Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The contrast between the process designed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador to select Morena’s presidential candidacy, and the method designed by the Frente Amplio por México for the same purpose, is total.
In essence, AMLO designed a supposedly democratic procedure, but one that would allow him to control its entire development and, most especially, that would allow him to personally decide the candidate. Hence, he decided to use the polling method. He had used the poll method before, with great success. In 2012 he snatched for himself the PRD presidential candidacy from Marcelo Ebrard, and in 2018 he took the candidacy for Mexico City’s Mayor from Ricardo Monreal to give it to Claudia Sheinbaum. Despite the jostling in each case, AMLO managed to discipline his detractors. He surely thinks he will do the same now.
He calculates that he will be able to tame Ricardo Monreal with promises (the candidacy for Mexico City?) and Adán Augusto López with a position in the Legislative Branch. And together, they will be able to tame Marcelo Ebrard, by hook or by crook. It has always worked for him before, there is no reason why it should not work now. On September 6, an envelope will be opened, and Claudia Sheinbaum’s name will come out of it, as Morena’s candidate for the presidency. For this, she demanded a process without debates, without proposals, almost like a beauty contest.
However, now it is not so clear that the President will have the strength to impose her candidacy without the risk of a strong division in Morena. Almost a hundred Morenista legislators have denounced Sheinbaum’s illegal acts, in the diffusion of her candidacy in advertising throughout the country, which will have cost loads of public money. They also accuse that she has bought pollsters. And, finally, that the Welfare Ministry operates in her favor throughout the country, threatening recipients of social assistance that they will lose them if they do not support Claudia.
The allegations against her, imply that Sheinbaum acts outside the law while offering to fight corruption. Her legitimacy is seriously affected.
In the opposition, the process has been completely different. The PAN and PRI agreed to divide between them the candidacies for the governorships of Coahuila and the State of Mexico, first, and then the Presidency and the governorship of Mexico City. As party bureaucracies always do, they despised citizen organizations, until they called and organized the two most important demonstrations of the opposition so far in the six-year term of López Obrador, in November 2022 and February 2023.
From that moment on, the parties could not agree on anything without reaching a consensus with that mobilized independent society. This independent and mobilized society demanded to give its opinion and also to decide on candidacies and government programs. Finally, the parties (PAN, PRI, and PRD) had to accept, very much against their opinion, a hybrid method for the selection of the opposition’s common candidacy that combines self-proposals with conditions, collected signatures, debates, surveys, and a free primary of the citizens registered in a voter registry. A process, by the way, absolutely novel for the rather tight Mexican political culture.
The parties had to change their by-laws to legally adapt to this new procedure, which was less top-down and more popular, with the purpose of defining their presidential candidacy.
This process is currently underway, and on September 3, the primary vote will be held to elect the presidential candidate of the Frente Amplio por México. On that day, the votes of all citizens who participated in the voting will be counted, and computed together with a final national poll, which will decide who will be elected to represent the opposition in June 2024.
The contrast between Morena and the Frente Amplio is relevant. On September 3, through the vote of the citizens, it will be determined who will obtain the presidential candidacy of the Frente Amplio por México. On the other hand, on September 6, Morena will open an envelope containing the name of its candidate for 2024.
The contrast: a primary of free citizens versus an envelope with a name. Those are the two Mexicos that today face each other with contrasting offers.
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