Real Politik

24/11/06

By: Gerardo Enrique Garibay Camarena

In Mexico is nearly unanimous the complaint about citizen’s distrust in the political parties and lack of participation in the political affairs. Is quite clear that, for the regular people, politics are nothing more than a dirty cocktail of interests, ambitions and vanities, where the last thing to worry about is the well-being of the electors that politicians claim to represent; and truth be told, in light of recent events, it seems that the “regulars” are right.

Just a couple of examples

1) On November 20, Andrés Manuel López Obrador become “Legitimate President”, supported by Convergencia, the PRD (Democratic Revolution Party) and the PT (Worker’s Party), whose Congress representatives are threatening, at the most classical “gangsta style” with sabotage real President, Felipe Calderon’s, oath ceremony on December 1^st, claiming a fraud that they haven’t been able to prove and that, in the peak of cynicism, affected, as they put it, the presidential election, but not the legislative, despite they were simultaneous. In other words, those parties scorn laws and institutions, except when is about cash their huge legislative paychecks. In their effort to embitter Calderon’s and National Action Party’s work, Obrador’s fans blocked the “Paseo de la Reforma” (the most important street of the country) for more than a month, causing the loss of hundreds of employments and millions of dollars, but they (Obrador’s fans) don’t care, because those who were affected are not members of their political cult, just ordinary citizens.

2) On November 23, Institutional Revolution’s party’s representatives in the “Asamblea de Representantes” (México’s city local congress) proposed a reform in the law to allow abortion and euthanasia. The project, wrote by deputy Tonatiuh González, seems to be a patetic strategy of the PRI to force National Action Party to give them more ministries and spaces in the new government. Doesn’t matter if, because of that “strategy”, thousands of people die in abortions, for the PRI the death ones will be only collateral damage, just Mexicans. The only thing that really matters to the “priístas” is to get more government positions, so they can live from the public treasure. Serve those who elected them is not in their agenda.

Seeing these facts it’s quite difficult to defend politician’s work, because, who wouldn’t think, after analyse the examples quoted above, that politicians are drainage rats?. Of course not every politician is like that, there are some who really care about and work for the benefit of the people, still, it seems they’re surrounded by those others who, drunken with power, think only in themselves

It’s necessary to clean up México,s political life, and in order to do that, the cooperation of every decent citizen and politician (yes, there are some decent politicians) is crucial. Now, more than ever, the worst thing we could do is stay away from the political parties and the government’s affairs, because, if we act that way, we’d let free camp to unscrupulous folks.