The Culture of Peace, Peaceful Expression in Defense of Democracy

My political ideal is democratic. Each one must be respected as a person and no one must be deified.

Albert Einstein

Last Sunday, citizen marches were held in more than fifty cities in the country and in other nations to defend our democracy. They all took place in peace, in a respectful manner, without acts of vandalism and in a massive manner. Only in Mexico City it is estimated that more than five hundred thousand people participated. It was an attempt to make the legislators, first of all the deputies, aware of the rejection of millions of Mexicans regarding disrupting the institutions responsible for the electoral processes in our country. It was not a march against the tenant of the National Palace.

Sadly, while the president recommends to his co-religionists not to fall into insult, injury or humiliation and suggests that they apologize, far from showing himself as a statesman and congratulating himself on the expression of citizens in the streets, the president declared in his morning monologue yesterday that these marches were carried out as an excuse to protect democracy but that in reality they tried to do them against the supposed transformation that is taking place in the country and in favor of the privileges that, according to the president, were held before of the government he presides over. As he has maintained since before Sunday, he indicated that they were in favor of corruption, racism, classism and discrimination.

It is very probable that a good part of those who marched were motivated by the discontent derived from the null results of the current government; the growth of poverty; the increase in violence; the largest indebtedness in the country; militarization, and the approval of a spending budget for next year that reduced items in health, education, scholarships and other basic services to increase expenditures for the president’s priority works.

The president was pleased that, according to him, despite the large number of people for the march on Sunday “not many people participated.” He added that “to have an idea, I reckon that’s why they didn’t come to the Zócalo. They would not have filled even half of the Zócalo, they must have been about 60, 50,000. The Zócalo fills up with 120,000. I hope they follow him, that they intend to fill the Zócalo.” For his faithful head of government of the City there were a few thousand people. Obviously they have minimized the marches, but the scope of the events last Sunday and their resounding success are fully publicized.

The president insists that his electoral reform initiative seeks to strengthen the INE and democracy because there are still “risks of electoral fraud.” Obviously it is one more hoax, since it is known that his intention is to dismantle the INE and that the government is the one that operates the electoral processes so that the supposed risks of electoral fraud return to our electoral scenario protected by the ruling party and its government.

It should be remembered that the presidential initiative proposes, among others, the following:

• Disappear the INE to give way to a national institute of elections and consultations;
• That the members of the proposed institute and of the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary be elected via popular vote, which would put an end to the impartiality of those officials;
• The control of elections falls on the federal government, affecting budget management, eliminating the autonomy and partisan impartiality that exist today;
• Transfer the electoral roll to another institution other than the INE;
• The disappearance of the opposition parties to convert the ruling party into a single party, in addition to affecting the representation and balance of minorities and majorities, and
• An eventual ban on coalitions, the creation of new political parties and national political associations to end the current opposition of the ruling party.

It is very serious that the democratic institutions that we have built want to be destroyed from the government. It is a mistake for the president to believe that all electoral processes can be centralized in only two institutions, as his initiative foresees. No one has alerted him to the impossibility that only the national institute of elections and consultations and the modified Court can carry out with efficiency and reliability what is organized today by the INE, the Court, the institutes and local courts in the 32 federal entities.

For the time being, as also happened last year, the INE will have to suffer a sharp cut in its budget of 4.5 billion pesos, in violation of the provisions of the Constitution on this subject, in addition to the disqualifications professed by the president and his co-religionists.

We cannot risk, as José Woldenberg recalled, that the next elections lack the same guarantees that we have had in recent processes, such as a reliable electoral registry, greater equality in the conditions of competition, impartiality of election officials, vote counts, and certain preliminary results on Election Day night. Of course it is essential that the victory of the contenders only be defined, as at present, by the vote of the citizens.

The reaction of the president that was seen yesterday, as a consequence of the marches on Sunday, seems to respond to the ostrich complex, which occurs when someone feels threatened and hides their head, believing that with this attitude they are safe. There are people who, faced with what they consider a danger or risk, prefer to evade adversity by avoiding them with trifles, in this case with disqualifications and all kinds of insults.

The survival of our democracy is in the hands of the opposition bloc that stopped the electricity reform in the Chamber of Deputies and, where appropriate, of the containment bloc in the Senate.

The tenant of the National Palace and his co-religionists have shown contempt for society’s proposal and lose sight of the fact that sovereignty resides in the people, who may be able, as they did on Sunday in an exemplary and peaceful manner, to challenge the government with the strength of a weapon as ancient as it is peaceful: solidarity.

*The author is a lawyer, negotiator and mediator.

phmergoldd@anmediacion.com.mx

Twitter: @Phmergoldd