Although there will be elections Sunday June 5 in 13 different states — nine will be for governor — the most significant one will definitely be in Mexico City.
Its significance lies not so much in the election itself, as voters will be selecting 60 “constituent delegates” who will be defining the new constitution for Mexico City, which aims at becoming an independent state.
The move for the new Mexico City constitution began last Feb. 16, when current chief-of-government Miguel Ángel Mancera appointed 25 people to pen a rough draft of the document that will eventually be submitted to the Mexico City Congress (ALDF) for approval.
Heading the group of 25 notables, carrying out the rough draft, is Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, who has promised that the Mexico City constitution will be left wing.
This does not come as a surprise as Mexico City has voted leftist for the past 19 years, mainly for the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) which has held the helm of government since 1997.
One thing, however, is the rough and final draft. On Monday, chief-of-government Mancera announced that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will be pitching the “best practices” part of the script and that it will be an internationally oriented document, as Mexico City is an international city.
Yet the drafting of the new constitution is full of politics and politicking, as it is clear that Mancera is pushing it because he’s seeking to be the PRD presidential candidate in the not-so-far-away 2018 presidential elections and showing his legislative clout now will surely only help his cause.
Yet there is one problem. Ever since twice presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) splintered from the PRD to form the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), the PRD lost a lot of grass roots voting ground.
A major concern at this point in the pre-election game is just how much ground the PRD has lost to Morena. The current polls claim it is a lot, and that it will be Morena candidates that will be winning Sunday’s election, which might signify a significant blow to the PRD’s hold on the city government. And the outcome will surely influence the 2018 election for Mexico City chief-of-government, and from the current outing it might also go to Morena.
Forecasts are also important in this Sunday’s election. Prominent parties such as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN) will be lagging way behind in the polls, and their impact on affecting the new constitution will be minimal, perhaps being only by suggestion.
Critics of the new Mexico City constitution claim that it has nowhere to go and nothing to add. Right wing ideologue and former PAN deputy Luis Pazos, a well-known economics opinion leader, says that “the said constitution cannot add any regulations that contravenes the Federal Constitution, and at best it may include new orderings.”
Of course, Pazos, as well as PAN leadership, loath the making of a left-wing document and Pazos adds to his tirade against the new draft:
“What’s new in constituting this ‘Constitution?’ A new nation, a new city? Is it a desire of Mexico City inhabitants to have it? It comes because this government can’t give what people want: security, better traffic, less contamination, fewer fines, lower real estate taxes, and diminished corruption. Instead they are offering a ‘Constitution’ that’s one more law, and that does not afford a concrete benefit to 99 percent of the citizenry, as the change of the name of the city does not either. From the juridical and social points of view, it will only provoke conflicts among laws, more bureaucracy, more offices, more permits and more corruption.”
Let’s wait for Sunday’s election results, but what the polls hint is that AMLO’s Morena — which claims to be the true honest left wing — raises victor in this fray, with the rest of the parties being sore losers.
