Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the supposed electoral animal, was wrong at the beginning of this process. He seriously thought it was possible to buy the 2024 election. Hence, he risked the financial and fiscal stability of the next government by giving away loads of money to social groups so that they would vote in droves for Morena. And we are all witnessing the buying of votes with cash in droves in urban areas. Videos show Morena operators, hands full of bills, distributing to citizens who receive thousands of pesos in exchange for their vote.
It is an abject and miserable scenario, yes. It is ethically and politically deplorable, yes, too. But it is the reality we live today, Sunday, June 2, throughout the Republic. These practices of vote buying (or coercion, however, you want to see it) come directly from the inspiration of the President of the Republic. He is the most prominent and most eloquent electoral merchant in the country.
But we are not only witnessing the purchase/coercion of the vote of the wretched of the earth, to quote Franz Fanon. No. We are also witnessing the purchase of consciences and wills of supposedly “relevant political actors” who, just like the people in the poor neighborhoods, sell themselves to the highest, or only, bidder. Their consciences have a price in the market of the purchase of wills.
Some live under threat of losing their jobs in the governments led by Morena, mainly the federal and state governments, such as Mexico City, Veracruz, Morelos, Puebla, Chiapas, and Tabasco. In Mexico City, even agencies such as FEPADE and PDI are used to try to arrest opponents of Morena as instruments of intimidation.
The relevant aspect of all these instruments is that both the President and all his political cadres of Morena and, consequently, his candidates assume that buying and coercing votes with public funds is a valid and legitimate practice. They assume that they can dispose of public budgets for their political and personal use because they won the elections in that already distant 2018.
The essential question that arises from their conduct is this: does the fact of winning an election (whatever it may be) grant the elected official the right to dispose of public funds as if they were their personal, political, or family assets? The answer is, undoubtedly, categorical: the official does not acquire absolutely any right to the personal, political, or family use of public resources.
However, the presidential administration of López Obrador has promoted and allowed the assumption that public budget resources are for the personal and discretionary use of the official only if they are a member of Morena. This is how AMLO has done it; it is the school he created for his followers. Permission is apparently given: stuff yourselves with public resources, as the victory of 2018 allowed us to assume ourselves as “pirates on board”. AMLO’s children are already schooled, examples and objects of admiration for the new generations of Morenistas. They assure us that getting rich is a right and a duty in the fight against the past. Faced with the abuses and permanent threats of the neoliberals, let us act against them… by getting rich!
The nouveau riche of Morenism explains their philosopher’s stone of justice and ethics. They justify that there are ways to combat the world’s evils, using “against them,” the very instruments of neoliberalism’s lack of ethics, but now with good intentions. They offer us a future of anti-neoliberal nouveau riche. It is an art to put their logic into practice. What is the difference between “the good and bad guys”? The difference is blunt and seasoned with a moral justification: the President’s children and Morena’s leaders are getting rich but thinking of the poor. And they argue: the neoliberals did not even think of the poor!
The practices of using the public budget as a personal possession established, refined, and legitimized by Morenism in these six years of government are now being applied in all their splendor and cynicism to win the presidential elections, with the sole intention of continuing for six more years.
What we see today in action in the streets, towns, and neighborhoods all over the country is their government proposal: let the takeover of the public budget continue for us in the name of the poor!
The problem is that this robbery will not allow Morena to obtain a legitimate electoral victory. Legitimate electoral victories cannot be bought. They are won with real votes from a majority of citizens who are convinced that one offer and proposal for a country and government is better than the other. Vote buying produces results without credibility and without a convinced population. Vote buying generates a population that is apathetic and distant from its government. Vote buying creates that population that we saw in the Zócalo recently at the closing of Morena’s campaign: people who are forced to attend, they charge for their services but do not support the person who speaks to them at the microphone, nor do they believe in them, and they are present without conviction. The victory thus pretended is not, and will never be a victory: it is an omen of defeat due to the lack of social consensus and legitimacy.
It portends defeat and profound humiliation for those forced and coerced to participate in such a parade of lies. The most humiliating thing in life is to live on lies and defend them as if they were the truth.
Today, it must be a heroic deed of liberation for the people. A deed to break the chains of humiliation to which millions of Mexicans are subjected, trapped by their economic condition. A “no more” to the blackmail, to the demand to vote for whom they have been told to support, and not for what their conscience dictates. Voting should be an act of freedom, not slavery.
It is time to demonstrate that victories cannot be bought because they do not enjoy legitimacy. Victories are won with conscience and gestures of freedom by a people firm in their search for justice and democracy. They are won with legitimate and true votes. That is what we must see today when the polls close and the numbers speak: legitimacy and real victories, not bought ones.
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