Sucker-punch, like Mexico

Mexico is clearly not what you would call a fair match for the United Stares in many regards – not in military armoury or economic fortunes, for instance. But that Latin American country lately showed a markedly superior edge in moral high grounding over its illustrious neighbour.

United States President Donald Trump, even before assuming office last January, had for much of his public life made a favourite punching bag out of Mexican immigrants (Latinos) in his country, and without sparing a breath for their home land of Mexico. He flagged his prejudice most luminously when he kick-started his stumping for the American high office on June 16, 2015 with diatribes on Mexico, as he said: “When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me…When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

The xenophobic bluster did not stop at mere words, because Trump made the construction of a border wall to staunch the flow of immigrants from Mexico a signature promise during his electioneering. And the icing as he vowed, both while on the hustings and ever since he won the presidency, is that Mexico will pay for the $10billion wall. That vow was naturally galling to Mexico, and the country has repeatedly insisted it would not by any stretch of diplomatic gambit pay for the wall.

Actually, the mere suggestion riled former Mexican President Vicente Fox enough to peer-match Mr. Trump with Adolf Hitler, and to use the ‘f-word’ as he riposted to the then Republican candidate that his country was “not going to pay for that f-king wall!” Fox later apologised on national television for using the vile word, and Trump’s response was to underhandedly rub in the umbrage by saying at a pre-election rally in May, last year: “Vicente Fox was on television last night and he apologized, and I accept his apology…Honestly, I thought it was very, very nice, because I was giving him a little hard time about something, and he apologised.”

The U.S. president has also implacably bickered over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), by which he said his country was being shortchanged to the advantage of its southern neighbour, Mexico, as well as Canada to the north. He has insisted on renegotiating the trade deal or cut out of it as he did with the Paris Treaty on Climate Change.

Then came Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall in Texas penultimate weekend and swamped the oil state in torrential rains and catastrophic flooding. By last weekend, the hurricane had ravaged Louisiana, and no fewer than 40 fatalities as well as large-scale destruction had resulted from the elemental barrage. You could say ‘God’s own country’ was having its defining moment under the eight-month-old Trump era holding up the heads of citizens in the affected areas, literally, from under the waters.

Amidst all that siege, Commander-in-Tweets President Trump made time to be active on his famous bully pulpit, @realDonaldTrump. Mid-last week, he restated his campaign to make Mexico pay for his proposed border wall. “With Mexico being one of the highest crime Nations in the world, we must have THE WALL. Mexico will pay for it through reimbursement/other,” he tweeted. And a short interval after, he shared another tweet, saying: “We are in the NAFTA (worst trade deal ever made) renegotiation process with Mexico & Canada. Both being very difficult, may have to terminate? (sic)”

In obvious response to those tweets, Mexico’s foreign affairs ministry in a statement insisted it would “not pay, under any circumstances, for a wall or physical barrier built on U.S. territory along the Mexican border.” But apparently seizing on former American First Lady Michelle Obama’s famous credo that “when you go low, we go high,” the statement went on to say: “The Mexican government takes this opportunity to express its full solidarity with the people and government of the United States as a result of the damages caused by Hurricane Harvey in Texas, and expresses that it has offered to provide help and cooperation to the U.S. government in order to deal with the impact of this natural disaster – as good neighbours should always do in trying times.”

In plain language, Mexico was offering to help Trump’s America mitigate the ravages of Hurricane Harvey. But it was an offer completely at odds with Trump’s crusade to build a border wall that will keep out Mexican immigrants, and not minding his regular jibe against Latinos already in the U.S. Many American media outlets couldn’t help recalling last week that following the devastation by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Mexican government had also deployed soldiers, medical personnel, engineers and aid to stricken residents of Louisiana and Mississippi.

There are useful lessons to learn from the Mexican tack by Nigerian politicians in their typically adversarial partisan gamesmanship   

Mexico’s surprise gesture left the United States literally floundering last week, with neither a response from ordinarily rumbustious President Trump nor a clear policy on what to do with the offer. Texas Governor Greg Abbott was reported keen to accept the aid, but it apparently wasn’t exactly his call being a matter of relations between two countries. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did thank Mexico for the offer while welcoming his Mexican counterpart, Luis Videgaray, to talks on bilateral trade and security. “It’s very generous of the government of Mexico to offer their help at this very, very challenging time for our citizens down in Texas and now moving towards the border of Louisiana as well,” he was reported saying, without stating clearly whether or not the aid would be accepted.

I hold that there are useful lessons to learn from this Mexican tack by Nigerian politicians in their typically adversarial partisan gamesmanship. And let’s just boil it down: Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose needs finesse in his one-man squad opposition politics. The governor has been a vocal critic of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, and that to some extent has helped in energizing the democratic space. But it should by no means be a closed-minded advocacy.

When President Buhari was recently away on his 103-day medical vacation in Britain, Fayose was hot on the button in demanding full disclosure regarding his ailment. In brazen affront of Nigerian cultural morality, he made rash claims about survival chances of the president; and when Buhari eventually returned to the country, not a few openly wondered if Fayose would fall on his sword now that his claims had been shown fatally false. But all that, in my view, wasn’t even where he went overboard.

There is an axiom in Yoruba, and I suspect in many other Nigerian cultures, which interprets to saying our disputing isn’t sufficient to wish each other dead. When state governors paid Buhari a goodwill visit in Aso Rock upon his return, Fayose was alone in staying away, appropriating the authority of a physician – which he certainly is not – in declaring that the president wasn’t medically fit to continue in office. And late last week, he gave a scorch-earth censure of the president’s curious claim earlier in the week that the economy was looking up, even though the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) simultaneously issued a report showing food prices at an eight-year high.

Fayose certainly needs schooling in the art of opposition politics. But the catch is: so does the Buhari presidency in politically engaging irritants like him.