The Culture of Peace, Opacity and Legislative Assault I

A president cannot deceive, he can only mislead.

José Francisco Ruiz Massieu

The health of the president in any country is a matter of general interest and national security. The absence of the president in the media due to an alleged contagion of Covid and -above all- the erratic handling of information by his collaborators created a vacuum, most likely intentionally, to raise a dense smoke screen and thus distract attention from the national issues that concern more and more Mexicans, particularly the legislative assault that occurred in the Chamber of Deputies last week.

The oversight organized by the tenant of the National Palace was dissipated with a long video broadcast on social networks, in which he said he was in good health and denied his collaborators.

While everyone was distracted by the effects of the erratic information management of the president’s health condition, the deputies of the ruling party and his satellites approved, using the steamroller technique, a series of reforms and new laws that, without being read or discussed, without going through commissions or having been ruled, they were sent to the Senate where their members of the government bloc, after receiving instructions from their leader during the conclave in the National Palace, to which their “corcholatas” also attended, approved them in the dark, honoring the president’s policy of opacity regardless of the forms or the consequences. In an absolute mess in a strange session held in the patio of the Xicoténcatl mansion on Friday night and Saturday morning, with the absence of opposition senators, they operated with a questionable quorum. It is a sign of disloyalty to the Constitution, to democracy and to the country of the legislators of the official parties.

Among the laws that they approved are the one that disappears the Institute of Health for Well-being (Insabi), which is added to the list of failed occurrences after leaving 15 million Mexicans (almost three times the population of Denmark) without health services , having dropped life expectancy to 1991 levels and having access to the 102 billion pesos from the Protection Fund against Catastrophic Expenses whose fate is uncertain. Its functions are transferred to the new IMSS Bienestar model; the one that disappears the Financiera Nacional de Desarrollo Agropecuario, Rural, Forestal y Pesquero, which was a rural development banking institution, and the one that disrupts the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) that will eliminate all its trusts, will have a Governing Board made up of representatives of the secretariats of National Defense and the Navy, among others, which will define the budget, scholarships and postgraduate courses, as well as topics on the development of science and technology in the country. Neither academics nor scientists will have a vote in the decisions of the now “Conahcyt” and they will only be heard at the invitation of the Governing Board itself.

Some of the approved provisions will be toxic for the productive sector and others increase the intervention of the military in national life such as tourism and air control, which we will comment on in subsequent installments.

The denigrating servility dispensed by the legislators of the parties related to the president has translated into the approval of laws that they were not aware of, the neutralization of the Legislative Branch and the division of powers.

In the aforementioned conclave, the president reiterated his instruction to disappear the INAI and that its functions be assigned to the Superior Audit of the Federation, which would allow, according to the president, an annual saving of one billion pesos and thus stop that ” waste, superfluous expenses, privileges continue to be encouraged.” Regarding this supposed saving, it cannot be ignored that the difference between the price at which the government auctioned off the presidential plane and its cost is equivalent to six times the INAI’s annual budget. Remember that, as the president himself declared several times several years ago, the plane had a cost of 7,500 million pesos and he wasted it at 1,659, more than 5,800 million Mexican pesos were thrown away.

Various investigations carried out by prestigious organizations, based on information provided by the aforementioned INAI, revealed that in the “mornings” held between 2019 and 2022 the statements and statements of the president contained inaccuracies and lies that contributed to the growing opacity, as well as the discovery of multiple acts of corruption of his administration such as that of Segalmex.

A government prone to opacity and lies, which ignores that the truth gives value to the word, contributes to a great extent to the deterioration of the social fabric and to a more tense polarization, in addition to gravitating against the fundamental conditions on which the arrangement is based. democracy, the culture of peace and general welfare.

From the legislative monstrosity approved in recent days by the legislators of the official parties in an improvised, untidy manner, lacking expertise and parliamentary dignity, it is very probable that -finally- not all the provisions can enter into force, above all because they have violated the legislative process and in some cases are contrary to the Magna Carta. It will be in the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation where the next chapter of this story will take place in which, asserting the Constitution, the plan will have to be corrected again to the legislators and the president.

This explains the expressions of contempt towards the Judiciary and the president’s incitement to attack the Ministers, the violent protests, as well as the presence of joints and direct physical attacks outside the Court’s headquarters. It is noteworthy the protection that is granted to the National Palace and its tenant with steel fences before the celebration of any march or peaceful protest and the Ministers of the Court are left adrift in the face of acts of violence.

When things go wrong, they can be improved if the policy goes well. But when politics goes wrong, even what was going well can deteriorate and that is what happens in Mexico.

It is essential to choose paths of non-confrontation to leave violence behind and evolve as people, as a social fabric and as a country.

*The author is a lawyer, negotiator and mediator

phmergoldd@anmediacion.com.mx

Twitter @Phmergoldd