Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
President López Obrador has done what he always does: he has upped the political bet when he feels cornered. If the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) annuls the National Guard as a military body, the President will force his candidates to succeed him to focus their positions in favor of insisting again on its militarization.
In Friday morning’s press conference, AMLO made the threat: on September 2024, he will send the new Congress an initiative to return the National Guard under the command of the Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA), along with its budget. Thus, the militarization of the national police.
The President’s threat has several implications for current politics and the national electoral campaigns of 2024.
As far as current politics is concerned, he recognizes, at last, a reality. That reality is that he lost the majority in the Congress of the Union due to the results of the mid-term elections of 2021. Therefore, he assumes, without saying so, that he will no longer be able to successfully promote any constitutional reform during the term of the current Congress. And therefore, he recognizes, also without admitting it, that his movement and his political force have lost power and legitimacy. In short, AMLO and Morena went backsliding.
However, he insists on acting publicly as if he were on the rise. He had already lost the majority in Congress for his constitutional reforms. But now he faces the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation. “AMLO ordered the members of his legal and expanded cabinet not to even take phone calls from the Court’s Ministers” in the act of breaking off relations with the other branch of the State. And he denounced the Ministers for being, in his words, “traitors and influence peddlers, Ministers of law but not of justice”. He even accused the Ministers he appointed as traitors to the people as if their appointments were made under the condition of total and absolute submission to the will of the President and not to the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States.
The tone of the attack on the SCJN has a strong whiff of coup d’état, it must be said.
By announcing that the President will present a new constitutional reform initiative on September 1, 2024, he affirms that he, as a political leader, will win the qualified majority in the Congress of the Union again. In other words, he is positioning himself as a de facto candidate in the 2024 campaign.
Candidate for what? It will not be for the Presidency because Morena will have its candidate. As President, he will campaign for his candidates, both for the Presidency and for senators and deputies, to win the qualified majority in the Congress to promote the constitutional reform to transfer the National Guard to the SEDENA. He will be the candidate “for no position” that will drive Morena’s most important campaign in 2024. And that campaign will have, as its axis, the need to militarize the National Guard.
With this decision, AMLO is informing his candidates what his discursive line will be if he chooses them for the Morena candidacy. They will be the promoters of militarization. That will be the discourse, the narrative, and the central government program offered by Morena in the 2024 presidential campaign. The candidates have just lost any relative autonomy they might have achieved during the campaign. Today it is clear that the task assigned to them by López Obrador is to be his spokespersons in the pretension of the militarization of the National Guard. By dictating to them the line on what they will say in the future, he also achieves their absolute submission to his proposal for the country’s future. From being “corcholatas” (Bottle caps), they will become AMLO’s serfs.
At the same time, López Obrador wants to impose on the opposition the agenda for debate and discussion during the 2024 presidential campaign. He wants to continue directing the national narrative according to his interests and obsessions. That is why he will try to place the security/militarization issue at the center of the national discussion. And he considers that this brings him gains.
The first gain is that it assures him, he thinks, the support of the Army. He considers this support fundamental to consolidate his project of forming a civil-military government in case of a possible defeat in the next presidential elections. In the event of resorting to a presidential declaration to annul the elections under any pretext, the support of the military will be crucial.
With the military properly subordinated to his political and economic interests, AMLO will be able to negotiate more comfortably with drug traffickers the territorial control of the country, between the State and the narco, and continue to protect those who have won his support.
On the other hand, AMLO manages, through his intention to promote militarization as a ” security public policy” during the electoral campaign, to place himself as a permanent “asset” in the national debate. It will allow him to be present in all the forums of the country and will make it easier for him to control and direct the discourse of his corcholatas already turned into candidates. It will allow him to call voters to support Morena candidates so that he will have a majority in Congress to achieve the constitutional change for the National Guard in September 2024 as his farewell gift from the Presidency of the Republic.
For all these reasons, AMLO pushes for militarization, yes, or yes.
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