Saturday Morning Sanity

Jorge Chabat has a typically sensible look at Mexico's oil reform debate in Thursday's El Universal. He touches on a lot of points, but one that bears repeating is the show-trial quality to the congressional hearings that make up the debate. The legislators all know how they are going to vote going in; the PAN will vote for the reform, the PRD against, and the PRI will try to extract as many concessions as possible from the PAN in exchange for its support, which it will eventually give. Congressmen don't need the debates to make up their mind; virtually no deputy or senator is going to go against the party leadership (since there is no reelection in Mexico, pols are beholden to their party for their next job, not their constituents). What is actually discussed in the debates is secondary to this political logic, if not entirely irrelevant. In theory, the debate could be used to influence public opinion, but that is also unlikely here, as the debates are highly technical and not really designed to persuade Joe Six-Pack of one side or the other. The result is a series of debaters who aren't really debating so much as offering their opinion, with varying degrees of expertise. Everyone is essentially talking past each other. So, while the reform debate is not quite a sham, it's also "very probable that the monologues of spring won't be remembered by history."