Loyalty to whom?

In times of discontent, loyalty takes center stage in politics . It is not said clearly because it is embarrassing to recognize that loyalty today refers to people, not to institutions, nor to concepts with content and substance such as republic or democracy . When loyalty to the project is invoked from those in power, in reality it is loyalty to López Obrador , because the project is him, the proposals for change come from him. The initiatives of this government, such as eliminating consecutive reelection and prohibiting nepotism, are minor compared to the change of regime promoted by the moral leader.

How is loyalty resolved when the original leader has symbolically and legally withdrawn from institutional power? Simple, with the commitment to the founding symbols by whoever heads the government. That is why it is correct, if it is about the survival of the project, that President Sheinbaum invokes her commitment to Andrés Manuel López Obrador .

The coincidence of the president with the former president is not self-interested, nor calculated. This is because there is identity in the substantive, which is the destruction of the democratic regime , and also in the accidental, the use of the daily morning meeting with the media as a resource for propaganda and control of the news agenda. Of course there are styles, as the president usually describes Donald Trump, but politically the differences do not result from different political and professional training. President Sheinbaum has found a fertile path to exercise power without the counterweights of democracy . It is a spiral from which there is no return.

The problem arises when the conditions or challenges facing the country and its government change. Exercising power with large resources in trusts, investments and savings, as well as a balanced public finances , is not the same as doing so in financial conditions as critical as those that President Sheinbaum found when she took power. Nor is it the same to win the government without suspicion of collusion with organized crime . Furthermore, governing with a Trump 1.0 is not the same as governing with a Trump 2.0. It is evident that conditions have changed and therefore an adjustment of government decisions is required, the most obvious being in matters of security.

For any regime to survive, it requires a process of adaptation to the changes that reality imposes. That was the magic of the PRI and its supposed six-year pendulum policy, until it was devoured by democratic competition and its intrinsic rigidity to assume it. Now adjustments are required that must be made carefully so as not to awaken inertia or the perception of rupture; notable, necessary and convenient in terms of security because the situation was unsustainable.

It is not an exaggeration to point out that the greatest threat to national sovereignty that the Mexican State has faced in the last century has been the different organized crime groups. Such seriousness was not present in the Second World War or in the period of the Cold War, with respect to the risk that criminal groups represent when challenging the State for the legitimate monopoly of violence, justice and public management. A situation that is already serious due to the complacency of Obradorism, which is updated and increased by the demands of Trump and his people. Mexico sees itself threatened by its northern neighbor under the argument of collusion or the inability of its authorities to combat criminals. National public opinion has normalized the irregularity that means that the most outstanding cases of justice against organized crime take place in the neighboring country. García Luna had no charges in Mexico, El Chapo was arrested after two escapes in national high security prisons with intelligence information from the US and El Mayo was subdued by an operation agreed to, negotiated or operated by the Chapitos with the North American authorities.

Loyalty to Mexico is what is most needed in these difficult times. Democracy has lost and this great defeat prevents a feeling of unity around the president, especially because those in power insist on exclusion , intolerance, impunity for their own people and the factional use of the government. Actions for the good of the country in terms of security must be recognized, but it must also be demanded that the law be applied to everyone, including those in the regime who are in collusion with crime; actions to protect migrants must be supported, but without official double talk; the government must be supported in its relationship with the US, but without submission or hidden or explicit agreements that compromise national sovereignty.