Bernardo Bátiz V.: The PAN and democracy

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n democratic system requires party competition. There can be no democracy in a single-party regime. If in Mexico the so-called “progressive” party was defeated, official match It was because, even though the PRI controlled everything and was an expert in electoral fraud, it never stopped calling for elections. Today we have taken a major step towards the democratization of Mexico and we have to ensure that the Morena party does not repeat the old patterns; therefore, there must be a real, organized opposition with its own proposal. Among the current parties, the PRD disappeared, the PRI has been greatly discredited and, in my opinion, only the PAN could fill the role of opposition.

I say this because of its history, now it is a minority, it has forgotten its doctrine, it is marginal, but it is the second political force in the country. It represents 14.2 percent of legislators in the Chamber of Deputies and 17.1 in the Senate. It governs five states in the Republic and five mayoralties in the capital. Not long ago it was the alternative that won the Presidency first with Vicente Fox (2000) and then with Felipe Calderón (2006), although by then he had already renounced his political primogeniture for a mess of pottage. Fox, with the initials of the PAN and with the support of businessmen gathered in a parallel organization called Friends of Fox, accepted that the principles were to be abandoned in the desk drawer and based his campaign not on proposals, but on the image of himself created by the geniuses advertising. No doctrine and a lot of marketing.

It is now far from being the party of citizens who faced, without many possibilities, the official match former rival, with whom he eventually became an ally and with whom he was defeated in the recent contest won by a wide margin by the first woman to preside over the country, both were defeated by Morena, a recently founded party and a movement with historical significance.

In a note published by The Day Last Tuesday, the 17th, it was announced that this party, considered to be right-wing, was celebrating its 85th anniversary since it was founded, and indeed it was; in 1939, on September 17th, at the facilities of the Frontón México, this foundation took place, as well as the approval of its statutes and its principles of doctrine.

It was the year in which the controversial government of Lázaro Cárdenas ended; he had changed the third article of the Constitution to declare that, in Mexico, education would be socialist; oil had been expropriated and large estates of former haciendas were distributed throughout the country to be given to the towns converted into ejidos and communal lands, thereby breaking the liberal scheme of private property.

The newly founded PAN, in 1940, made its first major decision: it had to choose between running its own candidate or joining a very popular and well-organized campaign of the former Zapatista revolutionary and later Huerta member Juan Andreu Almazán, an opposition candidate who competed with Manuel Ávila Camacho, the official successor of Cárdenas. The new party, hesitant, agreed at its assembly to give its members the freedom to support or not the opposition candidate, knowing that it was not easy to defeat the ruling party and that it would be a bad start to its political life with a defeat.

At that foundation, whose anniversary goes unnoticed, documents were approved that opened an electoral option that was democratic, politically, and liberal, economically, and independent of the government, formed by citizens eager to participate in politics, knowing that it was little less than impossible to defeat the official steamroller.

For years, the PAN did not win any electoral victories, but it did bring a party mystique and a strong will to exercise the democratic rights established in the Constitution. For decades, its benches were in the minority, with five or six deputies in the majority, but they began an incipient parliamentary life in which heroic testimonies were given in the debates even though they knew that defeats in the votes were certain.

Worth remembering is his motto: For an orderly and generous homeland and a better and more dignified life for allas well as some of its founders recruited mainly in the world of culture and Catholic action. I mention Manuel Gómez Morín, its founder, one of the seven wise mena public servant in the Obregón and Calles governments and rector of the University of Mexico; others worthy of being remembered are the Jalisco native Efraín González Luna; the Tabasco poet José María Gurría Urgell; the university professor Roberto Cossío y Cosío; the philosopher of law Rafael Preciado Hernández, and the writer and historian Luis Calderón Vega.

A proactive opposition is needed and I believe that the PAN could take advantage of the opportunity to vindicate itself, return to its days as a citizen-forming party and shake off the leaders who have become a real estate mafia.

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