Reality is constructed on the accumulation of actions and inactions, decisions and omissions. What follows are some observations of the current Mexican moment:
1. The capture of “El Chapo” and the death of Nazario Moreno reopened the debate on security and the similarities or differences between the former administration and the present one. Are there differences? The evidence suggests that the only notable difference resides in the strategy of communication, in which President Peña-Nieto’s government excels. The government’s manner of acting suggests efficacy and competency but, at least in this matter, there’s not the least doubt but that luck also is on their side. Those responsible for both facts –the police, the Navy, the Army- have not changed in the past several years and it is clear that the current government does not have a new strategy, in the police-military arena, distinct from the former one. Time will tell whether their political management, through their representative (some say “proconsul”) in Michoacán, yields different results.
2. The dilemma of competition in the economy is more complex than the argument suggests concerning the declaration of “preponderance” emitted by the recently created the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFETEL). There is no doubt of the dominance of two companies in television and telecommunications, respectively, but the solutions are not simple, in good part due to the technological change that has been taking place over recent decades. There are various things that seem evident to me, some apparently contradictory: a) today’s great issue in telecommunications is access to mobile networks and to the Internet. The demand for liberalization, for equality of access for other companies, seems logical and conducive to the creation of a public good –interconnection- that, no ifs, ands, and buts about it, should have been the original criterion for privatization more than two decades ago. Interconnection is the critical issue; b) the issue about television has changed in one sense and remained the same in another: on the one hand, the future of television lies in closed networks, via the Internet and mobile phones, which the experts call “triple play”. This places the viability and economic attractiveness of open television in doubt, at least in the long term. On the other hand, the contempt and disapproval of opinion leaders with respect to the television conglomerates perhaps has less to do with their dominance than to the perception that they are less dedicated, as they affirm, to entertainment than to political manipulation. Within this perspective, Carlos Slim, who is not perceived in the political arena as a political actor but as an encumbered businessman, may well be a solution to the television dilemma: a credible competitor; c) IFETEL’s decision has yet to weigh in with concrete criteria, some of which, I suppose, would derive from the secondary law that remains to be passed in the Congress, but it is paramount for IFETEL’s board to realize that competition is a means, not an objective. By the same token, I wonder whether IFETEL acted autonomously, if it responded to the clamoring from the gallery that demanded “giving their comeuppance the big ones” or whether there is an institution with looming strength, capable of confronting the government and the power moguls even if this would make it unpopular, not a small matter in light of what’s to come on the energy front. No less important is the government’s statement that it will not seek the breakup of other big companies that, given Mexico’s history, are present in many a sector.
3. The celebration of the 85th anniversary of the founding of the PRI constitutes a milestone not so much for the longevity of the party, but for its evident resurrection, and all which that implies. Above all, the PRIists are making haste to recover legislative control in 2015 and all of their actions appear oriented toward achieving that objective. Seen in retrospect, it is evident that the PRI never left and the PANists, in perhaps their greatest turpitude, were never able to dismount the scaffolding that sustained their power networks. But the “return” of a PRI that never faced the need to reform itself says a lot about the political culture of the country and about the PRI’s exceptional characteristic as a disciplined, pragmatic lot, capable of constructing and reorganizing its electoral machinery, of developing novel methods for building up and fattening their clientele and centralizing the power. No one knows what will take place in next year’s elections, but there are three issues on which it’s worthwhile to reflect: first, the President’s popularity isn’t what it once was, possibly forecasting a 2015 not necessarily like 1991 when Salinas won by a landslide; second, the economy is always a crucial factor in electoral matters and the present situation is not exactly buoyant; finally, both the PAN, as well as the Left, finds itself cowering in chaos, each of its own nature. It may be that the most pertinent question is not so much whether the PRI will dominate the next electoral processes and more about whether other parties will be capable of resurging as seasoned, capable checks and counterweights before a party that may no longer be a “state party” but that has proven an amazing ability to impose itself because of the weakness of the opposition, as the Pact for Mexico itself shows. On the side of the PRI, the question is which of the PRIs would dominate the future, because its historical nature as a party of coteries remains alive and kicking.
4. Perhaps the most interesting thing for 2015 might be the battle for Mexico City, which PRD has held since its inception in 1997. Some, in the Left, will seek to convert it into a state (with all the complexities that that entails, not unlike DC, Moscow or Paris); others, in PRI, would wish to regain it electorally. Surely no one will get its druthers, but in the PRI the Foxist battle cry, paraphrased here, of “get the PRD out of the DF”, no doubt reverberates.
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