Monday, January 11, 2010
Mexico Must Strive for Lasting Achievements in 2010
By Patrick Corcoran
After a dismal 2009, Mexican
President Felipe Calderón opened 2010 with a Jan. 6 speech to the nation setting his priorities for the New Year: reducing
unemployment, attacking extreme poverty, and making Mexico safer.
Calderón’s list makes political
sense for a pair of reasons. First, because these are worthy goals that address very serious problems. Unemployment, which
is historically not very high in Mexico, leapt up to above 6 percent in 2009. Even with a light recovery forecast for 2010,
there remains, as ever, a great deal of concern about the Mexican economy’s ability to create jobs. Thanks to the crisis,
extreme poverty also spiked, with almost 20 million Mexicans now suffering from undernourishment. And Mexico’s worsening
problems with organized crime are old news at this point.
Additionally, on all three issues,
after an unusually awful 2009, a more favorable climate will likely offer a correction, regardless of what the administration
does. Tellingly, Calderón didn’t announce any significant changes in policy or new programs to achieve his goals. He
is counting on the improved circumstances to make the difference, something worth remembering if in 12 months Calderón’s
2011 speech is littered with self-congratulation.
In any event, these goals are
largely unachievable in the political realm. As such, we should therefore not evaluate Calderón’s performance based
on whether joblessness decreases or the poverty rate drops, but on the passage of long-overdue fiscal and political reforms.
Calderón has signaled his desire to pass each within the first several months of the year, a window that may represent the
president’s last chance to significantly enhance his legislative legacy before he leaves office in late 2012.
Details of the eventual fiscal
reform remain up in the air, but the goal is crystal clear: as oil income sinks due to falling production, Mexico needs to
replace the revenue with a broad and durable tax base.
Many analysts argue that the
simplest, surest way to replace the crude cash is with a general tax on consumption. Another problem that effective fiscal
reform must solve is rampant evasion of taxes (legal and otherwise) by corporations. But these aren’t new problems;
the problem is that a regressive consumption tax is anathema for the broader political class, and the underpaying corporations
are, not surprisingly, resistant to Calderón's recent calls for them to pitch a few more (million) pesos into the pot.
The previous fiscal reform, in
2007, did not do enough to tackle these problems, and the atmosphere is not so different now as to assume that Calderón will
automatically have better luck this time around.
On political reform, Calderón
offered a more concrete glimpse of his preference in a ten-point proposal that he released in December. The plan would reduce
the size of the Congress, add a second-round of presidential voting, and allow for the reelection for mayors and federal deputies,
among other modifications. The overall objective is to reduce the role of special interests in Mexican politics and reduce
the gap between the governing class and the governed.
The proposal was met largely
with rejection from the PRD, and for meaningful political reform to pass Calderón will have to depend on the cooperation of
Priístas like Manlio Fabio Beltrones, a Senate leader who vacillates between adversary and collaborator of Calderón.
If the past few years offer any
indication, the end result of the reform drive won’t be a modern tax system and a revitalized political culture, but
a handful of half-measures that allow everyone to pat themselves on the back for being productive without addressing the problems
adequately.
But if the reforms are
sufficiently groundbreaking, if declining oil income ceases to be a perennial bugaboo and the number of knots in Mexico’s
political system is dramatically reduced, then 2010 will be a success even if Calderón falls short on his stated priorities.
The odds may not be in his favor, but if Calderón wants his presidency to be remembered as transformational, abiding by the
politics of the possible is not enough.
Last year ended with Mexicans
lamenting a cratering economy, rising unemployment, persistent security problems, and Juárez staking its claim as the most
dangerous city on the planet. Barring another unforeseen disaster, 2010 will be comparatively benign, but the bar for success
for Calderón must be higher.
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Patrick Corcoran (corcoran25@hotmail.com) is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila. He blogs at Gancho (http://www.ganchoblog.blogspot.com/).
