| | |  Editorials | Opinions | December 2009 
Mexican President Must Discard Cronyism and Face Reality
 Patrick Corcoran - Gancho
go to original
December 14, 2009
| “I have confidence in the general direction of my security strategy, but the increase in violence is worrying. We will be looking at ways to balance our frontal attack on organized crime with the recognition that citizens are the ones who bear the burden for its disruptions.”
- President Felipe Calderón | |
Halfway through his six-year term, Mexican President Felipe Calderón reminds one of an enigmatic NFL team stuck at 4-4. The season is not yet lost, but some good breaks are going to be needed for this campaign to be more than middling.
In making his mid-season adjustments, one thing that Coach Calderón should do is take a long look at defects in his governing strategy.
One significant flaw has been Calderón’s over-reliance on a small coterie of advisors for the most important jobs. He selected only one member of the opposition to his cabinet, in the second-tier post of Secretary of Communications and Transportation. He has not sought to build bridges with competing wings of his own party, but rather freezes them out. Each time a key job has opened-up, it has more often than not gone to a Calderón loyalist.
There are plenty of examples of this tendency (most recently his sending Finance Secretary Agustín Carstens to the Bank of Mexico last week), but perhaps the most damaging has been his selection of PAN party presidents, specifically Germán Martínez. That Calderón wanted to remove Manuel Espino, a staunch intra-party adversary, is understandable. But replacing him with a longtime collaborator (rather than a compromise candidate) only deepened the fissures in the PAN. Martínez’s utter ineptness in the job made things worse still. Yet, when it was time for Martínez to go following last July’s electoral debacle, Calderón went back to the loyalty well, tabbing his former personal secretary César Nava (who has, in fairness, been much more effective) as Martínez’s successor.
Another flaw undercutting Calderón’s best efforts was his inability to adequately prepare for the deep recession that has enveloped Mexico over the past year. With the financial crisis exploding in the US several months before it arrived in Mexico, officials here had ample time to ready Mexico for the adverse impact, both in terms of protecting the nation’s economy and bracing it for a jolt of social upheaval. But while the nation's finances survived in decent shape, the impact of the crisis on the work force has been devastating.
The pillars of the Calderón administration’s response were a weak stimulus that subsequently ran out of money; and Oportunidades, which is a great social program, but not in and of itself an adequate answer to the greatest economic decline in seven decades. As a result, the number of Mexicans suffering from nutritional poverty has leapt by 5 million in the past two years.
Another administration tic that has had a negative impact on a number of different areas is Calderón’s tendency to see everything through rose-colored glasses. On security, the economy, and a number of other topics, Calderón has been significantly more optimistic than circumstances have called for.
At no point, for example, has he addressed security concerns by saying something along the lines of, “I have confidence in the general direction of my security strategy, but the increase in violence is worrying. We will be looking at ways to balance our frontal attack on organized crime with the recognition that citizens are the ones who bear the burden for its disruptions.”
Instead, he and his team repeat that Mexico is safer than it was 15 years ago (which is true, though beside the point), and insist that an aggressive strategy is sorely needed from Mexico’s executive (which is arguably true, but also merely tangential to the issue of rising violence).
Other sources of trouble for Calderón are largely not his fault. One can argue (as columnist Leo Zuckermann recently did) that Calderón should have been insisting on deep reforms from the get-go and not just after three years in office. As a result of the decision to not drive a hard bargain on reform legislation, many of the bills passed were either wrong-headed (electoral reform), watered down (the Pemex reform), or both (fiscal reform).
But the basic fact is that Calderón’s PAN didn’t enjoy a majority in either house of the bicameral Congress, and the president was at the mercy of the only major party willing to negotiate: the PRI. And though Calderón’s “changes of depth” speech was inspiring, the above calculus has only grown less favorable for the PAN. With the PRI holding on to a majority coalition in the lower house as a result of last July's midterm elections, Calderón’s reforms won’t pass without the PRI’s say-so.
Were Calderón to insist on his way or the highway, in all probability nothing would have passed, and he would be stuck with the same criticism that was leveled at Vicente Fox: for all his big plans, he didn’t know how to negotiate with Congress and wound up with a legislative donut.
As things stand today, Calderón’s government isn’t irreversibly destined for mediocrity, and an improved economic climate over his final three years should help a lot. But not all of his difficulties stem from unfavorable circumstances, and Calderón would do well to examine where his government has erred.
Patrick Corcoran (corcoran25(at)hotmail.com) is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila. He blogs at Gancho (http://www.ganchoblog.blogspot.com/). |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us