Ricardo's Blog

Dear Andres Manuel, you deserve all of my respect as a politician and a leader of millions of fellow Mexicans.  millions of Mexicans believe in you and I am sure they do it the same way we Mexicans do most things: with all our heart and with all the passion we place on everything we do.  I don’t have to ask myself if you aspire to be the president of all Mexicans: in your words, your face and in all of your body you can easily see the ardent desire you have to rule our country.

This week you said in one of your speeches that your movement was going after more. Beyond the “voto por voto”, beyond the presidential election process.   You said that now you are after the “transformation of our country” and that you will “purify the life of public service”.  Both goals deserve recognition and that is why I’d like to ask you for some things as you go about fulfilling your mission.

If you aspire to rule for all Mexicans, please do not put labels in any of them. Labeling people has in most countries a very direct name: it is called discrimination. Not even “good” labels are acceptable.  Labeling the poor is as offensive as labeling the rich.  Labeling everybody who is not with you as “right” or “extreme right” does not help anybody. Aren’t we all, labeled by you, simply Mexicans?

If you aspire to govern all of us do not let your speech become radical.  You should know it well, making your speech radical made you lose the election and it keeps costing you everyday. The periods in which you fell the most in the polls, in an election you had everything to won, where the periods in which your speech was more radical, when you avoided debating with other candidates, when you showed your anti-democratic side.  All of us who work in marketing and sales know that there is no budget large enough to sell a poor product.  If the negative campaign that your rivals deployed on you had a strong result is because you gave many reasons for it.  You gave the content that made that negative campaign thrive.

If you aspire to govern all of us you should be inclusive and tolerant.  Neither you nor I have all the responses to the needs of all Mexicans.  Neither you nor I know everything everybody needs to progress. The only attitude that can help us understand the needs and provide solutions that benefit the majority of the population is to include everybody in the solution.  This is extremely hard to do as most of us have different perspectives on life and different ways to live and think.  However, a true democratic leader overcomes this hurdle and goes and truly transforms his or her country into something better.

If you aspire to rule all of us, you should make your acts match your words.  A democratic leader that states that is building democracy blocking the access to people to their workplaces, schools and houses is not being consistent. It is not consistent to aspire to govern a country under a democratic system taking authoritarian decisions.  It is not consistent to aspire to govern a democratic country taking unilateral decisions that are backed up by one group only.

If you aspire to be a president, do not use violence, not even as a rhetorical tool for your speeches. You see, the words of a leader like you are carried by many people in their hearts and you know it well.  You cannot say that you will reach your goals “one way or the other” and not expect that somebody might see this as a call to violence. True leaders should not only enjoy the benefits of having people following them, they also have an obligation with their followers to take good care of them. With hate-filled speeches, are you really sure that people are always going to be under your control? Aren’t there enough examples of leaders that have been surpassed by the violence they created themselves?

Lastly, if you aspire to transform the institutions of Mexico and purify its public service: How come you never did that in Mexico City when you were the mayor? Why didn’t you took advantage of having an absolute majority of the local congress in your hands? Why didn’t you make Mexico City a cleaner, safer and more inclusive city?

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- Querido Andrés Manuel