Monday, June 30, 2008

Legislative Maturity is Bolstering Mexico’s Presidency

By Patrick Corcoran

Much of Mexico’s political history has been a struggle to find a healthy role for the president, with periodic alternation between weak leaders and authoritarians.

Today acceptance in the international community demands a democratically elected, check and balanced president, so Mexican strongmen are consigned to the history books. Unfortunately, the authoritarians – Cárdenas, Díaz, and perhaps Juárez if he’d lived a bit longer – have been the most effective leaders. Weaker presidents, often the targets of gun-wielding enemies, or at the very least in the figurative crosshairs of political adversaries, have typically accomplished much less.

Former President Vicente Fox was a perfect example of the latter. As Mexico’s first president in 70 years who was not from the incumbent party, his term was characterized more by squabbles with the opposition than by legislative accomplishments. Although the aura of presidential authority eroded under his predecessor, with Fox it disappeared entirely. Not coincidentally, Fox achieved very little.

His National Action Party (PAN) was short of a legislative majority, and the opposition – the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party – was merciless. While to their credit they did not assassinate Fox, as they might have done during the Revolution, they picked him apart in the media and blocked every major initiative emanating from Los Pinos.

A country like Mexico, in need of a lot of reforms and governed by a presidential system, requires a strong man or woman at the top, so it was important for the pendulum to swing back.

And so it has.

The latest evidence is a pair of procedural changes that will remove two clubs periodically used to bash the president. The first is the Informe. It used to be that this annual state of the union address had to be read aloud before Congress. Ever since the controversial election of 2006, protesters have used the event as a very public forum for their grievances, whatever they may be. And with a Pandora ’s Box of Protest having been opened it was unlikely that the Informe was ever going to return to being the solemn affair of years past, so the change will help shield the president from a yearly beating.

In addition, the president no longer must request permission to leave the country; whereas in decades past he needed the Senate’s approval, the president now simply has to inform the body of his plans. This modification will eliminate moments of public pettiness – such as when a spiteful Senate denied Fox’s request to visit Asia in 2006 – that leave everyone looking bad.

Of course, this is not a swing all the way back towards authoritarianism. The president’s control is far from absolute, as the Central Bank’s recent rejection of Felipe Calderón’s pleas to lower interest rates makes clear. 

But Calderón’s term has been a welcome recalibration away from the presidential emasculation that prevailed during the latter half of the Fox years. Indeed, the changes to the Informe and presidential travel procedures are just symptoms of a warming trend toward the executive, and superficial ones at that. Much more important is the willingness of opposition politicians, especially the PRI, to negotiate with the PAN rather than simply obstruct. Politics isn’t always a zero-sum game; what is good for your adversary can also be good for you. Belatedly, the PRI has made this realization. Although a big chunk of the PRD still remains an obstinate foe of the president, the passage of oil reform and a drubbing in next summer’s elections could make them chart a different course.

The most immediate beneficiary of a stronger presidency, of course, is President Calderón, but the greater executive freedom will hopefully endure through future PRD and PRI presidencies. As such, any forward-looking Mexican should be encouraged by the shift. Whatever your vision for Mexico’s future, a strong executive is important to achieving it. As long as the presidency is subject to the outright disdain of the Fox years, gridlock is likely to prevail, so Mexicans of all ideological stripes should welcome the smoother terrain.

However, most Mexicans don’t agree with me. Recent polling in the Mexico City daily Excelsior revealed that large majorities – three-quarters in the case of the Informe, three-fifths in regard to travel procedures – are against the changes. Perhaps the poll is a reflection of a fondness for tradition, or maybe a general apprehension of removing checks on presidential power.

Whatever the case, one can only hope that this doesn’t translate into a shift back away from a strong presidency. Mexico needs to keep moving, and a weak executive is little more than dead weight.

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Patrick Corcoran, a MexiData.info columnist, is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila.  He blogs at Gancho.