Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Morena did not manage to break the opposition alliance in the Senate, triggering a new political scenario. In multiple sectors, political agreements are creaking and tend to break down or move towards redefinitions of form and substance. This situation opens new windows of opportunity for both AMLO and the opposition. Let’s go by parts.
The epicenter of the new situation is centered on the PRI’s acute internal crisis. For the time being, there are two visible factions in that party: Alito’s faction, together with his nomenclature deputies, and that of the PRI senators, formed by forces linked to two former presidents, Salinas and Peña Nieto, and to an active governor: Del Mazo. There is a real train wreck at that party. Alito’s faction is dedicated to mobilizing to prevent its leader from going to jail for his illegal activities (his case is very similar to the accusations against Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina). On the other hand, the other sector of the PRI has dedicated itself to defending the political agenda agreed with the Va Por Mexico coalition, with PAN and PRD. It is a head-on clash between a personal plan and a political agenda.
Alito is willing to merge his party with Morena not to be imprisoned. The other PRI faction defends the party so that it does not disappear and continues to be an independent and relevant political actor in Mexico, showing that it has an agenda contrary to that of Morena. That is the size of their dilemma. In addition, the reality is on the way for the PRI parties in conflict: the elections in Coahuila and particularly in the State of Mexico. What happens in the State of Mexico will be decisive for the outcome of the following year’s presidential election.
The PRI faces an existential decision, and all precipitated by the suicidal decision of Alito and his nomenklatura. In those two states, the historical PRI knows it must maintain the Va Por México alliance if it intends to continue being politically relevant to the country. Therefore, it must accept a painful but inevitable reality: its internal balkanization as a party. Balkanization means that each state will decide on the most convenient alliances for its future, even if it is to the detriment of other partisan choices. The same will happen in Mexico City: the PRI is one in the Va Por Mexico alliance and is another (on the way to extinction) without that agreement.
Seen from another angle, it is a good thing that Morena attacked the PRI now and not during the presidential campaign. This “shaking of the tree” of the weak links of Va Por México is, in fact, something positive for the opposition. The effect of the attack on Anaya during his presidential campaign has already been seen.
Speaking of the PAN, something similar is happening, although with much less impact on that party. Turning the accusation of the “real estate cartel” within the PAN in Mexico City into an asset for Morena is impossible. Their problem is that all the PRD-Morena heads of government (AMLO, Encinas, Ebrard, Mancera, and Sheinbaum) have propitiated an illegal and disorderly real estate boom in Mexico City, whose emblematic symbol is the Mitikah development, precisely in the Benito Juarez municipality. All of them, including junior officials, have had their hands in that bottomless barrel, collecting favors in cash to move the project forward. That’s why they can’t do anything to Mancera despite hating him: he knows about all of their scams in real estate development and the construction of Metro Line 12. The mafias threaten each other but protect each other because their corrupt acts are shared.
The attack on Mexico City’s PAN is designed to weaken the national leadership of Jorge Romero, whose political origin is Benito Juarez, and of Santiago Taboada, current Mayor of Benito Juarez and aspiring candidate of Va Por Mexico for Mexico City’s Mayor. Morena does not aspire to disappear the PAN, as it intends to disappear the PRI, but rather to weaken it towards the 2024 elections. It thinks that in this way, it will be able to retain Mexico City in 2024, despite the discredit of the President and his government among the population of Mexico City.
In the case of the alleged “real estate cartel”, the same happens as in the case of the PRI: by shaking the tree and exposing the issues that Morena believes will help it win the 2024 elections, its denunciation ironically benefits the opposition. By exposing these cases now, lifting the veil of the vileness of AMLO and his followers, it is achieved that in 2024 neither Alito nor the “real estate cartel” will be credible issues for the electorate. And this will allow the opposition to focus its batteries against the fundamental issue: the visibility of the failure of the Morenista administration and the need for a course correction for the country.
The case of AMLO wanting to destroy the opposition now and not wait until 2024 offers an interesting insight into how he wants to retain the presidency. He thinks the opposition is frantically engaged in the succession fight for the presidency, as he and his pre-candidates are. He believes the opposition is internally polarized as Morena is among its presidential pre-candidates.
This is a presidential miscalculation with consequences. He is wrong because the opposition is in another process. It is just defining its form of organization to face the 2024 process. It has not resolved how to create the structure required to comfortably integrate the four parties: PRI, PAN, PRD, and MC. In addition, it must define and assume its relationship with emerging citizen organizations as an asset whose influence goes far beyond its organizational capacity. Citizen influence is much more moral than structural but with a profound electoral impact.
The immediate task of the opposition is to decide what to do about this organizational and political issue. For this reason, the “shaking of the tree” helps it look more serenely at how to achieve its conformation and solve its internal procedures. By shaking off internal threats, the opposition dialectically becomes more solid.
Once the political aspects of its coalition are resolved, then, and only then, will the opposition be able to focus on who should be the bearer of its presidential banner. Most likely, that definition will come after the 2023 state elections, mainly by resolving that of the State of Mexico.
It is clear that the President and Morena suffered a defeat all along their flotation line in the Senate. No matter how many “consultations” on the National Guard AMLO improvises, he will not be able to erase this defeat’s impact on the State of Mexico and the 2024 presidential election. Between the shaking of the tree and the democratic firmness of the senators, a totally new scenario has opened up for the opposition to reach 2023 and 2024 with a winning dynamic. It must make the most of it.
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