"Why is President Calderon so close minded and stubborn? Why can he accept his gaffes? Why can he listen to suggestion from other political actors?"
By Gabriel Infante Carrillo
Surprisingly a few days ago Manuel Espino Barrientos, former national president of the ruling party, National Action Party, sent a public letter to President Calderon, where he expressed to him that his decision to fight the organize crime is wise but the strategy is incorrect, making this war a complete failure. The critics doesn’t end there, Amnesty International, in his recent report Mexico: "New Reports of Human Right Violation in Hands of the Army", has warn to the Mexican government that if the grievances of the Mexican army continues against the civilians as part of “the drug war”, Felipe Calderon’s government will be held responsible of crime against humanity, which is sanction by the Rome Statues of the International Criminal Court, and which Mexico is a signatory. The response of the government to this, wasn’t any surprise, once again, as it has been doing with other unfavorable human right reports, it was disqualified in voice of the Secretary of State, Fernando Gomez Mont. On December 6th, thousands rally in the streets of one of the most violent cities in the country, Ciudad Juarez, since the drug war began in 2006, urging the government to put an end to the violence. All these criticisms seems useless and won’t make President Calderon do any drastic changes on the way the drug war is been fought. Recently he called all his critics “naive” if they think that the government by withdrawing the fight, the problems of security will be solve magically. President Calderon is not getting the clear message, no one is saying that the government should withdraw from the fight. Manuel Espino’s public letter just exhorted the president to reconsider the strategy, which hasn’t given in three years time any positive results.
Why is President Calderon so close minded and stubborn? Why can he accept his gaffes? Why can he listen to suggestion from other political actors? According to the investigation of journalist Anabel Hernandez, about the personality of President Calderon; she points out that people who knows him closely describe him as determined and arrogant. He has a hate and beloved list, and which is really hard to get out of it. He doesn’t like to be surrounded by brilliant people, most of the men and women of his team are less experience them him and with low profile, with the exception of the late Secretary of State, Juan Camilo Murillo and Secretary of Security, Genaro García Luna, which seems to be the only ones with permission of Calderon to be conspicuous. In many political and close circles insistently they talk about his weakness with alcohol. Also some of the collaborators of the transition team, expressed, that they started to be bother by the attitude of the elected president, beginning with his personality to the devious work methods, that instead of encouraging the work, it only caused strong arguments and divisions within the team. High rank politicians, such as Carlos Medina Plascencia and Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, both from the ruling party, and were part of the elected president team, complaint that Calderon, hardly ever spoke to them and sees them in the eye. Some saw the arrogance of Felipe Calderon with optimism (a hard man) others saw it as a wake-up call.*
This is just a glance look of what Anabel Hernandez reveals in her book “Los cómplices del presidente (The Accomplice of the President), regarding to the true personality of the man who his in charge of a country that is in the midst of becoming ungovernable, due to his stubbornness and his thirst of power, and most of all a government compound by a group of inexperience people. Three years of this administration and the Mexican society has began to see the consequences and being directly affected by the blunders taken by president Calderon. I’m beginning to think that Calderon doesn’t have and never had a political agenda.
*Hernández Anabel, Los cómplices del presidente, Chapter Los cómplices: Retrato de un presidente pg. 385-387 Editorial Grijalbo, Mexico 2008
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