The telltale sign of what the limits of discussion mean in the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto came to light on Feb. 26, 2013, when teacher Elba Esther Gordillo landed at the Toluca airport, never imagining that she would be arrested by members of the Attorney General’s Office (PGR).
She, as it happens to the powerful, lost the ability to listen to warning signals. And now we are witnesses to curious circumstances such as the fact that, while Gordillo is in prison, the money she allegedly stole from its rightful owners, the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), has never been claimed and justice has never been done.
But what we must not forget is that we are Mexico, a unique and fantastic country where every day or every six years we can reinvent everything.
There is something impossible to postpone about the current situation and it concerns the fact that the new director of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), José Antonio González, despite being a wizard of finances, must cross blades with the union or the country will eventually collapse.
Both models are no longer compatible, because now, instead of having a pie to go around, we are left with just the crumbs and must finally decide who will eat them.
And the thing is that those crumbs will be eaten by the apparatus resulting from that weird relationship between some unions who are co-opted by the exercise of poser or they will be put upon the table in order to invest them in education, the youth, jobs and no longer use them in the expenses of the union leaders such as planes, cars and apartments.
I have never been anti-union. I believe that, when unions do their job, they can become a very important instrument for the gathering, defense and rationalization of the workers and society.
But what I can’t support are union leeches, who always include in the negotiations the implementation of a mafia. That is, through the complication of dialogue they manage to break the negotiation itself and then and there they consolidate an agreement.
Now, economic complications, the world situation and our poor oil prices — so devaluated today — forces us to face the problem with unions and pensions — because it seems that Carlos Romero Deschamps, Pemex’s union leader, will be the next —. The coming great question is when will be time for the political class to understand that if order is not achieved in the distribution of the crumbs, the Mexican state will prove unworkable.
