Two Fewer Years

Miguel Carbonell sees Calderón as slogging through the last few years of his presidency, much as Fox did:

Maybe many think that the difficulty with which presidents spend their last two years owes to their lack of leadership, political commitment or personal motivation. I don't think so. It has more to do with the dysfunction of the constitutional arrangement that perhaps worked in another era of Mexican political life, but today is not in the least bit useful.

The best solution is to change to a period of four years and discuss if we want to copy the US model, which permits only one reelection immediately, or the Chilean model, which permits reelection by not consecutively. Or if we reduce the period but we continue maintaining the principle of absolutely no reelection.

The worst thing that we can do is stay where we are waiting months for a new president to arrive, while the rest of the nations pass us by in economic growth, judicial reform, infrastructure development, job creation, quality education, et cetera. We need to modernize our antiquated regime and we need to do so as soon as possible, to overcome the political paralysis in which we find ourselves.

I offer no argument regarding the diagnosis. And actually I think the prescription is right on, too. I do, however, think that it's a bit much to expect that changing the presidential term will have a very direct, immediate impact on the above litany of problems.