First of all, the energy reform

The energy reform is the epitome of the political project of Andrés Manuel López Obrador ,

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but also the scaffolding that supports his daily discourse of counterattack against those he considers his adversaries. The day that Mexico exceeds 200,000 official deaths from coronavirusAfter managing the health crisis surrounded by criticism, the president has chosen to intensify his defense of the new electricity law, which is paralyzed by the courts and in practice has not yet entered into force. Because there, in that argument, everything that it claims to represent fits. The priority of the public, in this case the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), in front of the private initiative; the vindication of national values ​​in the presence of foreign companies, led by Iberdrola; attacks on the media; the break with the past and, ultimately, an attempt to stop the wear and tear of government action by trying to look like opposition.

The message, or the lament, is clear and at the same time profitable for the president, whose polarizing strategy brings him benefits according to polls with just over months to go before the federal and local elections in June. In other words, they are all against the government, but they are not going to move us. In other words, López Obrador has shown himself once again, this Friday, determined to complete his energy reform. For this, it has already faced productive sectors, not only foreign investors, and has even entered into a melee with the judicial sector that has stopped the new law, questioning its independence and accusing it of responding to the interests of large corporations .

"We are not going to take a step back," emphasized the president, who has appeared accompanied, among other positions, by Manuel Bartlett, CFE general director. Behind this position there is an attempt to show that if they twist they would become "cover-ups and accomplices of corruption." The president has not stopped making accusations against businessmen and the press, without presenting evidence, on account of the electricity reform, a legal change that buries the model of his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, and gives priority to the supply to a company of the State, despite the enormous economic and environmental impact that this entails, according to experts.

This idea of ​​corruption coincides, with almost no exceptions, with an attack against private companies for receiving public subsidies. And the main argument to defend the electricity law is the substantial reduction in electricity rates, which at the same time is an electoral promise that will surely bring benefits. Analysts with decades of experience in the sector such as David Shields, however, have indicated that Mexico is likely to have more expensive electricity. This increase will not directly affect small consumers, because that energy will continue to be subsidized. But it will have an impact on industrial production and the increase in costs will have effects on the entire market and on the prices of goods.

The format of the morning press conferences allows López Obrador, day after day, to take the initiative and set the agenda. This Friday has been, as has happened on multiple occasions in recent weeks, the electricity reform. Thanks to the rhetorical artifice that he has built around the reform, he has deepened his attacks on the media, including EL PAÍS, which the president has not stopped linking to companies such as Iberdrola, which already at the end of 2020 ruled out new investments in Mexico. And thanks to a speech full of insinuations, he diverts the attention of the critics to a more than discussed management of the coronavirus pandemic and the distribution of vaccines , while the danger posed by the new variants and the threat of a re-outbreak at Easter continue current.

Yesterday the undersecretary Hugo López-Gatell resigned from the arguments and turned his appearance into an attack against the newspapers, televisions and radios. And to that is added that last night the National Electoral Institute (INE) canceled the candidacy of Félix Salgado Macedonio , a politician from Morena who received the unrestricted support of the president and the party apparatus despite facing two complaints of rape and other accusations of sexual harassment . The electoral authority withdrew its list to the governor of the State of Guerrero for not having submitted a report on its pre-campaign expenses. The decision is reversible and will be challenged before the Electoral Court, but in the meantime it has meant a setback for López Obrador and the Government.

With these premises, the Government has continued its attacks on judges and companies in the electricity sector. To the judges because "they voted against an agreement to guarantee the stability of the network", in the words of Manuel Bartlett, general director of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). And to energy companies because they pay lower transmission rates as part of the self-supply model, a mechanism that started three decades ago and that allows companies to buy electricity from private plants without going through the CFE.

The companies, in the crosshairs
Iberdrola, a frequent target of this Government, receives 26% of these supposed "subsidies", according to Miguel Reyes, director of CFE Energía. At the cocktail party, Kimberly Clark, whose board of directors is chaired by the father of Claudio X. González, a declared opponent of the current Administration. This company buys electricity through the reviled self-supply model.

To support their attacks, the Government has released a barrage of figures, of uncertain calculation. Bimbo pays 1 peso per kilowatt hour (Kwh) and Oxxo, 1.2 pesos, while a middle-class home with subsidized electricity pays 2.3 pesos, as announced by the CFE this Friday. Four days before, the president had presented other figures: Bimbo paid 1.7 pesos per kilowatt hour (Kwh) and Oxxo, 1.8. The message, whatever the figures, is the same as always: "Their objective [of these companies] is to supplant the CFE," declared Manuel Bartlett, head of the parastatal.

López Obrador intensifies his political battle before the suspension of the electricity reform

Andrés Manuel López Obrador took a little more than a month to promote the electricity reform, which was processed through the emergency procedure by Congress, and the justice system suspended it indefinitely in just over a week. The law that buries the previous regulation to give priority to the supply to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), a state company, is a personal flag of the President of Mexico. It has become a symbol, because it forms the backbone of the Government's discourseto contest everything that preceded it. Energy or economic management is just the starting point for a kind of amendment to the whole of the past. That is why the suspension issued this Friday by a judge who accepted the resources of two companies from renewable sources will not make the president desist, who, on the contrary, intensifies his political battle. López Obrador wants the Supreme Court, the highest judicial body in the country, to decide the case and has promised to "make this matter a matter for national debate."

"We are going to decide the Supreme Court because it is a legal process. It begins with a suspension, it has to be reviewed and surely this matter will reach the Supreme Court of Justice ”, the president anticipated in his morning press conference when Judge Juan Pablo Gómez Fierro was about to announce the ruling about reform. “For them to declare the law unconstitutional, they would need to have an absolute majority or two-thirds of the votes of the ministers of the Court, with four ministers who say no,With that they could not declare the law unconstitutional ”, he continued. This pulse, which began with warnings to the Judiciary and a formal request for an investigation by the judge sent to the President of the Court, Arturo Zaldívar, lays the foundations for a melee in the middle of the electoral campaign of the federal and local elections of 6 of June.

Criticisms of the judiciary for which they consider an interference in the separation of powers are added to those of the productive sectors for a reform that discourages investment, especially in renewable energy. But López Obrador has not shown concern about it, but has taken advantage of the clash with those estates to reaffirm his position, which revolves around the idea of ​​energy sovereignty, and to seek the complicity of his voters, whom he usually calls "the town". The president has already made it clear that he will continue to use his pulpit in the morningto inform, or comment, on this litigation. This Friday he has deepened his crusade against the aid received by private companies for investing in clean energy sources such as, he has argued without providing more details, were the American chain of stores Walmart and the Mexican group Bimbo.

“I am going to be informing the people of what is not known, because I am sure that people did not know that Bimbo and that Walmart also had shares in electricity companies, that is, that in addition to commerce they are also engaged in electricity, because that, as they are electricity producers, they receive the subsidy ”, he added. The central argument of the president to defend the reform is consumer savings, which does have electoral pull.However, according to analysts such as David Shields, with extensive experience in the sector, electricity will be more expensive. This will not have a direct impact on the pocket of Mexicans, because the energy distributed mainly by the CFE will continue to be subsidized. On the other hand, industrial production will be affected, according to their forecast, which indirectly will end up determining costs of goods and services.

In this context, the Federal Electricity Commission, chaired by the veteran leader Manuel Bartlett, became one of the highest political expressions of the so-called fourth transformation, the López Obrador project. That is why the president, who openly recognized that the purpose of the reform was to strengthen that state-owned company, is willing to take the case to a constitutional reform that, in addition, would allow him to try to change the entire energy model.

“If [the law] is declared unconstitutional, because the interests of business groups dominate, if the judges, magistrates, ministers do not act with justice, it would be necessary to remove even the name of the Supreme Court of Justice, Supreme Court of Law or something like that, but if the electricity law is declared unconstitutional, which is for the benefit of the people, then I would have to go to present a constitutional reform initiative to leave the Constitution as it was when President López Mateos ”, the president has warned in reference to the ruler who during his tenure, in 1960, nationalized the electricity industry.

Despite these claims, López Obrador maintains that they do not pose a "threat, or even a warning." "We fight for a democracy, we do not aspire to a dictatorship, we want a true division of powers," he went on to say last Wednesday. The president hides himself in a strictly political conviction. That is, a failure that does not coincide with their plans would be “an abuse”. “I am not a cover-up. So, if I am seeing that something is benefiting a minority at the expense of the suffering of the majority of the people, then I have to denounce it and I am not going to stay with my arms crossed, especially if I am the authority, ”he said. Ultimately, it does not contemplate that an unfavorable ruling conforms to current legislation and is determined to turn it into a political storm.