Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
AMLO deceives with the truth. When he has repeatedly said in recent weeks that “a technical coup d’état” is coming, he warns us that he is seriously considering extreme action, and that something is not a “technical coup d’état” executed by the opposition and the Judiciary. He is warning us that a coup d’état is possibly coming, a self-coup.
He has apparently lost all hope of winning the presidential election fairly. He also accused the opposition of deliberately messing up the electoral process. That accusation is, of course, a smokescreen, a distractor, to hide what he is designing. In Baja California Sur, two days ago, he called in an official government event to vote for Morena: “Let the transformation continue,” he harangued. He knows perfectly well that it is an illegal call and that it calls the election into question. He has done the same thing a thousand times before. He will continue to do so until June 2.
But he is no longer doing it to get more votes because he knows that Claudia already reached her ceiling of votes a long time ago, and now she is starting to lose votes, not gain them. The obvious trend in the remaining two and a half months of campaigning is evident: Claudia will see her electoral base erode while Xóchitl grows hers.
Will there be a technical tie between the two candidates? It is foreseeable. What is in doubt is whether it will happen soon enough for Xóchitl to overtake Claudia or whether Claudia will maintain a slim lead.
Polls can say whatever the corrupting power wants them to because they are a campaign tool. The reality is that the presidential electoral process is closing, and AMLO knows this. That is why he has designed a scorched earth strategy for the last throes of the campaign. He already knows that if his candidate wins, it will be by a small margin and highly questioned. He allowed the intervention of organized crime to secure certain areas of the country for Morena. But the calculation failed him. He thought he could keep the phenomenon within certain parameters. But that is not the case. It has gotten entirely out of hand. Why? Because the cartels saw their election intervention as a great opportunity, the President of the Republic offered them the opportunity to consolidate and expand their positions within the national territory as a bet on the future. If they succeed in bending this government, the next one will be a victim previously bent and semi-devoured before starting its administration.
The international community is already warning that a very dangerous intervention of drug trafficking in the Mexican elections is coming. Only AMLO and Claudia deny it. Intelligent and wide-eyed Morenistas know that the massive and indiscriminate intervention of crime in the elections is inevitable, and it directly threatens their possible electoral victories.
Then, why do they deny such obvious intervention in plain view of the national Morenismo’s two characters: the President and the presidential candidate? Even knowing it is true, they must deny it to justify the actions they will take at the end of the campaign process. They speak that the opposition and the Judiciary are planning a “technical coup d’état“. What does this coup d’état consist of? As suggested by AMLO, the Judiciary will cancel a supposed electoral victory of Sheinbaum, pretexting the illegal intervention of the President to influence the vote (which is true) and the specific weight of drug trafficking in the results for having intimidated and murdered candidates and for its intervention on election day, stealing ballot boxes and altering results (which is also accurate and will be confirmed).
In other words, AMLO is perfectly aware of what he is doing and does it on purpose. If he did not want those pretexts to exist, then he would not intervene every day in the electoral process, and he would not order the Armed Forces and the National Guard to refrain from curtailing the actions of organized crime in the electoral process. But it does the opposite: it intervenes in the elections and allows freedom of action to organized crime.
Apparently, all this goes against his desired result: Claudia’s unquestionable victory on June 2. But obviously, he has already lost hope of reaffirming his party’s presidency, at least in a fair way. His loss of social consensus and the fact that he has had to rely on the forces of organized crime are the elements that consolidate his disillusionment before the elections.
Therefore, AMLO is preparing to apply option Z: the creation of the conditions for a severe post-electoral conflict, which will allow him to intervene by declaring a State of Exception throughout the national territory, annulling the electoral results and establishing a de facto government that would govern through decrees, given the inexistence of a Legislative Power. This interregnum would also allow him to achieve his most cherished dream: to decree the disappearance of the Judicial Power and the preparation of the conditions to call, at some point, new presidential and legislative elections.
All his actions tend to create that scenario. And the idea is not so remote: it is what a ruler AMLO admires tried to do: Pedro Castillo, former President of Peru. He was imprisoned for having tried exactly what AMLO wants to do in Mexico. It would not be surprising if Castillo had attempted such a coup d’état spurred on by the President of Mexico himself.
That is the ideal coup d’état that López Obrador really wants to operate and execute. When he accuses the opposition and the Judiciary a thousand times of plotting such nonsense, it is precisely because he is thinking about the feasibility of such action. The warning from President Sanchez of Spain, a member of the Socialist International, should be heeded carefully. It is a direct warning to AMLO: do not try it.
No one can claim ignorance of what is happening: AMLO is walking toward a State of Exception, his kind of coup d’état. When he accuses others of planning coups d’état, it is because he is taking the social temperature and the political feasibility of carrying out such an aberrant action as desperate and destructive of the Republic.
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