Mexico: The siesta Congress

AFTER a fortnight of Christmas fiestas, Mexicans groggily returned to work two weeks ago. Or rather, most of them did. For the 500 deputies and 128 senators of the national Congress, the holidays roll on until February. Mexico’s lawmakers sit for only 195 days a year, the fewest among Latin America’s bigger countries. (Their $11,200-a-month pay, however, is the highest after Brazil’s.) When they do stir themselves to vote, it is more often to block rivals’ bills than to pass reforms. Gridlock in the palace of San Lázaro partly explains why Felipe Calderón’s presidency, which ends in December, now looks like a six-year damp squib. Mr Calderón has identified many of Mexico’s bottlenecks. But most of his big proposals have floundered in Congress. A modest fiscal reform passed in 2007 was eased along only by an electoral law to help the opposition. Last year a competition law tentatively prodded the country’s mighty monopolies. But changes to the backward energy sector in 2008 were diluted beyond recognition. A reform of the political system has been similarly gutted and is yet to pass. And there is still no sign of a promised law to improve competition in telecoms. Even where there is consensus, Congress contrives to disagree. All the main parties say they want to merge the 2,000-plus local police forces, which are helpless before the country’s drug mafias. But five years into the war on organised crime, the relevant laws have not passed. In 2010 Mr Calderón proposed a labour reform making hiring and firing easier. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the biggest opposition group, rejected it, only to produce a similar plan itself last year. But in December Congress delayed all labour bills indefinitely. The same month, it approved three counsellors to the electoral authority, 14 months late. Earlier, confirming a Supreme Court judge took 15 months. The Senate has been the less obstructive chamber. Mr Calderón’s conservative National Action Party (PAN) is its biggest force, and the Senate leaders of the PRI and leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) are more reformist than their counterparts in the lower house. There, many PRI legislators owe political debts to Enrique Peña Nieto, their presidential candidate, who does not want to give the PAN any victories before the July poll. The PRD candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also has a base in the lower house. Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) are more reformist than their counterparts in the lower house. There, many PRI legislators owe political debts to Enrique Peña Nieto, their presidential candidate, who does not want to give the PAN any victories before the July poll. The PRD candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also has a base in the lower house. Co-operation has been especially rocky since 2009, when the PAN attacked the PRI in mid-term elections. The mood soured further when the PAN formed a brief electoral alliance with its ideological opposites, the PRD, to push the PRI out of some governorships. With this deal, “the president cancelled the possibility of working according to agreement and consensus,” says Heliodoro Díaz, a PRI congressman. Such rivalries exist in any democracy. Yet “in Latin America, [Mexico’s Congress] stands out as a bad performer,” says Víctor Lapuente, a political scientist at Gothenburg University in Sweden. Unsurprisingly, there has been more conflict since one-party rule ended in 1997. No president has had a legislative majority since then. But Brazil’s leaders have coped under worse conditions: neither Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva nor Fernando Henrique Cardoso ever controlled more than 20% of Congress. Building coalitions is harder in Mexico, where congressmen are wedded to their parties and hard to buy off. No politician, from president to mayor, may stand for consecutive re-election. This quirk means that politicians depend on party bosses, not voters, for their next job, making it essential to toe the party line. (Mr Calderón’s political reform included re-election, but was crushed in Congress.) Voters are unusually loyal too. Mr Lapuente and José Fernández-Albertos, of the Institute of Public Goods and Policies in Madrid, found that in Brazil parties often do well in presidential elections but badly in simultaneous congressional races, or vice versa. In contrast, in Mexico they tend to register near-identical levels of support, as voters rarely split their ballots. This link gives lawmakers every incentive to scupper the president’s agenda. The July 1st elections will completely renew both houses of Congress as well as the presidency. Mr Peña’s boosters say that if the PRI wins all three—it already has most state governors—the deadlock will end at last. PRI lawmakers insist they will stop blocking legislation only if Mr Peña wins. “There will be labour reform after the elections of July 2012, when we have a president identified with the principles of the revolution,” Armando Neyra, a PRI congressman, said in December. Others doubt that Mr Peña will be so revolutionary. He recognises that the oil industry needs foreign private investment, which the PRI has blocked. But many a president has buckled before the mighty oil-workers’ union. Mr Peña turned against the labour reform after unions complained. He has befriended the teachers’ union, the biggest of all (as did Mr Calderón). And he has been given friendly coverage by Televisa, a TV giant eager to protect its dominant position. Mexico’s future is uncertain, but its legislators will have plenty of time to ponder it during their summer holiday—which begins in April.

Dow Corning & Dr. Stephanie Burns

For 28 years, Dow Corning has benefited from the intelligence, dedication, spirit and kindness of Dr. Stephanie A. Burns. She retired as chairman at the end of last year, and her coworkers are expressing their appreciation for all that she did to help make Dow Corning a growing, successful company and a great place to work.


Stephanie has a gift for recognizing global opportunities, and she had the vision and courage to advance Dow Corning’s mission — innovation to unleash the power of silicon to benefit everyone, everywhere — by combining the scientific and social benefits of chemistry.


At Dow Corning, her career spanned scientific research, science and technology leadership and business management. She has left a positive mark on many aspects of our company and in the last decade had the foresight to commit to a significant stake in renewable energy and spearhead investment in new geographic regions, including China, India, Russia, Turkey and Vietnam.


Starting with an intensive evaluation of the markets, Stephanie challenged the company’s leaders to determine the role Dow Corning might play in renewable energy. The result was an expansion into the green-power arena. The company’s reach included development of products for applications throughout the crystalline solar supply chain — including such critical innovations as life-extending, efficiency-boosting encapsulants for solar panels — a commitment to monosilane manufacture for thin-film cells and a portfolio of technology for the wind-power industry.


The planning led to expansion of the corporation’s Hemlock Semiconductor Group joint ventures both in Hemlock, MI, and in Clarksville, TN.


Under her leadership, we’ve set up innovative Solar Solution Centers in Michigan, California, Japan, Belgium, and Korea. Though Dow Corning’s solar focus is the materials business, these centers produce and rigorously test solar panels assembled at the sites. This enables the company to understand problems panel makers engage on their manufacturing lines and create products to solve them.


Stephanie led Dow Corning’s investment in construction of China’s largest siloxane manufacturing operation at the Zhangjiagang Integrated Silicone Manufacturing Site. The project was noteworthy for more than its size. The company partnered with one of its most significant competitors. The plant launched with state-of-the-art technology in late 2010.


The China investment is just one of many important measures Stephanie has initiated to expand Dow Corning’s global scale.


The company has opened a business and technology center in Shanghai, acquired silicon metal processing sites in Brazil and expanded its specialty chemical production capacity in growing economies.


Stephanie has not confined her influence to intra-company matters. Beginning in 2008, she advocated job creating expansion and development of advanced solar manufacturing in the United States.


In 2009, she received White House invitations to represent Dow Corning and sometimes industry in general, at forums that sought advances in understanding the promise of solar and the job creation potential of renewable energy technology.


President Barack Obama has appointed her to the President’s Export Council, the principal national advisory committee on international trade. The council, created in 1973, advises the president on government policies that affect U.S. trade performance, promotes export expansion and is a forum for discussion and resolution of trade-related problems among the business, industrial, agricultural, labor and government sectors.


In addition to her advocacy of alternatives to fossil-fuel-generated electricity, she has consistently, internally and in public, strived to bring awareness of the megatrends shaping the future of the planet. She has urged an aggressive search for solutions — silicon-based and otherwise — to water scarcity, energy poverty, urban crowding and disease.


Her vision has translated into business success. Dow Corning’s sales grew to the 2010 level of nearly $6 billion from $3.37 billion at the end of her first full year as CEO. Dow Corning’s 2010 net income reached $866 million, up from $238 million in that time.


The chemical industry has acknowledged her accomplishments.


In 2001, she received the Vanguard Award from the Chemical Education Foundation in recognition of her advocacy of science, math and technology education.


In 2011, she became the first woman awarded the prestigious International Palladium Medal. The American unit of the French Société de Chimie Industrielle established the honor in 1958 to acknowledge individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the chemical industry.


Stephanie, we thank you for your service and dedication to our company. We wish you a long, happy and healthy retirement!


— The employees of Dow Corning Corporation