of content as well as a deliberate signal interruption whenever authorities deem as necessary; likewise, it also weakens the powers of the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT) and takes into account issues such as the suspension of resolutions of the “autonomous” body due to amparo (Constitutional protection) trials, which may protect major economic stakeholders. Although it is likely that protests will end up by rectifying some of the most controversial issues within the draft, the possibility of ending up with a weakened regulating body that allows the television duopoly to sustain its privileges at the expense of consumers and the nation’s competitiveness.
It seems that the current government has benefited from the fact that public opinion is focused towards issues that are not of the highest priority. For instance, the reform dealing with transparency and access to public information that was approved in Congress just a few months ago was put to a thorough revision after several complaints coming from the civil society. Beyond achieving its objectives, changes led to an ambiguous interpretation that ended up limiting the autonomy of the regulating body. Similarly, the tax reform caused several protests that focused the attention on preventing the controversial proposal of raising VAT in school fees and household rents while at the same time, the fiscal miscellaneous resolution, something that is hardly the integral reform that the country needs and the government itself had proposed, was completely overlooked. It seems that the most controversial proposals reach society so they can later hail pyrrhic victories while the most relevant issues are ignored.
Likewise, the Executive Power has benefited from being within a pragmatic center ideology compared to the rest of political parties. In little more than year, the government has effortlessly gone through a liberal rhetoric regarding energy issues to a more protective discourse that – with the aid of PRD – was successful in approving the tax reform. The aforementioned was possible thanks to two main advantages: PRI, along with its allies, has a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, which guarantees the approval of its initiatives in at least one of the Congress’ sections and the lack of a political ideology that would bound it as leftwing or rightwing party has even enabled it to support opposing stances. In other words, PRI has managed to disguise its pragmatism because it lacks political guidelines that, thus, allow it to establish itself as a “centrist” party and prevent it from limiting towards a single political discourse. This certainly creates political benefits while also having financial drawbacks: the poor handling of the economy is not merely a coincidence.
Despite the Executive’s low approval ratings, there are no solid alternatives within the political horizon. PRI’s advantages are not limited to its capacity to establish the country’s agenda but also in its ability to enable small victories to both opposition parties as well as the civic society. Its strength relies in its mobilization capacity, something that, without a powerful leadership, is impossible for PAN or PRD to try and replicate except for a few specific locations. At the same time, it is clear that, in absence of the aforementioned leadership, as it happened in 2006, the mobilization capacity is severely decreased. Another way to put it is that Mexican society that has radically changed.
CIDAC
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