López Obrador, after a Morena rally in June 2016.
Carlos Slim is attributed with the phrase addressed to his fellow businessmen "calm down, don't get excited, hold on... he is a transitional president", referring, obviously, to Andrés Manuel López Obrador (collected in financial columns, among others that of Darío Celis) .
As in so many other issues, the practical philosophy of the richest man in Mexico is not wrong.
It is not only an accurate diagnosis but also a possible starting point to build a strategy to follow.
Diagnosis first.
Slim does not say, "calm down, it's a parenthesis" or "wait for the waters to return to their course and go back to the way they were before."
No, he speaks and rightly so of a transition;
that is to say, that we are on the way to something different from what existed before the arrival of the Government of the 4T.
And it is that the workshop is here to stay, as has been repeatedly reasoned in this space.
Either because left-wing populism is the wind that runs through Latin America, or because the discontent of the impoverished majorities has already found its way to the polls, or simply because López Obrador won the political battles he had to win from the Palace and reduced the opposition to a pitiful disability.
Probably a mixture of all of them, although the latter, it seems to me, has more weight.
The Government of López Obrador is one of "transition" among other reasons because the next Government will be a Obradorist. There are many uncertainties in life in Mexico, but this is not one of them. Morena will continue to win elections as it was shown in the territorial elections last year and, everything indicates, it will be shown in those of 2022. A total of seven governorships will be in dispute before the end of the six-year term and in five of them it is considered that the workshop the victory assured, but it could well be seven.
It currently governs 17 states and could end up controlling 23 or 24 (of the total of 32 that exist in the country). And as the Portuguese navigators would say “and if there were more sea, we would have gone further”. That is to say, Morena will not end up painting the national geography this six-year term simply because the change in the other entities is not on the electoral calendar. With this inertia and in view of the blurring of the opposition, it is strange to consider any other outcome that is not the victory of an official candidate in 2024. A conclusion that does not result from putting into play one's own empathy or antipathy, but from the analysis of the correlation of forces.
If this is the diagnosis, there are two possible strategies for those who are nervous about the workshop we have today (the businessmen to whom Slim addresses his phrase, for example). First, the frontal opposition. Although there is no way to beat Morena in the presidential election, there is a way to limit her victory in the chambers to, among other things, force the next president to negotiate the constitutional changes that he seeks. Additionally, the opposition political actors can fight, as they have been doing, to stop or hinder with legal actions and other political resources the advance of the 4T reforms that they consider adverse to their vision of the country. In short, it would be a task that, although it seeks modest objectives, can mitigate its own losses or qualify the triumphs of the party in power.
But there is another strategy that Slim is probably referring to without saying it (my interpretation, not his). If it is not possible against the construction industry, it is possible not to confront it but to put oneself in a position to modify or improve it. If the Government of the 4T constitutes a transition and one modality of it will continue in the immediate future, instead of fighting it, they could well be attentive to influencing it at the right times.
Perhaps there is not much space in the two “effective” years that AMLO has left (in 2024 the main interlocutor is no longer the president but the candidate). I guess that's where Slim's call for patience comes from. The style of the current president is combative, polarizing and over-politicized; strictly attached to their phobias and affiliations and very charged with the feeling of indignation and rage of the majority who are dissatisfied with the system. In that sense, he has been a fighter, rather than a statesman, dedicated to elbowing and shoving his way in search of a different route. He did not achieve much economically and socially, due to circumstances whose account is beyond the limits of this article, but in political terms he laid the foundations for a trans-exennial project.
His successor will face a different scenario.
On the path opened with machetes you can flatten, cement and decorate what was left in black work.
Majorities would have hailed the president who spoke on their behalf for the first time and expressed their grievances and resentments, but the one who follows will have to offer more than that: jobs and well-being.
And for this you will need to activate the forces of the market.
This offers a favorable terrain to promote, from within and from without, a second-generation workshop.
One that without betraying the flags of the founder is capable of updating them in the face of the challenges presented by the 21st century.
One that is less concerned with making grievances visible and more concerned with finding ways to involve those responsible in resolving them.
It seems to me that any of the candidates chosen by the Obrador will have grown up in political and historical circumstances different from those of the movement's precursor.
Unlike AMLO, Claudia Sheinbaum, Marcelo Ebrard or Adán López have spent more time as public officials than opposition fighters.
That would make them different presidents, especially since the toughest task, confrontation and political solidification, would have already been done.
“If you can't beat your enemy, join him”, the classics used to say and they have not really been able to beat him.
jorgezepedap@
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