The repentant and the accomplices

There are many who repent and some who are accomplices, who today prefer to find a way to join and integrate, because there is nothing worse than living outside the Budget.

Leonardo Kourchenko

septiembre 26, 2024

https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/leonardo-kourchenko-la-aldea/2024/09/26/los-arrepentidos-y-los-complices/

In these days of fawning farewells and tearful tributes — Mexico is full of melodrama — the balance sheets, as objective as they are brutal, of the economy, democracy, security, health and education appear.

 

I am not going to bore you with numbers. There are many timely and precise reports that point with transparency the six-year term that is ending as the one with the lowest growth in the last 36 years; as the lowest GDP per capita in three decades and many other figures.

 

The opportunities that this country missed due to bad government decisions, repeated whims, lavish works that wasted resources uselessly.

 

If you are interested, I recommend the report ‘6 years of government: 2018-2024′ by Integralia, or the analysis of Mexico, how are we doing?

 

No one must pretend anymore or pretend that we had a great President who brought down corruption—the primary promise of his candidate speech—or who eliminated poverty.

 

None of that is true. Corruption remains and, in the opinion of some experts, it has worsened, although in different ways.

 

Poverty did decrease by 5 percent in average poverty; extreme poverty sadly remained and in some areas of the country grew.

 

We have been hearing for more than three and even four years the confessions of those who repent, who say, “I thought he was going to be different”; “I really believed him, I always thought he was honest and authentic,” and so on. I heard one recently that borders on naivety: “Andrés acts out of good will.” Tell that to the judges and magistrates, to the destroyed judicial career that the new reform has just been buried.

The repentant ones look for a corner and shelter, lower their heads, admit frustration and anger. They did not think that their beloved leader would do such serious and profound damage to the nascent Mexican democracy. But today there is no turning back, or at least not in the immediate future.

 

Andrés Manuel (López Obrador) built a popular and electoral political movement, strengthened with huge amounts of public money—his and mine—to consolidate a machinery of control and manipulation of the vote.

 

The foundations are laid for a regime of several decades, as his hegemony has dreamed.

 

All those repentant ones who today walk and go aside hide in the face of abundant evidence of the facts, that their sympathy and support at the polls led the country to a condition of democratic regression, with diminished or co-opted institutions.

 

The degradation of democratic quality is perhaps the greatest damage of this pseudo-progressive whirlwind called Morena.

 

Along with those who repented, there are the accomplices, those who consciously, out of ambition or interest, expressed their support from the business community, from academia, from professional associations, unions and multiple groups that were seriously affected, damaged and beaten.

Mexico will have a special place in its history for those who applauded Andrés Manuel in the victory of 2018, and then, silent and cowardly, relegated themselves to the shadows when they recognized the size of the tyranny they had supported.

 

There are overwhelming results: loss of educational levels, lag in learning, demolition of the public health system, criminal shortage of medicines, protection and shelter for cartels and murderers who have now taken over entire territories.

 

There are the undoubted, applaudable merits, such as the significant increase in the minimum wage, such as the growth of social programs.

 

Mexico will begin a new stage next Tuesday, October 1, amid international diatribes and unnecessary grievances.

 

There remains the hope for a better government, for a leader centered and focused on the well-being of the country, not guided by the quarrels, resentments and complexes of the past.

 

Will it be possible? Today the future seems doubtful, and hope weakened, in the face of the insistent discourse of the 'second floor of transformation'.

 

We have returned to the accommodating fever, the anxiety of groups and officials to 'stay', 'be included, called, incorporated' into the machinery of power and government.

Convictions are of little value. Connections are more powerful.

 

A wise old politician told me a few days ago: “they have rewarded their enemies with positions and appointments and despised their friends,” displaying the traffic of appointments for all those who have joined ‘the movement.’

 

The shadow of the leader will be more vivid than ever after decades of the stinging text of Martín Luis Guzmán, who ended his days as an excellent PRI member, integrated into the current movement of those years, the revolutionary one.

 

Many are the repentant and some more the accomplices, who today prefer to find a way to join and integrate, because there is nothing worse —says the popular slogan— than living outside the Budget.