Luis Rubio
The great success of President López Obrador is not to be found in an exceptional strategy or ability, but instead in his having discovered an amorphous and untapped electorate that did not feel represented. His mastery for communicating with that part of the population has equipped him with enormous impetus, much of that the product of the nonexistence of discernible alternatives in current national political formations. That is, his success has been twice driven by the incapacity of the political parties to understand the new realities that characterize the citizenry and to adapt to them. Therein lies the success of AMLO, but also the opportunities for the opposition.
The argument is very simple: the country has undergone immense changes over the last decades; the electorate was transformed; the context -both internal and external- is another; the citizenry comprises a new reality, previously practically nonexistent; and the transmission of information, ideas and dogmas is now instantaneous. Each of these elements has built a new political reality that does not dovetail with the traditional paradigms lying at the heart of the national political entities and institutions. In a word, the country changed, but the politicians, especially the political parties, live on in a remote past that has nothing to do with the Mexico of today.
That maladjustment explains the incoherence among the stances of the political parties -all of them, including Morena- and the national electorate. Suffice to observe the atrophied, clumsy, corrupt and petty leaderships that typify these entelechies dubbed “political parties”. The fluidity of the electorate finds no dwelling place in the mind or game plan of the parties, thence their incapacity to motivate or attract voters.
In this context an astute politician arrived on the scene who identified an electorate that does not respond to traditional party brands, which is resentful of the prevailing corruption and that is (or was, at least in 2018) made up of an extraordinarily diverse fringe of persons regarding their origin or social and economic position. The connection of AMLO with his electorate takes place at his party’s perimeter. López Obrador, like Trump (in another context), chanced upon a new electorate and capitalizes on it each morning, apparently even defying the laws of gravity.
The political parties enjoy a privileged situation because the law elevates them and protects them. The law grants certainty of permanence, funds and stability on the three largest parties, and generates opportunities of association for the small ones for them to partake from those same benefits. That is, the entire politico-legal structure that kindles the political parties is designed to preserve the status quo of decades ago and all the incentives that arise therein rekindle the maladjustment distinguishing Mexican politics.
If anyone doubts the latter, they have only to look at the way that the reelection of legislators or municipal presidents operates: rather than this functioning to draw near the deputies, senators and municipal presidents and oblige them to respond to the demands of the citizenry, that is, for them to represent the latter, reelection fortifies and secures the power of the party leaderships because it is the latter that decide who can register to run for reelection. The inexorable conclusion is that the authors of the electoral statutes -those that have afforded Mexicans certainty, stability and less political violence- have also made it possible for the emergence of a political phenomenon such as López Obrador. Instead of that legal framework favoring a natural evolution of the political system, its effect was that of paralyzing said system, anchoring it to a distant past, heightening citizen anger and indignation. Paradoxically it now ends up that AMLO wants to alter the very scheme that fortifies him, but that’s another story for another day.
The problem of the political parties are their misdeeds, many of these historic, especially those of the PRI, because they form, like corruption, an inherent component of their former times and nature. The passing of the PAN through power was no more commendable, because in addition to its being sparsely effective as a governing party, it ended up falling into many of the same corrupt practices. Morena will soon come across to face the same dilemmas because, beyond the person of the president, it is not distinct from the others. But the worse part is not the existence of those transgressions, but the inability of the opposition political parties to grasp the causes of the citizens’ ire or of AMLO’s success.
The strengths that the law confers on party leaderships end up being colossal weaknesses, as recent PRI conduct illustrates. The question is when will the parties and their leaders break free from that partisan dead weight, both the historic as well as the contemporary. That liberation must be the product not only of an elemental congruence with today’s Mexico or of a false morality, but one deriving from cold political calculation: because being associated with corruption, the narco, predatory unionism or a conception of the world long ago surpassed entails ever growing diminishing returns.
In as much as the 2024 mother of all electoral battles is closing in, the question is not about AMLO, who will pass on in history in one way or another. The question is whether the opposition will be capable of reforming itself to be able to ally itself, because without that it will continue to dig the hole of its own extinction. And with it, that of the country.
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