The uncomfortable silences of Felipe Calderón | International

On Saturday December 3, 2011 at 11 am, the then candidate Enrique Peña Nieto He made a tremendous presentation of his book at the Guadalajara Book Fair. In front of an auditorium of hauled VIP who filled the place with ties and fixative gel, the telegenic candidate spoke of hope, hope and a Mexico for young people. The cadence of the words, the calculated pauses for the water and their most forceful sentences always ended up looking at infinity. It was the debut of a man designed from the cradle for the presidency “pronouncing phrases rehearsed in front of the mirror a thousand times”, I wrote in the notebook that morning.

However, half an hour later the inevitable came. Peña Nieto, the candidate who led with more than ten points in all the polls, made such a ridiculous thing that it haunts him until today. Even the cameramen began to laugh when he was unable to remember three books that marked his life. His team moved their fingers, scissors in front of their mouths, and the three minutes that Mexico saw were, in reality, a quarter of an hour of anguished babble.

Of that book nobody remembers that it was titled Mexico, the great hope, but with Felipe Calderón’s, Difficult decisions, of recent appearance, will not happen the same. First because the book of former president (Editorial Debate) reminds one of Hilary Clinton, Hard choices and second, because it is written by him.

Eight years after leaving power, the book by the former president of Mexico between 2006 and 2012, the best-selling on Amazon, reads like an adventure novel that reveals some of the conversations, pressures, successes and failures that surround a President. Time showed that Peña Nieto was the instrument of the PRI to reach the presidency, but CalderónFor better or for worse, he is the protagonist on the way to the service of his convictions. Hence, his book was enough to forgive him.

Why a book so many years later? It should not be forgotten that Calderón has set out to remake the right by promoting the creation of a new political party and continues to atone for its faults. However, it should be thanked that, unlike the majority of former presidents, after convincing more than ten million people to vote for him, he has not disappeared from public life. His book stirs a taste for politics and discussion in covid-19 times and unique speech.

With Vicente Fox imprisoned by their frivolities, the importance of Difficult decisions lies in Calderón’s claim as conservative leader, a vacant post after the tsunami erupted López Obrador. Although re-election is prohibited, Calderón dreams of bringing his wife, Margarita Zavala, to the presidency of Mexico. A strange impulse similar to the one Fox once had, portraying a right that conceives of the country as the living room of his home.

Throughout 14 chapters and more than 500 pages, Calderón describes the most tense moments of his mandate. Among them the electoral night, the never-proven allegations of fraud by López Obrador or the violent taking of protest in 2006. The book dedicates several chapters to the unsuccessful war on drugs, its relationship with the unions, the dissolution of Luz y Fuerza, his management at the head of his party, the arrival of the influences H1N1, the first pandemic of the 21st century, or its tense relationship with Hugo Chávez and Lula da Silva.

The book, which covers the seven years that elapse from his resignation as Energy Secretary until he leaves office in 2012, plus an epilogue with criticism of the current president, portray the complexity of power and loneliness of a president surrounded by people, but deeply isolated.

Without a doubt, the most exciting passage is from 2005 when the self-styled disobedient son, is launched with a group of files to conquer, first from the party and then from power. Starting with his inauguration in July 2006, which he describes minute by minute in an interesting chapter that includes entering Congress through a secret door and in which he describes López Obrador’s reaction to “attempted coup d’état”, the rest of his mandate walks between mistrust and political loneliness between the repudiation of the PRD and the indifference of the PRI.

With those wickerwork, Calderón surrounded himself with a small group of men whose common thread is not talent or efficiency, but loyalty. In this context, it is understood that he describes as “the hardest moment” the death in a “plane crash” of his friend and Secretary of the Interior, Juan Camilo Mouriño.

Throughout the book, Felipe Calderón, born in Morelia 57 years ago, appears as a tenacious man who knows parliamentary threads like no one else and who is responsible for every decision. He also describes a proud and ignorant leader of the violent reality that awaited him.

Calderón portrays himself as a man who confronted the electricians union and an effective manager who brought order to his party and left a successful economic balance that generated more than 500,000 jobs in his first year in office. He describes himself as a president who bet on renewable energy and who put Chávez and Lula in their place.

On the main reproach to his management, having agitated the hornet’s nest of violence, Calderón maintains that it was almost a constitutional mandate to regain control of that of large areas of the country where he had been lost (as is currently the case) and that with his coming to power broke the “that is not touched” that Fox snapped when he consulted him on the subject. Calderón remembers that he went to the Michoacán governor’s call for help and blames the bottom line that there was no continuity with Peña Nieto.

However, the book suffers from self-criticism and a more profound explanation of the “war” waged. Beyond a small scare when he went to Tamaulipas to support the PAN candidates, he seems to be unaware of a bigger phenomenon than his government. Calderón does not admit errors in the face of a phenomenon that leaves undeniable data: the number of homicides rose 150% during his six years in office, according to INEGI figures.

Throughout many pages Calderón describes a tactic and not a strategy that leaves many dead. At the same time, the absence of a serious explanation about his strong man on the subject of security Genaro García Luna, detained in the United States Accused of favoring the Sinaloa cartel in exchange for bribes, he weakens the book beyond gossip.

With a hasty note at the end of the chapter, Calderón says that he learned the news of the arrest after he had delivered the manuscript to the publisher and settles the matter saying that “If his guilt were proven, and the facts of which he He accuses him, this would be a very serious lack of trust placed in him by society, and especially by his own colleagues (…) who risked and even lost their lives. “

Considering that his arrest occurred more than five months ago, on December 10, 2019, and that the book has only been distributed electronically, the five paragraphs devoted to the subject seem more like an excuse than an explanation that the responsibility in the betrayed society, as if it had been named by the Holy Trinity.

In the chapter dedicated to the H1N1 pandemic there is no mention of the covid-19 but it is inevitable to make a comparison with the current scenario. The former president celebrates the success of the five-day confinement ordered in May 2009 and dedicates many pages to recognizing the diligence of his team in controlling the virus or importing Tamiflu in a context of international isolation. The president, however, omits the disastrous communication policy of his Health Secretary José Ángel Córdova, who daily disseminated data without confirming that they fueled international rejection.

López Obrador, who he says is authoritarian and undemocratic, is unable to accept anything in the book, unable to accept anything other than his victory and his data. He reproaches Vicente Fox for the contempt with which he was treated since he decided to dispute Santiago Creel’s candidacy and criticizes the current leadership of the PAN with the pain of someone who has stolen something he felt from his property since he was a child put up posters among the insults of the PRI supporters.

There are curious references to his old friend Germán Martínez, today a deputy from Morena, whom he describes as someone dark “who does not put all the cards on the table” or who flirted with the extreme right-wing of the Yunke during his time as president of the PAN. Among the best freed are Juan Camilo Mouriño, from whom he says “he owes the presidency” or Marcelo Ebrard, today chancellor and then head of the Government of Mexico City, whom he says did not speak to him in public, but acted responsibly when it came to working together. Among other contradictions, Calderón confronted the electricians union, but gave Elba Ester Gordillo, the main leader of the teachers’ union, managed the Mexican Lottery so that it did not set the street on fire.

In your relationship with Latin AmericaCalderón appears as an eclipsed leader and caught between two monsters like Chávez and Lula. The image that best portrays Calderón’s management is that of that meal during a summit in which for protocol reasons he had to sit between the presidents of Brazil and Venezuela. After a long time making jokes, jokes and bragging “like little children,” says Calderón, they joked about invading Mexico. “Together, or separately, they peel it from the Mexicans!”, The former president would have replied angrily after leaving the cutlery. About Cuba, he says that although he always refused to make a state visit if he could not speak to the opposition, he ended up accepting when he learned that the Pope would also go. “I can’t be more papist than the pope,” he said to himself.

Precisely in Cuba, Fidel Castro’s best-known book appealed to History for his salvation. Calderón’s, however, seems like a Sabina song where absolution occurs whenever he confesses.

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