Manuel Ibarra Santos
At the political crossroads that the nation is experiencing, in a sort of perfect storm, facing the presidential succession of 2024, the Senate of the Republic, with Ricardo Monreal Ávila, has established itself in the space of democratic balances, counterweights, stability and governance in Mexico.
This is perhaps the greatest contribution that the Senate has made at this time (198 years after its creation, completed on October 4), to the political development of the country, beyond ideological Manichaeism.
The constituents of 1824 and among them the promoters of bicameralism (such as Ramos Arispe, Lorenzo de Zavala and Francisco García Salinas), thought of the Senate as the revision chamber, that of balance and the representative of the nation’s federalist interests. Ricardo Monreal has currently reclaimed that historic spirit.
The original conception of the Senate as a Chamber of review and balance is actually recovered, in a period of strong dilemmas for the existence of the Republic, when the singular (and perhaps useless) debate has been dusted off, like a tomahawk.) between conservatives and liberals, federalists and centralists.
Ricardo Monreal was commissioned with his guidance to reorient the life of the Senate, to transform it into the Chamber of consensus, of critical rationality and in the space of governability, where they coexisted, in an extraordinarily unexpected event, the same of the right, the center , then the left.
Faced with the mechanism that stimulates aggressive confrontation, Ricardo Monreal instead took the initiative to invoke unity and reconciliation among Mexicans.
With this, the “pro/Marxist” thesis which supported the erroneous thesis according to which the dialectical struggle of opposites was the best strategy to promote change is deeply questioned. This has proved false in the light of history, as Karl R. Popper so well stated in his long-running work “The Poverty of Historicism” (1936).
In this way, the Senate has positioned itself as the epicenter of great political storms, but also as a republican nucleus where it has contributed to dissolving strong tensions which, otherwise, would have risked exploding and disfiguring the face of the nation.
This is the value of the work that Ricardo Monreal has carried out as an efficient operator as president of the Senate’s Political Coordination Council, placing himself as an indisputable bridge of communication with the representatives of all the country’s political forces.
Most of President López Obrador’s aides and cabinet members lacked this feature, the function of which has been distorted and perverted by the interest of far anticipating the 2024 succession struggle.
As group leader of the Senate, Ricardo Monreal reconfirmed himself as the most effective point of reference for building agreements with the representatives of the most diverse national political forces. They seek him out because they know he likes to honor his word.
Within his own movement (MORENA), they treated him behaviorally, i.e. with incentives and punishments. First they show him the carrot and at the same time they throw him, with “sledgehammers” to try to eliminate him, through emissaries, as Layda Sansores recently did, generating a climate of radical confrontation. What his opponents don’t understand is that the Zacatecan politician grows up to be punished.
The governor of Campechana, Layda Sansores, with her virulent attacks sent to politically eliminate the head of the Senate, the only thing that has tightened the ranks of a group of national forces in favor of Ricardo Monreal, thus strengthening him even more.
So much so that, a few days after Layda’s attacks directed like missiles against Ricardo Monreal, Adán Augusto López himself declared in the capital of Zacatecas that the head of the Senate is a “luxury” politician, which surely rang in his ears to stop the conspiracy of the campechana and its allies.
Ricardo Monreal today marks a milestone in the history of the Senate of the Republic. A phenomenon for the political laboratory that needs to be studied, to see how far its scope will go.
THE MATHEMATICS OF CONSENT AND MONREAL:
As of last week, Ricardo Monreal has racked up outstanding results. He recorded a renewed mathematics of agreements and consents in his favor: 70% of the members of the Senate closed ranks around the Zacatecan; six out of eight parliamentary factions expressed their support; 65% of senators from his party (MORENA) expressed solidarity and his reconciliation movement reached 100 Mexican cities. A positive balance.
Ricardo Monreal is, today, a major factor in the 2024 presidential succession struggle.
THE MARCH FOR DEMOCRACY:
The building of consensus in the Senate coincides with the march for democracy and in defense of the INE, held in the country’s capital and in many Mexican cities.
