The problem with Mexico: 25 theses

The problem with Mexico and especially with Mexican elections is that:

1. Due to poor design, mistakes of key functionaries, or lack of legitimacy, institutions remain weak.
2. Candidates, party leaders, and key functionaries of the federal and local governments in charge of the institutions, the federal electoral authority (Instituto Federal Electoral) included, dismissed painful recent experiences emphasizing short-term goals over long-term aims.
3. The election, especially the TV and radio ads, became a mudslinging contest.
4. The intensity of the attacks plays now a key role in preventing agreements among the political forces.
5. To think that “such is the modern way of a democratic polity” is misleading and appears as an ad-hoc response of the PAN to justify what was a witch-hunting campaign against López Obrador.
6. The TV and radio, overwhelmingly owned by private corporations, emphasize their own political agendas over their commitment with truth and the free flow of opinions.
7. Despite improvements in the literacy rate, the readership of newspapers and magazines is low.
8. Access to Internet is heavily biased by income distribution.
9. Numbers 4 through 8 limit our ability to communicate with each other and to reach agreements.
10. That is why for a large number of people, the evidence presented by the IFE and the media about the July 2nd election is hard to believe.
11. That is also why many Mexicans are willing to embark in vast social mobilization to challenge the outcome of the election.
12. Recent efforts to improve access to electronic media, via community radio stations, have been blocked by the new laws regulating the media, one of the few reforms passed during the Fox administration.
13. Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in a region (Latin America) known by its awful patterns of income distribution. Income distribution inequality was not invented by López Obrador and it is not true that we need to grow (more) before distributing the wealth.
14. Party and congressional leaders have been unable to reach agreements to introduce a major tax reform to address income distribution inequality.
15. Big business owners are unwilling to support reforms to address income distribution inequality.
16. Blaming Andrés Manuel López Obrador of preaching “class struggle” is just a partial truth.
17. Another partial truth is blaming Fox for not addressing the structural sources of distribution inequality or to label him as a puppet of big business.
18. Another partial truth is to blame the PRI for these issues.
19. However, the three major parties in Mexico have played a key role in preventing, at different points in time and for selfish and opportunistic reasons, tax reforms to address income inequality and to release some of the social pressure created by it.
20. López Obrador needs to realize that his motives are not transparent and are not equally perceived by all the political actors in the country. For many of them he is using these features of Mexican reality for selfish purposes.
21. Most of these failures and the source for so many partial truths come from the fact that candidates and party leaders have little or no incentives to reach agreements to confront the issues at hand, as there are much more incentives to prevent agreements.
22. A weak presidency combined with a strong federalism, as in contemporary Mexico, makes harder for candidates and party leaders to reach agreements and hampers the chances to consolidate democracy.
23. There is little or no interest among the political elites to talk about possible changes to presidentialism.
24. The only option presented so far to address the maladies of presidentialism, that of ballotage or a second round of presidential elections, have had negative outcomes in other countries in Latin America.
25. Right now, the best hope for Mexico is the Judiciary. However, a deep paradox exists there as the Judiciary was an institution heavily attacked by Andrés Manuel López Obrador during his run as mayor of Mexico City.

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