On the morning of Wednesday the 26th, when asked by a “reporter” or palero, President Claudia Sheinbaum made clear what has been evident in the last 6 years: the 4th transformation is just a return to the past. How can they talk about the 4th transformation of national life, when more than a transformation, it is a return to the statist past? Rather than a transformation, it should rather be called the first regression.
It is important to understand that for her the 4th transformation is to return to the past of a state that centralizes power and where all decisions depend on the will of the president and the government. For her, the past to which we must return to have a better future is to return to statism, a strong state that decides everything and that grants the private sector the right to invest and participate.
Neoliberalism went to the extreme that almost destroyed the state, but the populism of López Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum is going to the extreme of centralizing all power and decisions in the presidency.
I must confess that I believe in a strong state, but in a state that does what the private sector cannot do. The state has nothing to do by returning to managing airports, trains, airlines or roads, much less leaving it in the hands of the army and navy, where corruption is allowed if it reaches the generals.
Claudia does not understand that a closed and authoritarian state becomes inefficient and corrupt, and she does not understand that if there are no counterweights and surveillance, inefficiency and corruption will occur in Pemex, CFE, airports, Infonavit and Mexicana. When it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, you will most likely lose due to inefficiency and corruption.
There is no doubt that the 36 years of liberalism were terrible for the majority of Mexicans: salaries went to the ground, the economy did not grow and the rich got richer. The phobia that the neoliberals in the Ministry of Finance had towards the state made them give away public companies, with big business and corruption; lowering salaries under the pretext of attracting investments; and create an ideal country for the rich. But we must not forget that statism entered into crisis in the world and in our country at the end of the 70s, so returning to the past is not a good bet for the future.
Claudia Sheinbaum’s analysis is very basic: since liberalism did not work, we must return to the past, to statism. The truth is, I thought she was smarter and more sophisticated, but her thoughts stayed at 68.
The thinking of López Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum is not leftist, it is outdated populist statism. If we want to move towards a better future, we must move closer to social democracy, where the state guarantees the right to education, health and the infrastructure necessary to have a quality of life, and is not playing around building little trains. With the 140,000 million pesos for the train to Pachuca and Querétaro, education could be truly promoted, health and infrastructure guaranteed to guarantee water, pavement, lighting and roads to the entire population.
I do not believe that López Obrador continues to intervene in the government, what happens is that Claudia Sheinbaum is, perhaps, a better copy of López Obrador, but she is still a copy. Neoliberalism was terrible for most people, but so was statism. It is shortsighted to think that the future lies in returning to the past.
