How democratic is López Obrador?

A government is more democratic the less power is concentrated in a single person, on the contrary, the more power the head of government concentrates in his person, the political system will be less democratic.

The first condition for a country to be considered a democracy is the division of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial. A federal government is also more democratic than a centralist government and when it moves towards greater citizen participation, it goes from a representative democracy to a participatory democracy.

In our country, democratic progress has been slow and it was not until 1997 that an authentic division of powers was achieved with the loss of the PRI majority in the Chamber of Deputies, as well as with the restructuring promoted by President Zedillo to give more autonomy. to the judiciary. The participation of citizens in our political system has always been very limited and only in the last few years had it been possible to open up some spaces for civil organizations within the government.

With López Obrador, many of these advances have been reversed. In the case of the Court, his intervention to propose, and in the event of a lack of agreement in the Senate, appointing ministers, has allowed him to control the possibility of rejecting unconstitutional laws proposed by the president and approved by the majority of Morena in congress. The judiciary has been subject to permanent pressure from the president and his decision to control the Court.

In the case of federalism, the control that the president has of the federal budget has turned governors into unconditional allies if they want to count on their good will for works and support. Civil society organizations have simply been ignored, calling for consultations by show of hands, totally manipulated.

In the case of the legislative power, it has achieved, as never before seen, a congress that passes all its initiatives without changing a comma. Even in the times of the most concentrated PRI presidentialism, Congress had never been just an office of parts of the president as it is today.

During the PRI, the initiatives that the president sent to the chambers had been previously discussed and agreed with the worker and peasant sectors, with representatives of the private sector and governors, so that when they arrived, they were automatically approved by the deputies and senators. .

Currently, these sectors and representatives have lost strength and the initiatives sent by President Lopez Obrador have only his point of view and his support and thanks to the control he has over the majority of Congress and the consequences that voting would have for any Morena legislator. against, are approved automatically, without changes and in most cases without discussion.

Lopez Obrador says that he is a democrat, the reality is different, during his government there has been a step back in the autonomy of the legislative and judicial powers, in federalism and in what would be a participatory democracy. If we add to this his intention to control the INE by intervening in the appointment of councilors and progress in militarization, we are living one of the least democratic six-year terms of the last 90 years.