How to respond to Salinas Pliego

Ricardo Salinas Pliego is a willfully illiterate, with ideas so watered down that they would embarrass any author of self-help books from Sanborns or the economist Javier Milei, and even the showman Javier Milei. He is, simply, a son who would embarrass his father, unless his father is equal or worse than him.

The Mexican businessman has offended millions of Mexicans with some of his eschatological outbursts, with the garbage he broadcasts on his junk television or by sending thugs to pay the bill for a washing machine that broke down 10 years earlier. “Uncle Richi” reeks of impunity, uncleanliness, arrogance, classism, corruption, manipulation and decadence.

But on the night of Saturday, October 25, he said that he wants to pay his taxes, which until last summer amounted to 74 billion pesos. It shouldn’t be up to him to decide if he pays or not, because if I don’t pay the SAT they will persecute me and double me. But he already said it. And although he does not have a word (ask his creditors for more details), his offer will require a formal – and necessarily political – response from the Government. How to do it?

Obviously, the character is making the offer while offending the President. And he does it this way because he has been dubbed, and he needs to be seen as brave and daring. It failed to put its television stations at the service of the PAN candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez; He failed in trying to guide the population against Sheinbaum and against Andrés Manuel López Obrador. And he will fail in his bid for a presidential candidacy due to the sum of all his mistakes. Now he will fail in his campaign to postpone his tax obligations for longer. So what’s left for you is to make the offer.

The analysis of his offer starts from considering that he is cornered and the time has come to pay, whether he wants to or not. His lawyers have stretched the league too far, they have kicked the boat too far and have left him in a very fragile situation that the businessman himself does not want to see.

Salinas Pliego – and this is another important element – ​​works a lot based on how others see him, just like a pampered beardless boy. I thought this movie ended with him celebrating on a yacht for not paying what he owes. Things went well for a while, but that expensive little enjoyment ended. You won’t celebrate on a yacht while everyone watches you bathe in champagne; that won’t happen. It has gone from failure to failure. They are your failures. He wants, as always, others to pay for him. That is and has always been Salinas Pliego: a spoiled person who would embarrass his father, a rude man who spits at his elders to get their attention; some of the Kardashians showing off their 50 centimeter waist acquired in an operating room and not in a gym. And now he wants to pay because reality is imposing a moment of reason on him. He does it by pretending to be funny, tough, iron-chewing.

On the other hand is Sheinbaum, who comes from a very different path than the businessman. The President comes from effort; He got to where he is, jumping over the logic of a macho country. He is someone who has dealt with many, many bad guys worse than him, than Salinas Pliego. Someone who has managed to contain, like no Head of State in the world, Donald Trump. His “cool head” technique is famous globally. His calculation is equally remarkable. (There was something about AMLO that made him foresee the future; he had, empirically, what Isaac Asimov called “psychohistory”: understanding human behavior and calculating what is coming almost with mathematics. Sheinbaum inherited something from him). Frankly, Salinas Pliego has nowhere to go. His rival is not minor, as he thought due to his misogyny.

Claudia Sheinbaum knows that during the next stretch of her Presidency she will encounter characters equal to or worse than Salinas Pliego. So it is important how you will respond. You will see people who, like this businessman, will add vulgarity to the debate to provoke. That thing about bringing out López Obrador’s bottargas and dancing rats that symbolize the 4T and the former president’s children; Trying to ridicule her is part of the attempts to vulgarize the debate and provoke a reaction. Sheinbaum is dealing with a bad and ugly actor, who is mounted on a stage full of lights and does not want to get off because when he gets off he will have to face his reality. And it will remain there, above, as long as it has an audience. But the public gets tired. And he will have to go down. The President knows it.

In August 2023 I wrote that the third richest man in Mexico will confront each government as long as that government does not have the capacity to return him to his rightful role. What is that role? I asked then. That of any citizen who pays taxes; that guarantees its obligations and exercises its rights and is not an example of the absence of the State.

And then I said what I think Claudia Sheinbaum should do. I said that anyone who asks for a “strong hand” against Salinas Pliego is wrong because that generates distortions and can be considered abuse of power: they must be responded to with law and reason. See him more as a debtor and less as a spoiled rich man, a grotesque son, a rapper with gold teeth, a Kardashian with an enhanced waist or a ridiculous and unimaginative comedian. He must be seen as a businessman who represents a sector of society that must be contained: the sector that believes that money is impunity, and that one can live outside the Law and be admired by many.

The response to the businessman must be cold and calculated, without rushing. And it will remain as an example. The answer to the clumsy child is to simply let him be. He’ll get tired of his antics and if he doesn’t get tired, then that’s him.

There will be those who suggest to the President that Salinas Pliego take away television. It’s a bad idea. Lots of noise, unnecessary. If my calculations are correct, his fortune against his debts is no longer enough to maintain that toy. It’s not business. He and his family’s real-time net worth is calculated by Forbes in five thousand 500 million dollars, that is, 102 billion pesos at today’s exchange rate. He owes, as far as is known, 74 billion pesos in taxes and 10,704 million pesos to his creditors in the United States, that is, 85,704 million pesos. He has very little left. He will have to sell part of his business to breathe. You must sell what you are not allowed to (and what you do not know how to direct): your media network. But you have to let him suggest it himself.

There will be those who tell the President that the Government present a business plan to Salinas Pliego and his family, so that he can keep some of what he has, pay what he owes and guarantee a generational transition. Allow him to retire with something in the bank and a yacht full of cigars, if that takes his fancy. It’s not a good idea. He’s going to spread it. “They wanted to remove me the hard way, like Putin or any other dictator does,” he will tell Adela Micha (since their means do not work).

There will be those who will tell the President to put them in jail tomorrow. It is not a good idea either, although, I guarantee you, Claudia Sheinbaum would reach the highest level of popularity for a President in all of history.

My only advice is to let him slide, he likes bananas, but don’t pick up the peels. Let him get off the stage when he gets tired; He should remove himself from the spotlight when his retinas are dilated like saucers.

My dad had his own version of “cool head.” I once complained to him about one of my bosses and he said: is he treating you unfairly? Is it wrong with you? I told him yes. He told me: don’t be in a hurry. Then he told me that the deer hunter leaves apples in two or three points in the mountains and monitors them. Then patiently wait for the deer to arrive. He will go down to drink water or get apples. Nobody ever chases the deer because you will lose. You have to wait for it to go down. That’s what my father said. I think that applies, also, with Salinas Pliego.