Politics: More polarization or a national accord
The Covid-19 virus continues to spread in Mexico, although at a relatively moderate rate. With the number of people detected with the virus doubling every seven days, and fatalities doing so every four, at the current clip Mexico could end the month with four times as many confirmed cases. Covid-19 czar Hugo López Gatell has projected that the epidemic’s impact will peak in mid May, and that the first cycle of the epidemic will extend to June 25, when an estimated 95% of cases will have passed, but only if tighter restrictions on activity are fully respected, many of which have been largely voluntary for the general public until this point. Even in such a scenario, there would be highly differentiated strategies for resuming normal activities.
Tensions over the government’s response to both the health and economic crises have been intensifying at an accelerating pace. As in most countries, there are doubts as to the reliability of official data given that limited testing could mean a serious undercount of people with the virus and related deaths. Many state governors have been especially critical of the lack of protective gear and medical equipment reaching hospitals.
But the government faces a potentially more serious threat in the mushrooming of discontent among business leaders, even key ones in the administration’s immediate orbit. Enraged when the administration recently rejected out of hand their proposals for reviving the economy, opting instead for its same script of cash transfers to the most vulnerable, micro credits and the administration’s three main infrastructure projects, the country’s business associations, opposition parties and many other social and political actors have put forward a plan of action to serve as a National Accord for dealing with the crisis that might eventually bring the government into the mix.
This historically unprecedented initiative could prove to be an indispensable mechanism for deactivating the current social and political polarization and uniting the country’s efforts to overcome its health and economic imminent crises. Given the risk of hardline groups on both sides' beginning to dominate the situation, this leadership initiative provides a moderate and sensible alternative to a destructive dynamic of social and political polarization.
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