The New Strategy

In deciding to arrest the leader of the National Education Workers’ Union, the current government has shown its determination to change the country, starting by establishing a policy of combating corruption and impunity. This is the clear message of one of the decisions that has most shaken up our country of late. However, this should not be indiscriminately directed at unions, which have faced the brunt of the basest instincts, but also at innumerable politicians, businesspeople, journalists and media, judges, magistrates and ministers, lawyers’ offices, priests, chambers of commerce and others besides.

The President is taking such action because he made a promise to a nation tired of injustices, inequalities and a lack of rights, heading for failure, just as John F. Kennedy and Barack H. Obama have both made promises to the people of the United States at certain critical times. Moreover, Mexico has no other alternative and the worlds of politics, work, finance and culture are watching it. Confidence is gained by raising the moral standards of a society and its government, and by correctly interpreting and applying justice, which must be transparent.

Their ineptitude and corruption have meant that the PAN (National Action Party) governments led by Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón have been condemned to oblivion and mediocrity. This new government has a unique historic opportunity, and by absolutely no means should it follow the path of the persecution and attacks on the working class and their honest, democratic leaders. They need stronger principles and ethical values than those of many of the people who are attacking the teachers’ union. The message must be clear. It is not a question of political vengeance, but rather of a strategy to control runaway ambition and insulting opulence. As well as this, they must develop strategies, in other ways and in other spaces, to correct the irrational exploitation of the nation’s natural resources through concessions and permits, blackmail, privileged information and trading in influence, which are only accessible to those close to the inner circles of power.

Justice must not be selective because then it is not justice. Therein is crux of the case of some corporate groups that have previously been named here, which pay little or no taxes, as exposed by the data published here in La Jornada by the distinguished columnist Carlos Fernández-Vega in January 2010 when he clearly identified a tax debt from 42 companies amounting to 223,707.9 million Pesos. This includes certain companies from the mining sector like Germán Larrea’s Grupo México with a debt of 11,939.1 million, Alberto Bailleres’ Grupo Peñoles with 6,124.14 million pending payment and Alonso Ancira Elizondo’s Altos Hornos de México which to date owes 6,666 million.

It would be very easy for the Treasury Ministry to demand the payment of these debts, which in many cases are confirmed frauds, going even as far as the non-payment of taxes upon the sale of businesses. Furthermore, some of these same consortiums have received hundred of mining concessions and other sinecures, to the extent that more than 25 percent of the national territory has been given away in concessions to Mexican and foreign companies. That is to say, the hypocrisy of some businesspeople and certain media outlets has turned the strategy of media coverage and social attacks into a web of complicity in business and political influence, in both cases founded on the manipulation and confusion of the population. The truth is that very few of these assailants would pass the test of transparency and social scrutiny, because their hands are stained.

Some of these businesspeople are so cynical and high-handed that they talk about the politicians who are in power disdainfully and sarcastically, and they manipulate them to their own ends. They still take the liberty of announcing big investments that benefit them, so as to impress improvised and superficial politicians who when it comes down to it have no notion or feeling of how to identify and resolve social needs because they are only concerned with power and profits and spare no love for Mexico. They are sinister characters who in one article I called bodies without souls. In the political sphere we have seen the cases of barefaced corruption in recent PAN governments, led by Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, as well as some led by other parties.

As things currently stand, a single sector of society has been demonised: the working class. Many people forget that the unions have in fact, despite their flaws, been a force for balance, stability and social peace for many decades. They conveniently forget that workers have the right to act in accordance with the Constitution, the Federal Labour Law and Agreement 87 of the International Workers’ Organisation, and that union leaders are workers, just as the heads of companies are shareholders.

Mexico hopes that this high-profile case will be the start of a process of real change to eliminate or combat impunity and ensure that the state of law is respected, and not an isolated case. It is the political moment to establish a visionary strategy for the State, one that avoids unleashing persecution and the worst instincts of Mexicans whose frustration and impotence cause them to react in that way, faced with what is perceived as the lack of a better future for our country.