D
I start the discussion, in committees, of the electrical reform sent to Congress by the President, who requested that it be approved as he took turns. Several characters immediately jumped to ensure that, as requested, it would not be approved. For the times announced in its journey through the chamber of origin, everything indicates that the entire process will take a few days. It is necessary to remember that the discussion in the open parliament consumed prudent and even ample effort, both from proponents and opponents. Therefore, it has been possible to show to a large part of the citizenry the advantages and requirements of such a central reform.
It is not just about weighing arguments of one and another modality. It is necessary to remember the political base that sustains the changes that are desired to be introduced in the Constitution and derived laws. This reform is an additional piece embedded in the movement, gestated for years, that culminated in the electoral victory of 2018. It was not just any electoral-looking phenomenon. It is a whole flow with base forces that intends to balance the existing imbalance of opportunities between different social classes. That is, to give rise to a bid that tends to achieve, in addition, greater participation in the conduct of public affairs. Participation that, until three years ago, was denied them by an elite coalition that owned the existing partisan formulations, PAN and PRI. A combination that, for practical reasons, was coded as PRIAN.
The prevailing model, until before 2018, left no room for the ambitions of accessing better stages of well-being for very broad layers of Mexican society. The punishment in income and, therefore, in the paltry appropriation of even a fair share of wealth was enormous. That is the vital nucleus formed within the movement, which crystallized in the Morena party. It also came to give content and certainty to the drive to reverse the rapid trend towards inequality. The precarious position in income and opportunities of the majority of Mexicans should not continue, was the clamor. The popular mandate, for others firm, although many want to cloud it. This is how it should be understood: to carry out a drastic change that ends with the previous state of affairs.
In this process towards greater equality, Mexico is not alone. There is a whole world ensemble working hard in that direction. Those who consolidate it will be the ones who best coalesce to give consistency and clarity to their claims for change. The consistent and continuous offer, from the then candidate and now from the President, was centrally that: replace the prevailing concentrating model with a justice model of a wide range of goods and opportunities for those who, until then, had been deprived of them. That is the force behind the presidential request to approve the electricity reform. That is the correspondence between the current leadership of the country and the crowd that supports and needs to be heard and attended to.
Such a reform cannot be understood as a simple negotiation between what exists and an innocuous collection of compromises. What is in the background is the struggle to put an end to a model, convenient and functional, to increase inequality in an industry that is vital for the development of the country. It is, first of all, to position the State as the driver and guarantor of such a crucial industry. Separate it, therefore, from the hands and the ambitions of a group of private companies that have tried to give themselves the privilege of being the owners. In truth, this reform seeks to position the companies, currently generators, as a part of the total market. A part that, moreover, is important but not the driver as it is trying to achieve. They will be able to generate almost half of what is offered for energy each year. For the size of the national market, that part, which is assigned 46 percent, is of sufficient size and, moreover, satisfactory. But the pretension of displacing the CFE and being the dominant entities is curbed. That unjust and dangerous horizon must end.
Legislators will need to understand what the reform entails. It is a popular demand expressed in votes, for a massive movement of change towards a less unjust state of affairs. A prolonged search for greater well-being. And on that route we work hard, intelligence and determination. It is not the position of an authoritarian President, as the opposition accuses, but the will of a people that demands to be treated fairly. And in the energy he has placed his trust to achieve it. He does not exhaust himself in investing in renewables either, a decoy used to hide waste and huge subsidies to private parties, but also to decolonize the industry, now under external control. Hopefully the deputies and senators will hear that vindictive popular claim.
