Knocked Out At Round One

Knocked Out At Round One

“Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.”

Muhammad Ali

By: Erreh Svaia

The left wing parties in Mexico's considered the auction of the country's oil reserves a direct attack to the nation's sovereign, the change in politics in order to open Mexico's oil reserves to outside investors is a big part of president Enrique Peña heavily advertised reforms, but we can say that really bad luck has struck most of this reforms as the education reforms are stuck in the middle of the government struggles with teacher's union, tax reforms are blamed constantly for hurting internal markets; Although I prefer to consider education reform as the most important of all, the government seems to be pretty much inclined toward the oil, or energy reform, as oil industry performance has served as the source of funding for most of the government investments in the past decades, and at the same time, that dependency and monopolist practice hurst deeply the national oil industry in its competitive nature.

Although oil is still an important item nowadays, it is important to also consider other kind of energy resources such as the sun, the wind and the sea, endless sources of energy that up to this days have pass unnoticed by our so called long term, big effect reforms, giving space to oil offering to external investors, am strategy that from the beginning seems destined to failure, these days the is  world surplus of oil and countries whose economy is based on the commodity are suffering enormously by the big fall on pries, countries like Venezuela, Russia and México are all adjusting their budgets in order to absorb the negative impact.

Not being able to think in a clear and smart way has being a particularity of Enrique Peña government, mistake after mistake has been committed and there's no sign of reversing that trend with oil, energy reforms were a necessity assumed years ago, but at the time EPN party the PRI made big efforts for it not to be released aligning with the left wing parties in what they called "the defense of sovereignty", PRI efforts to stop all reforms became a handicap for the official party at the time, the PAN, but in an ironic turn, when the PRI took the power from the PAN, reforms were part of the "dinosaur" party promises, in Mexico, the PRI is called a "dinosaur" party, they don't want change and they try to maintain a certain status quo, and reforms were a part of a strategy to regain power, advertised as “el nuevo PRI, or the new PRI, reforms were set in motion but weren't given enough attention neither to planning them nor to executed them and like all things the PRI has given to Mexico, they fell apart and were executed in  terribly wrong way.

This is a bad time for auctioning oil resources as oil prices are at all-time low, nobody seems interested in oil, even China all-consuming internal markets are decreasing and a surplus of oil precipitated by Saudi Arabia record production, and the world lifting of bans towards Iran, are a signs that prices won't increase in years to come, on the contrary, they will continue to fall.

At the so called round one, Mexico's government wasn't able to assign those oil reserves bids, the world simply is not interested in oil anymore, Enrique Peña arrived very late with his reforms and once again has proven to be inept at game changing, just as his party has always been: Incapable of making real reforms, as he was knocked out just in round one and the future doesn't look any brighter for him, and this is the guy that proclaimed in outside magazines as to be the savior of Mexico, I wonder Who or what will save him? As the dollar gets stronger and the peso starts losing its value, affecting imports, raw materials and in short time it will start to raise inflation, the future is looking less bright and is time to start taking action, making fast short time and longtime plans in order to mend the country´s way.