Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
López Obrador is at war against the opposition coalition, seeking to destroy it before the 2024 presidential elections. Breaking all norms of civility, loyal or legal competition, AMLO’s action is aimed at destroying what he considers his mortal enemy, not an opponent in the political arena. The consequences and effects of the President’s perverse war against the opposition will leave lasting and divisive wounds in Mexican society.
When people are infected with the virus of hatred, it takes generations to cure that disease. Even if deep grievances are not entirely forgotten, at least it is aspired to reestablish civilized coexistence. Coexistence that polarization destroys.
The logic that incites López Obrador to promote hatred among Mexicans is based on a strategy of consolidation of power. Although so far, AMLO has not sought to physically eliminate those he considers to be his enemies for reasons of ideology, he does want to annihilate them politically so that only one ideology reigns in Mexico: his own. And he does not accept any space for dialogue with other ideas, notions, and conceptions divergent from his own. He wants a society subjugated to his vision of the world. Questioning scares him. That is why he feels comfortable doing his “performance” in every Mañanera: he knows he has before him domesticated subjects.
Faced with the uncomfortable fact of heading a government that does not give good results and is headed for significant failures, he prefers to liquidate any opposition rather than be accountable. And he has already found the way. It is the method of violating national laws without regard or qualms, in addition to using all the power of the State, military force, and the muscle of drug trafficking to impose Morena and its presidential candidate in 2024. That is his priority. And he believes he has found the formula. It will be peaceful, winning with votes or by the force of violence and imposition if he does not receive the necessary votes. Either way, he does not intend to lose the election.
The experience of four elections marks the challenges and the routes he will have to follow to impose himself, correctly or wrongly, in the test of tests: the presidential election of 2024.
In the 2018 presidential election, AMLO learned that he could win by playing by the democratic electoral rules accepted by all actors. His victory was not haggled over at any time by his opponents. With an even field, he could win.
However, the outcome of the 2021 mid-term election soured the President’s democratic celebration of 2018. In a relatively even contest between Morena and allies against the opposition, he saw his political force weakened by the final results. Even having retained the majority in the Chamber of Deputies, he lost the qualified majority because he lost congressional seats compared to the 2018 election. López Obrador went into that election thinking that the result would yield a growing balance in votes and seats for him and his party. Instead, he received a punishment vote as a popular verdict on his lousy government. He lost strength in the Chamber of Deputies and lost Mexico City. Adding the votes of all the opposition, it was almost 2 million votes more than those received by Morena and its allies. That election could not have left a worse omen for Morena towards 2024. It opened the real possibility of losing the Presidency.
For the April 2022 recall vote, AMLO decided to rehearse a much more aggressive electoral strategy, seeking to disqualify the control limits of the electoral institutions, the National Electoral Institute (INE), and the Federal Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF). In this process, Morena tried “crowd-bullying”. En masse, from the President of the Republic to the governors and the head of Government, military, police, legislators, party leaders, and public officials by the thousands joined in and, in unison, violated all the electoral laws of the country. In addition, they spent massive amounts of public and private money without rendering accounts on the origin and destination of those resources. Even the narcos participated with singular joy: sharing with the President the violation of all national laws is the specialty of the narco house.
And most importantly, all these violations of national laws were done publicly and in front of everyone’s eyes to show their absolute impunity and to intimidate society. It is similar to when the drug traffickers operate alongside the army or National Guard troops in broad daylight. It was a test to see if any constitutional institution would do anything to prevent their illegal conduct. As it turns out, their behavior came at absolutely no cost to any of them. The President achieved what he wanted: to intimidate society by demonstrating his total impunity. That illegal conduct opens the way for him to impose his will on the entire country, with or without popular consent. Just as the narco does, by the way.
However, that election had a negative side for Morena. Although only Morena participated, with no opponents, its results were poor. For so much deployment of force and resources, its 15 million coerced votes turned out to be a disappointment for the President. This way, Morena will not win in 2024.
The most recent election in June 2022 had a contrasting and mixed result. Although Morena won 4 of the six states in competition, the opposition won strongly in two of them and almost tied in a third. That is to say, the electoral competition continues to exist despite the same “crowd-bullying” operation of the government and the official party. Of course, on warning, there can be no deception: the illegal conduct of the government and its party is designed to become the norm. They want society to feel that imposition is inevitable.
Behind the electoral strategy of “crowd-bullying” also lies a system of social terrorism. It is the use of terror that the State promotes in vulnerable populations. It consists of the generalized threat that they will lose their social benefits if the population does not vote for Morena. People, frightened and vulnerable due to the economic crisis, think the loss of their benefits could be true. This social terrorism brings another benefit to the government: in fear of losing everything, society does not mobilize, as expected, to protest against the high cost, inflation, and the growing phenomenon of hunger among the population, according to evaluations by INEGI and CONAPO.
And social terrorism is also reinforced when the President constantly attacks, denigrates, and insults the leaders of the opposition, using the microphone of the Mañanera. The operation against the President of the PRI is part of this effort to divide, minimize and eventually destroy the opposition coalition. All the resources of the Mexican State are being employed in the operation against the opposition before it is too late for Morena and its leader. And the people are thinking, “if the leader of a party is fiercely attacked by the President and does not defend himself, who will defend me in case I need it?”
It is a fact that AMLO’s civil war against those he considers his mortal enemies is, in reality, the recognition that the union of the political and social organizations opposing his government represents a force with the power to defeat the Morenista hegemony and its pretensions towards 2023 and 2024. Hence its “crowd-bullying” policy.
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