A couple of years ago the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, asked Elizabeth II to close Parliament for five weeks and the Supreme Court’s response was negative and unanimous. In passing, he recalled what was expressed to James I in 1611: “The king has no prerogative, except that which the law grants him.”
That is, even for kings the law is the law.
Here in Mexico, the Morenistas who assault power in the name of the majority and democracy, follow the script of the populists who destroy freedoms and the rule of law, so well described by Yuval Noah Harari in Nexushis most recent book (Debate).
In the subchapter The dictatorship of the majority indicates that “it is common for strongmen to attack its self-correction systems one by one, often starting with the courts and the media, to undermine democracy. The typical strongman either deprives the courts of their powers, or fills them with trusted people and tries to shut down the independent media while building his own omnipresent propaganda machine.
The Cambridge professor points out that “a populist is defined as such when he claims to represent the people and considers that anyone who does not agree with him is either a victim of false consciousness or is not really part of the people.”
Harari points out that “that is why populism represents a lethal threat to democracy… No group, not even the majority, has the right to prevent others from being part of the people. That’s what makes democracy a conversation. Having a conversation assumes the existence of multiple legitimate voices. On the other hand, if the people have only one legitimate voice, no conversation can take place. Rather, that voice will dictate everything. Therefore, no matter how much it declares fidelity to the democratic principle of ‘people power’, populism empties democracy of meaning and seeks to establish a dictatorship.”
That is precisely what President Sheinbaum and her appendages in the chambers of Congress are doing: establishing a dictatorship.
Harari points out that “in the imagination of populists, the courts do not really care about justice: they only protect the privileges of judges… The media does not care about the facts; “They spread false news to deceive the people and favor journalists and the cliques that finance them.”
Having declared that they alone represent the people, adds Yuval Noah Harari, “populists affirm that the people are not only the only source of legitimate political authority, but the only legitimate source of all authority.”
Therefore, “any institution whose authority derives from something other than the will of the people is undemocratic. As self-proclaimed representatives of the people, populists seek not only to monopolize political authority, but all types of authority, and to take control of institutions such as the media, the courts and universities.
If you want to see what comes next after this assault on the Judiciary carried out by the Morena legislators incited by President Sheinbaum, I suggest you read Nexus. They continue to control the elections and the media.
And if you do not want to read or find out about so much bad news, you will not be an exceptional case: it is also in the script that the Morenistas, assailants of democracy and our institutions, follow:
“Democracies die not only when people lack the freedom to speak, but when people do not want or cannot listen.”
