Transformation and audition | Article

Mario Luis Fuentes

ANDThe current administration is running out of time, and the supposedly big changes promised in the 2018 election campaign seem to be fading faster and faster. All governments heading towards their closure are striving to confirm, with the help of individual indicators, that they have done and achieved what they have never been able to achieve before. However, it will actually take time to assess whether what was done in this government really had the depth and depth that the president, his team and his followers claim today.

Meanwhile, the executive branch constantly refuses self-criticism and immediately rejects any accusations. In recent days, at one of his morning meetings, the President of the Republic confirmed that from time to time he meets people who tell him that they agree with the need to change the country, but not with the methods and strategies. To them, the president says, he replies “to continue on their way and that everything is fine with them.”

However, in politics, as in almost all areas of human life, the idea of ​​the philosopher Nietzsche is applicable: “beliefs are prisons.” And the fact that the President of the Republic, unfortunately, has only this, convictions, that is, claims to absolute truth. And what in a political campaign can be regarded as a virtue of the inflexible character of people, in the activity of government such an attitude is contrary to the most elementary forms of democracy.

The president is said to refuse to talk to his opponents; and he himself confirmed it. But there is something worse, and this is what was mentioned above: not only does the president not want to put his arguments on public display, but rather refuses to listen to everything that does not coincide with his vision and set of views. positions that holds onto reality.

We also had an example of this in recent days, when the president announced that his three top advisers in the transition group, and later the secretaries of state, had suggested that he proceed with the construction of the Mexico City International Airport in Texcoco; but his answer was: “Let the people decide.”

This is one of the main beliefs of the president: “that the people are not mistaken”; but his main mistake is to think abstractly of an entity that can be called “people”, which would presuppose a unity of vision, that is, a single thought, the impossibility of criticism and, above all, the iron logic of the constant confirmation of prejudices, which is expressed in the fact that a person is ready to receive only that information that confirms what we believe.

In a dangerous way, the President has stepped up his criticism of the judiciary, and especially of the President of the country’s Supreme Court. He accuses her of orchestrating an entire strategy over the course of weeks to free alleged (but not alleged) criminals who the President believes should spend their lives in jail. Based on this, he recommends a new reform, but which his successor or successor will have to implement.

The folly of presidential discourse is to firmly believe that the political reforms the country needs can be built or initiated by hard discursive strikes at so-called “morning conferences”; which, as has long been proven, have nothing to do with “cyclical communication” and even more so with an exercise in accountability.

For the country, the fact that the president does not have a powerful enough voice in terms of public presence to effectively oppose him is beginning to be a tragedy. Because it is also true that opposition parties do not currently have the ability to call on anyone with sufficient moral authority to accompany their proposals or criticisms.

The media with the largest presence in the country are also mistaken in this, which have not enriched their opinion bars, programs and spaces for analysis, incorporating new voices, in addition to the political convenience of the situation. In this sense, the media still have a huge window of opportunity to increase their ability to influence democracy in order to protect it from the abuses of power, and from the simulation and frivolity of those who should oppose bad governments at all its levels. .

There you also have a hearing problem; because so far it has not been possible to change the general idea that the majority of the media serve only their own interests, and not the interests of citizens; that is why the president dominates public opinion; that is why he is able to constantly impose the agenda; and that is why it can give immediate turns to conversations that begin to gain momentum but are immediately diluted by the force of government propaganda.

We are facing a difficult scenario where it is widely believed that democratic dialogue necessarily consists of defeating opponents; that public debate should be aimed at discrediting others and exposing and highlighting the corruption of others, while trying all the while to cover up one’s own…until they are discovered.

Mexico requires a different form of hearing; a mind open to difference; a mind that can feed on those who look at the world with different eyes; and the desire to build with generosity a free country of free men; where well-being can be a tangible reality and where the dispute for power is so civilized that it daily calls on all citizens to participate in good politics: one that allows you to build projects for the present and future life, and where all visions of the world are possible.