Disappointing

In her first public appearance as president, Claudia Sheinbaum passed up the opportunity to introduce the country to her own political personality.

October 02, 2024

https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/pablo-hiriart/2024/10/02/decepcionante/

Pablo Hiriart

If the inaugural speech of President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum’s was expected to bring signs of a certain intention to correct errors, yesterday's event was disappointing.

The solemn session of Congress for the transfer of powers was far from being a republican ceremony and seemed to be a partisan rally, with the President launching political harangues from the highest tribune of the nation.

 

Yesterday's republican simbols in the Mexican Congress only had the presence of opposition legislators and ministers representing the Judicial Branch.

 

There was not a single call or summons to national harmony, after a six-year term that polarized and fostered division and even hatred.

 

No recognition of the political plurality that exists in the country, nor of respect for those who think differently.

The parliamentarians who are not from the ruling bloc were completely ignored in the President's inaugural speech.

 

Just as Claudia Sheinbaum was in the debates with Xóchitl Gálvez in the campaign, she was yesterday at her inauguration. To the opposition legislators, not a glance, not a greeting. Much less a call to work together for the country that she will govern for six years.

 

The machinery of single thought took on new strength yesterday and will continue its way to where it stops.

 

Zero self-criticism, as incoming presidents who succeed someone from their own party usually do, to build from there a new stage and attain achievements where there were setbacks.

 

Nobody expected Claudia Sheinbaum to incur in the ruinous ritual of political cannibalism, but there was some trace that we will have a more inclusive and less authoritarian six-year term.

 

She said that those who talk about authoritarianism were lying. Why are they lying? Because she says so. Period.

Not a single line of argument on this issue, that worries representative sectors of society, such as academia, private enterprise, lawyers.

 

She said that the constitutional reforms that order the transfer of the National Guard (that is, police tasks) to the Ministry of Defense do not imply militarism.

 

Those who affirm this are lying, she said.

 

Why?

 

Because she says so. Period.

 

The word humility was not pronounced even once by the most powerful person Mexico has had in many decades.

 

In her first public intervention as president, Claudia Sheinbaum missed the opportunity to introduce the country to her own political personality.

 

There was, instead, an unusual deification of her predecessor, whom she called president in a lapse when the President is she and no one else.

 

We will have continuity in everything, because according to yesterday's speech everything was well done.

 

Continuity in everything, even in the rude ways and in the lies.

 

President Sheinbaum was disrespectful to former presidents Felipe Calderón and Ernesto Zedillo.

Whatever our opinion of them, together or separately, former presidents of the Republic who came to power through democratic means, in a solemn, institutional ceremony in Congress, are not treated in this way.

 

In debates, assemblies or party rallies, of course they are. But the lack of respect at these levels only serves to further poison public conversation and harm the democratic spirit of the nation.

 

She repeated the catechism of her predecessor's economic policy, which only achieved 0.9 percent average annual growth, and committed an act of intellectual dishonesty by accusing the country's ills of the governments of the 36 years prior to AMLO (her predecessor).

 

Thanks to the Free Trade Agreement (with USA and Canada), which she actively opposed, the country is now among the 15 main economic powers in the world, as she highlighted in her speech.

 

Mexico remains attractive for foreign investment despite the economic and energy policies of its predecessor, by virtue of the Free Trade Agreement with the world's leading power, with which we have more than three thousand kilometers of border.

With the funds left by the governments before AMLO, he was able to distribute money and leave office with high popularity, reduce (momentarily) poverty – although extreme poverty increased – and easily win the elections.

 

Thanks to the successive political reforms agreed upon in plurality during the years of governments that Claudia Sheinbaum attacked, it was possible for López Obrador to be president of the Republic, and she, her successor.

 

The security policy, so disastrous in the outgoing administration, will continue with the same axes as today: addressing the causes and doing intelligence work. “Peace is the fruit of justice,” she repeated, and the phrase is shareable.

 

But what about the results, when?

 

Will they be different if we continue doing the same thing?

 

Maybe in her administration we will have peace, but what she expressed is only a slogan, as it was in the six-year term of 199,619 murders and one disappearance per hour.

 

Continuity of a single way of thinking, without dialogue with those who have different ideas, and zero humility to offer even a greeting to those who are looking for their missing children, to the relatives of the hundreds of thousands of people who died from Covid due to mistaken and frivolous policies, to the relatives of children who died due to failures in the purchase of medicines.

 

Because we do not know Sheinbaum as we did López Obrador, there is the possibility of doubting that perhaps health and education will receive special attention during her government and that science will be linked to priority sectors.

 

She said that she would be respectful of freedom of the press. We will see. The movement is demonstrated by walking.

 

But there are no signs of change in what has been done wrong.

 

Her inaugural speech was disappointing.