Reasons for Opposition

Luis Carlos Ugalde runs down and rejects the various reasons for opposing the political reform:

1. The ad hominem fallacy. It consists of disqualifying an idea or proposal by attacking the author without analyzing the merits of the idea or propsal. "If the reform proposal is from Calderón, it's by definition wrong".

Counter-argument: Legislative proposals must be analyzed on their legal and political merits, not based on phobias toward the author.

2. The fallacy of omission. It says that the reform is wrong because it is missing things, for example, the ratification of the cabinet or the revocation of the executive. Some go even further and say that the proposal is wrong because it doesn't include fiscal or social issues.

Counter-argument: if the reform is missing certain issues, it should be improved with additions, not tossed aside because of what it lacks. Beneath that logic neither the fiscal reform of 2007 nor the oil reform of 2008 should have been passed because they had so little substance and that today have been demonstrated insufficient and irrelevant.

3. The fallacy of relative importance. It says that there are other more important topics, such as the economy or social issues, and therefore the political reform isn't relevant in this moment.

Counter-argument: the economic and social problems that Mexico has suffered from since independence are the result, in part, of a political system that permits political irresponsibility and impunity. Attacking it then requires new incentives because poverty and mediocre growth originate in a political machiners that limits new agreements, favors clientism and protects the status quo.

4. The smokescreen fallacy. It says that President Calderón launched his initiative as a smokescreen to cover up the problems of insecurity and unemployment.

Counter-argument: the political reform isn't a football game in which you can distract the citizens from their everyday problems. I don't see how the discussion of the political reform can grab the attention of the masses nor how it can alleviate the bad conditions in which millions of Mexico live today because of poverty and insecurity.

5. The fallacy of social uprising. It says that adopting legislative reelection would be to agitate society, which would rebel as was the case in the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

Counter-argument: No one is talking about presidential reelection, which was the origin of the uprising of Francisco I. Madero in 1910, but rather the reelection of legislators and mayors. Madero never included in his revolutionary ideas the prohibition of deputies and senators.

6. The fallacy of the special interest. It says that reelection is wrong because the special interests have taken over Conress.

Counter-argument: diverse special interests have already taken over Congress and in other instances the Mexican state -- they penetrated it many decades ago. Combating that harmful phenomenon requires alternative methods, such as attacking oligopolistic markets and making the unions more transparent.

7. The fallacy of congressional weakness. It says that the initiative seeks to weaken Congress.

Counter-argument: far from weakening it, reelection strengthens Congress because its integrants will be more professional, more independent of the party structure and because their potential terms will be greater than that of the president of the country (up to 12 years).

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The political reform is a rare opportunity for President Calderón to leave a transcendent legacy. The reform record of Calderón is mediocre until now --his fiscal and oil reform were insufficient and the electoral reform refressive. For the PRI this is an opportunity to make some of their demands a relaity, among them citizen candidacies and the possibility of including issues omitted, such as the plebiscite.

Some of these are more common than others, especially 2, 3, and 7. But I think the big thing Ugalde's missing is that the reasons for opposition are not primarily ones of governing philosophy but of political expediency. No one wants to hand Calderón a victory. The counter-argument to that is that it's in the PRD's and PRI's electoral interests to pass political reform. I guess you could make the case, but I'm not sure I really think it's true, at least not in the narrow short term.