In an interview, the political analyst Leonardo Curzio talks about the implications that the way of governing of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has brought to the country.
In Mexico “an attempt is made to restore an imperial presidentialism” under the premise that the concentration of power in a single individual can be the solution to the country’s problems. That man who has monopolized the agenda as had not been seen in recent years is President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, says political analyst Leonardo Curzio.
“It is clear that what is being tried is to restore an imperial presidential, where the concentration of power in a single individual can be the solution to the country’s problems. We have already rehearsed divided governments, majority governments and now we have returned to the model of the president who does everything, decides everything and controls everything ”, says Curzio in an interview with Expansión Politica on the occasion of his book El Presidente, which he publishes as co-authored with Anibal Gutiérrez under the Grijalbo label.
Curzio points out how López Obrador is a president who perfectly connects with the populist tendencies of recent times as Silvio Berlusconi and more recently Donal Trump in the United States did in Italy.
“They are very similar leaderships, people who say that they represent the people, normal people and that there are a lot of horrendous gentlemen who are involved in the political class, swamp, power mafia … but the mechanism is always the same as more than transforming the What they actually do is transform the way politics is done ”, he mentions.
Leonardo Curzio abounds precisely that the difference between the speech that López Obrador raises with the few results in terms of security, one of the pending ones recognized by the president himself, or the poor economic performance that has been further diminished by the pandemic is notable. of COVID-19 that has the rest of the world in the same conditions.
“It is a speech that still effectively has another action, I do not see it exceeded, what I see is that the country is far behind presidential optimism,” says Curzio, who also shares his views on the self-styled ‘fourth transformation’ on them which he refers to is a concept that seeks to bring the present administration “to the height of art.”
This is the interview:
What are the implications of the president having been in office for two years since his morning conference?
The consequence is that everything is effectively centered on the figure of the president. The public conversation has been noticeably impoverished, when everything focuses on whether you are for or against the president, which leads you to many topics that would, in my opinion, deserve a discussion on their own terms, for example, security policy Public or any other element of governmental action are not treated on their merits but by whoever issues them, which in this case is the president.
And the strengthening of the presidential figure? How will it impact the 2021 electoral process and even its succession?
The president has to greatly value this speech that he himself raises every day of the principles, and of course, refer to what he defended in 2006; he commanded the president (Vicente Fox) to be silenced with the famous: ‘shut up chachalaca’. That’s what he thought when he was an opponent. I hope you embrace those principles that you defended as an opponent and today as president you understand that what you cannot do is be involved in the electoral process. On the other hand, I am not naive either, I see a president who from dawn to dusk does politics and is basically focused by the nature of his populist leadership in an eternal campaign.
Speaking of the electoral process of the following year, will it reach the opposition united in one front to pass on Morena?
I don’t think so, I think the president still has very broad support. He is going to be playing the role of uniting a coalition, which in this case is just as incoherent as the one he criticizes from the opposition side because he has the Greens, he has the PES, he has Elba Esther Gordillo. It seems that the incoherence of others is easier for him to identify than his own, but I do not feel that it reaches a PAN and a PRI that arrive very worn out with a very poor speech, which is nothing more than to contain the president unless they get profiles truly extraordinary. Behind that, let’s say coalition, there is more a grotesque marriage of convenience than an attempt to make new politics.
And can Morena charge a bill for his alliances with former allies of what he has called neoliberal governments?
I think not, otherwise, it would have cost him. That is to say, the majorities that it has formed include the Green Ecologist, include the PT, include the PES; they have had allies like Cuauhtémoc Blanco in Morelos and so far it has had no cost. The president is still in an upward phase, where people can still forgive him from this until his cousin had contracts with Pemex and it turns out that he now tells us that he was not aware. All this, still in the enormous acceptance that the president has, goes to the background because people are still convinced.
Why, if López Obrador is a president who has concentrated so much power, has he declined to form a state party?
There is already a hegemonic party, it is not yet a state party. In recent times, the PRI itself stopped being a state party, as such, to be a hegemonic party. Morena today is hegemonic, wherever it goes, it has the best chance of functioning from the start. It is also a party that works symbiotically with the government, there is not properly a parliamentary leadership differentiated from what the president says and as Mario Delgado said, his program is what the president says. There is not properly a party with an autonomous life, there is a party that in this case is personal.
And yet we do not see the president setting guidelines within the decisions that are made within the party.
I believe that nothing moves there without the approval of the president. Finally, Morena ended up electing its leader with the method suggested by the president. I doubt very much that Alfonso Durazo has reached the candidacy without the consent of the president as well as his ‘superdelegates’, therefore I still believe that the president does not get involved in the day-to-day of the game, but the general line, the same as for the parliamentary fractions, he draws it.
Has the fate of the government been cast since the government project was called “the fourth transformation”?
The president has a very high idea of himself. For personal reasons and his own frame in the history of the country tries to give him the idea of a huge transformation that of course, his propaganda apparatus works to support him. He insists that ‘the fourth transformation’ has already occurred, that 97 out of 100 commitments have been fulfilled and I keep wondering, at what time did we grow to 4% that I did not realize, or to say that in this country there is no impunity, there is no corruption, it is very difficult to believe, but the president insists and gives his administration this touch of art, trying to show that we are facing one of the great courts.
Historical administrations are measured by their results is not a matter to be anticipated. All governments have had, Fox’s, of course, López Portillo’s, this idea that they were regenerators, great transformers, but I believe that this is always judged at the end and therefore it will be history that decides whether this government de López Obrador is transformative or is an inertial government, as have been most of the governments in recent years.
What López Obrador can we expect in the second straight of his government? Is it possible to see a hardening in his way of governing or can the looming crises determine a change?
We have a zigzagging president. At the same time that I was describing this president at the height of art, he is a president who is a great connoisseur of the history of this country, although his interpretation of history is very inertial, he always sees good and bad, and he is a president that makes little complexity and reads few new authors, that is, he reads with whom he agrees, and that leads him to be very cautious.
He knows perfectly because he has been studying for twenty-some years to come to power, that a devalued president is devalued and that the Mexican people have a huge heart and are very presidential. And he knows that economic weaknesses or insecurity, just as there were the deaths of Calderón and Peña Nieto, he is going to have his and the people with the same harshness will demand results, therefore he is a president who zigzags and he corrects, he knows he cannot harden.
How much will the COVID-19 pandemic impact the end of your government?
I believe that it is an element that gives it exculpatory rhetoric, that is, there is no way to say that this did not affect government performance, but the broad policy lines that we analyze are there: the government did not bring good economic numbers before COVID There is no element to suppose that government management would have been dramatically different from what we have today and in any case, like the rest of the governments, it will be evaluated. People are going to apologize, they are going to explain that there are certain things that have not been achieved due to COVID, but it seems quite clear to me that this government is going to take its toll, in a positive or negative sense.
You make this statement yourself and I understand that the book seeks to answer this question: can this government be a success or will it be a resounding failure? What conclusion did you and Hannibal come to?
I believe that neither one nor the other is going to be an inertial government. It is a government that will keep us in what we have. Now I wanted to advance on the labor market, we stayed the same, you have a GDP that does not improve, which has a 9% deterioration, and investment expectations are very low even in decline, therefore I believe that the president is going to correct, It will be something very similar to what we saw in previous decades, the last thing a president with such a high opinion of himself wants is to be on the pages of history as a failed government.
The decision taken by the Supreme Court of Justice is ironic because it violates the Constitution that they swore to uphold and respect.
“The ambitious are terrified of being the first among men.
The miser the thirst for vile money, surrounded by fear on all sides.
To the player the luck of the dice, of the harmful cards and the board.
The proud man is drowned by his fierce ardor.
To lascivious desires not fixed.
He destroys their voracious conscience, putting crimes first, and giving them regret with his presence. “Gaspar Maria de Nava Álvarez
I am in mourning , in mourning , in condolences because six of the eleven ministers of the SCJN did not regret it, it did not mean anything to them, that the division of powers was only for the anecdote of the textbooks .
In the harsh reality that surrounds us, as Mexicans we have seen a herd of unpresentable people lose their dignity who decided not to live up to the expectations of their appointments.
Just as impunity is not defended , there was no room for confusion here either: the law is NOT subject to consultation . Judging former presidents – as, for that matter, any other individual or action, as the question was finally raised – must be done under the regulations, not with the “popular” process as an excuse for a show. One that, in addition, in the end would reach what was already stipulated in advance …
The decision taken by the Supreme Court of Justice is ironic because it violates the Constitution that the ministers swore to uphold and respect. They decided to put their interests, fees and quotas first to show that they are due to an individual and not to a nation . The voracious conscience will devour them .
And while that is happening, the other “autonomous” power also genuflected at the whim of the president . It was enough that this ordered the disappearance of the trusts so that the unconditional ones jumped from their seats to offer the millions of pesos back to the absolute control of the federal executive; public and private money alike, that doesn’t matter .
As they also did not care to leave the National Fund for Natural Disasters (used to support the most vulnerable population, in many cases the poorest when nature strikes without distinction) without the last of its resources or the corresponding and specific destined cancer patients and other diseases with high costs for their care (Catastrophic Expenses Fund). But leaving the sick without medicine is a crime of the State , and as such the legislators of Morena and their hindrances must be tried . Of course, without a popular consultation involved.
This unfortunate story, which comes from May, began with the requirement of 40 trusts and now they are already 109. And although due to lack of a quorum they did not manage to disappear the trusts yesterday, the bet continues to see if they will succeed next Tuesday.
But there is more. It is impossible to sing praises when our authorities ceded the civil power of control of the ports of our country to the armed navy . The head of the executive forgets that it was very important for Lázaro Cárdenas , that character he admires so much, to remove the military from the public administration. Separate military power from civil power.
The above are just examples, but the overall result is very dire. All of them have used the democratic framework to change the law, surround it and thus increase the power of a single person. And that is called building totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism
Of totalitarian e -ism.
1. m. Doctrine and political regimes, developed during the 20th century, in which the state concentrates all powers in a single party and coercively controls social relations under a single official ideology.RAE
There is no violent seizure of power, but we are slowly peering into its concentration. What we live is more subtle but not for that reason not perfectly planned; We had seen it in the legislature and he insists on it. The first president of this nation does not destroy the rule of law, but he does modify it and control it completely within the democratic framework.
He is not the first to do so. Following the same process, apartheid, slavery, and concentration camps were legislated to exterminate Jews during Nazism. Everything, at the time, was legal: broadening the framework of action within the law until a point is reached where the regulation itself is no longer necessary.
I have already said it and I repeat it again: it is now or never, then nothing can be done. Before it is too late, it is necessary to remove the president’s control of the Chamber of Deputies in 2021. Then he will have reformed the constitution in such a way that he will no longer require Congress to do so.
We are witnessing the weakening of the division of powers from and from the democratic framework. And soon it will be possible to give a burial – and not very dignified – to such an important principle.
There is mourning for the so devoted page made this October 1, 2020; it will thus go down in history. And, as for the SCJN, there will be only a handful of honorable heroes: Luis María Aguilar, Javier Laynez, Fernando Franco González, Jorge Mario Pardo, and Norma Piña. The others may be erased by oblivion of ignominy.
Thanks to cowards, shortsighted, and upstarts, today the power of the 4T is unchecked. Consummatum is delivery. We have reached the point of no return. Mexico receives my condolences.
Source: sdpnoticias.com, politica.expansion.mx