OPINION: Presidential term limit - The fascinating story of Mexico’s ‘Sexenio’

On Thursday, October 25th, I chanced upon a WhatsApp message urging Kenyans to reject a constitutional amendment set to extend the terms of the President, Governors, MPs and MCAs from five years to seven. This we were to do, I was informed, by sending an urgent email, pronto, to the Clerk of the Senate, as well as to the Senate Committee on Justice, Legal Affairs, and Human Rights (JLAHRC).

From what I could see, a total of 9,726 Kenyans had already made their protestations known via an easy-to-use app appended to the message. Little did I know it, but within 24 hours, 200,000 Kenyans would determinedly rise to the occasion, crashing the Senate’s system with emails screaming a resounding “No!” to the supremely odious amendment. I, too, hastened to join the bandwagon and sent my own.

Allow me to share a lesson from the annals of history.

On 17th February 1877, the citizens of the Republic of Mexico headed to the polls and elected a man named Porfirio Díaz Mori, aged 47, as the 33rd president of the country.

Diaz, born in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, had achieved a distinguished military and political career by the time he was in his 20s and 30s, and had done so despite being born into a family of meager means. Diaz's father had been a small-scale farmer, cultivating ‘agave’, the succulent indigenous crop that produced a light wine, which he then sold at his inn. Diaz unfortunately lost both parents at a very young age and entered a seminary by the time he was 15, hoping to become a priest. But a year later when the Mexican-American war broke out, Diaz abandoned this dream and signed up to serve in the Mexican army. 

After the conclusion of the war in 1848, Diaz went on to study law, with the encouragement of his mentor, an older gentleman named Benito Juárez who was already making great waves in regional politics. In the next decade, Juarez would become Mexico’s president and continue to be a close mentor to Diaz.

At this time, the constitution of Mexico did not specify a limit to the number of terms a president could remain in that highest seat of power.  So, by the time Diaz turned forty, Juarez, aged 64, was in his thirteenth year in office and Diaz had become a fierce critic of his exceedingly long stay in power. Thus, when Diaz himself ran for president in 1877, he did so under the campaign slogan ‘No Re-election’, promising to serve for only one term.  He won with a resounding 96% of the vote and immediately amended the constitution to limit the presidency to a single four-year term.  So, when his term came to an end in 1880, he had little choice but to step down and allow others to run.

Barely in his 50s at this time, however, Diaz found that he was not quite ready to retire. So, he did the next best thing and instead engineered the election of his close ally, Manuel Gonzalez. He then kept a close eye on national matters for the next few years, serving briefly as Secretary of Development in Gonzalez’s government and then as Governor of his own home state of Oaxaca.

When Gonzalez completed his term in 1884, Díaz blatantly repudiated his no-re-election philosophy, threw his hat into the ring and won the presidency for a second time. Four years later, and with his term coming to an end, he changed the constitution to allow himself to be re-elected for yet another term. In 1902, he oversaw another amendment, this time to allow re-election indefinitely. Diaz eventually remained president for seven consecutive terms, a period later referred to as ‘The Porfiriato.’

When Diaz had taken office for the second time in 1884, he immediately began to work towards the rapid transformation of the nation’s economy. One of the first goals of his administration had been to aggressively encourage foreign investment. Thus, in the next decades, vital infrastructure such as railroads - necessary for economic development at the time - were speedily built using foreign funds, as were other necessities such as bridges and dams. Industries such as textiles were established, as was the mining of precious metals such as silver, zinc, and copper, bringing substantial proceeds to the nation’s formerly deficient coffers. Eager foreign investors purchased large tracts of land and began to produce and export commercial crops such as coffee, tobacco and sugar. The nation even became a leading producer of oil, though major concessions were made to foreign companies in order to attract them to Mexico and encourage them to drill. The value of foreign trade multiplied tenfold. It was a time of great economic boom.

At the same time, however, Diaz methodically built a highly centralized, autocratic system of government. He was a strict, disciplined leader who systematically decimated leadership at the local and regional levels. His ‘pan o palo’ (bread or stick) philosophy ensured that opponents who were a strong threat were showered with tons of cash, while the unfortunate ones in the lower strata of society were swiftly vanquished through intimidation, harassment, involuntary conscription to labor farms and even imprisonment. He brought the legislature and court system tightly under his control and members of the press lost their voice. All pretense of democracy was subsequently lost.

Meanwhile, the fruits of Mexico’s economic success were being enjoyed by a meager few. Only middle and upper-class Mexicans benefited from the newly prosperous economy, as well as the foreign organizations that he had so assiduously cultivated.

Under Diaz’s tenure, too, large swathes of land previously held communally by native Indians moved to private hands, and the former owners became laborers on large ‘haciendas’ owned by the rich. Resentment began to grow and unrest simmered among the dispossessed poor.  Soon, even the more privileged Mexicans began to feel that Diaz had allowed too much of the country’s wealth to be held by foreigners.

It is said that Diaz believed he was indispensable, the only person who understood what the country needed. And so, for more than thirty years, he ruled the country with the iron fist of a determined dictator.

In 1908, his twenty-fourth consecutive year in office, Diaz happened to take an interview with an American journalist during which he intimated that he would not run in the upcoming elections set for 1910.  Excitement rapidly grew, and potential opponents began to prepare their political campaigns. But when election year came, Diaz, aged 80, announced his seventh bid and proceeded to fraudulently manufacture a win. But the people, at the tight end of a cruelly-choking tether, could take no more. The nation exploded and what is now known as the Mexican Revolution broke out.

Less than a year later, Diaz resigned and, to his credit, fled to France rather than plunge the nation into further chaos. The war lasted ten full years, but in 1917, the constitution was once again changed, this time incorporating strict safeguards to eliminate the chances of another oppressive multi-decade dictatorship.  

To date, under Article 83 of Mexico’s Constitution, the Mexican president is limited to a single term of six years. Once he has served his term, he may never hold that office again, even on a caretaker or interim basis. This is known as the ‘Sexenio,’ a furiously-guarded tenet of the country’s constitution, and also applies to governors of the nation's thirty-one federal states. Though there have been attempts to get rid of it, each effort has ended in failure and the Sexenio remains strongly entrenched in Mexico’s politics. Collective trauma, perhaps.  

Being well-seized of the story of Díaz, therefore, I found myself highly motivated to reject the proposed amendment to Kenya’s constitution, lest history decide to take a long stroll and visit my country as well.

“I see no benefit in extending the current term of office for the positions of President, MP and MCA”, I wrote to the clerk of the Senate. “However, I would be supportive of a bill that would extend the term of future presidents to seven years but restrict the office bearer to a SINGLE term, with NO RE-ELECTION POSSIBLE under any circumstances,” I concluded, large caps included. 

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A very warm congratulations to Madam Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, Mexico’s newly-elected president, who began her Sexenio on 2nd June this year. Madam Pardo is the first female president in the country’s 200-year history. May her six years in office be filled with peace, justice and God’s abundant blessings!

[Paulie Mugure Mugo is a published author and a co-founder of Eagles Leadership Network (ELN), an initiative that trains and equips upcoming leaders in the area of ethical governance.]