PRIAN Is Dead

Ricardo Raphael shoots down AMLO's persistent complaint that a PRI-PAN mafia is running the country, specifically in regard to the Calderón's agenda-setting informe speech:

The presidential proposal launched toward the rest of [Calderón's] interlocutors --in particular toward the priístas-- aimed at reversing the interests responsible for the present state of affairs. He wanted a broad front against those who have kidnapped education, the energy and telecommunications sectors, labor representation, local politics, and also those who have impeded a fiscal reform with a genuine redistributive objective.

The diagnosis [made in the speech] is correct: in the coordinates where all of these interests can be found you can also find a good part of the anchors of conservative Mexican power. A proposal like that placed on the table by the president threatens, therefore, the actors that protect and defend their authoritarian fiefdoms.

Is the PRI willing to negotiate (allied with the executive the special interests), precisely at this moment when the only worry of its leaders is the construction of a path that will eventually lead them back to the presidency of the Republic?

To fight with Elba Esther Gordillo, if by way of Enrique Peña Nieto the woman is coming back to the PRI? Why lose the support of the unions of Pemex and CFE, or the organizations affiliated with the CTM [a powerful labor conglomerate], if in moments still more difficult they knew to maintain their loyalty to the PRI?

Why confront the Coordinating Business Council or the Mexican Council of Businessmen with a just fiscal reform proposal that eventually could scare off their members? What sense does it make to complicate the relationship with Televisa, if the romance with their directors is just getting started? What would be the reason for confronting corruption and irresponsibility of the local authorities, when 17 governors represent the PRI's most reliable electoral bastion?

Objectively, and not for good reasons, a sincere and positive answer from the PRI to the president seems unlikely.

This state of affairs points to a major disincentive for deep, structural telecom, energy, labor, et cetera reform: anyone who is in power (or thinks that they are on their way into power) will want to risk offending the special interests who can make governing (or getting there) much more complicated. That helps explain why such a bold, broad agenda from Calderón had to wait until after the mid-terms, now that the PAN is on its downhill. The logic here isn't absolute (an administration could conflate its interests with a more long-term view of the country's well-being, rather than its party's short-term needs), but under Raphael's explanation, the best we can hope for is piecemeal reform, not one administration determined to weaken the grip of all of the nation's special interest blocs.