AND
in these times of change vertiginous in the world, in the subcontinent and in the country, times of regression in some cases, it is necessary to bear in mind, in the necessary debate of ideas, the essential values and components of an authentic democratic life, beginning with a genuine and competitive system of political parties, assets that must be preserved as the collective patrimony of citizens, beyond ideologies and six-year cycles.
The main theorists of modern political thought, such as Norberto Bobbio, Maurice Duverger and Giovanni Sartori, have made it very clear: without political parties, representative democracy, a balance of powers, accountability and, above all, peaceful translation, are impossible. periodic and civilized control of power, as transmission belts of the citizen’s will.
As the Italian philosopher of representative democracy Norberto Bobbio specifically said: The legitimacy or legitimation of power is based on the division and separation of powers in order to limit and regulate the exercise of that power.
. And in that system of checks and balances, he said, the role of political parties is fundamental.
Let us remember that in Mexico the hero of democracy, Mr. Francisco I. Madero, was the one who, aware of the adversities he faced from the dictatorial power, promoted from his brief and ethical government the regulation of political parties, in an electoral law that by For the first time, it specified the requirements for its creation and its legal recognition, to contend in conditions of equity for the Presidency of the Republic and for seats in Congress. Madero was clear that the dispute for power had to be institutionalized, respecting all political options, even those not related to him.
Today more than ever, only dialogue, debate, the comparison of ideas, the construction of consensus and respect for disagreements, can strengthen the coexistence of an increasingly plural and diverse society, especially in societies like Mexico, emerged from the interaction of multiple cultures and open to the world.
That is why it is necessary to take care of the institutional scaffolding that allows the crystallization of coincidences and the expression of differences. In the medium term, unilateralism and the suppression, or even the weakening, of counterweights is not convenient for anyone. The key is that the will of the citizenry, an increasingly critical, demanding and demanding will, continues to be the balance, to govern and control power, with the support of the parties, which by constitutional definition are entities of public interest and not private bodies.
Dynamiting the party system only feeds the risk of pulverizing the ideological referents, the containment dams of verticalism, and that only serves the extreme right, since it weakens the traditional mechanisms of the conquest, exercise and control of power and, above all, it undermines the classical division of powers, the system of checks and balances designed by Montesquieu, a system adopted by most modern democracies.
Those balances must be preserved. Now without certain, reliable data, an adversary is offended and accused of being corrupt, in a climate of tension and lynching, as occurred during the French Revolution in the second half of the 18th century, where Danton was put to the guillotine for the political crime of corruption
and with similar accusations the revolution also devoured Marat and sacrificed Robespierre.
The legacy of universal values of the French Revolution, beginning with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, approved by the National Constituent Assembly on August 26, 1789, is beyond doubt. There is no progressive movement in the world that does not invoke one or more of its many achievements and principles, in terms of freedom, equality, justice and democracy, but the cost of that emancipatory process, in its last stage of polarization and intransigence, was enormous. .
In our time, at times it gives the impression that there is a whole apparatus designed to put an end to the party system and the institutional scaffolding that sustains it, in a logic of negative sum, which in game theory means that at the end of the game all players lose.
In-depth debate without concessions is essential in all representative democracies, and this is only possible with clear ideological references. That is why it is necessary to defend the common patrimony of all citizens: the republican institutions, beginning with the system of political parties, a system that makes possible the right to choose, and also the right to revoke the mandate conferred.
Defending the party system is defending representative democracy, institutional counterweights and the control of public power.
*President of the Colosio Foundation
