Politics: Governability in Question
Following a couple of weeks of unexplained gasoline shortages, the government announced on December 27 that on New Year’s Day gasoline prices would rise by 20% on average, this following years of assurances by President Enrique Peña that the energy reform would do away with such "gasolinazos". Feeling hoodwinked yet again by a president already greatly lacking in credibility, people engaged in a broad and sometimes violent social response as they vented their rage at what amounted effectively to an unexplained tax hike at a time of flagrant corruption and profligate spending by government officials. The way in which the announcement was ineptly “explained” over the following weeks was yet another exercise in a tone-deaf administration’s inability to implement unpopular decisions.
Social organizations and opposition parties held marches, and sit-ins took place around the country, while a more ominous wave of anonymous social media campaigns and rumors of mass mayhem accompanied the looting of hundreds of commercial establishments, supermarkets and other businesses.
Rounding out the panorama as we began the year, and with Donald Trump confirming his determination to see anti-Mexican trade and migration policies become a reality beginning January 21 while publicly shaming manufacturers to cancel investment projects in Mexico, President Peña decides to bring Luis Videgaray, the architect of candidate Trump’s visit to Mexico late last August, back into the cabinet as minister of foreign relations.
Thus, 2017 is shaping up to be a critical year in the sense that the manner in which serious problems facing the country – an increasingly fragile economy; discredited governments and parties; unbridled corruption; rising insecurity and violence; the United States government's adopting openly anti-Mexican policies with the enormous potential to further weaken the economy; the discrediting of politics and an exacerbation of insecurity due to the expected wave of stepped up deportations — are managed will determine whether the end of a presidential administration in 2018 will be marked by a grave political and economic crisis. The problem is that the government — which should be directing its efforts and those of society and markets to solve such problems — appears to be oblivious to the gravity of the situation, or is pretending to be so, and is failing to act accordingly, which is to say it is failing to make the necessary changes in its governing team and in its policies.
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