The question regarding the press conference held last Saturday by the presidents of the National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), Ricardo Anaya and Alejandra Barrales repectively, is still: Why?
Their objective was to announce a possible political alliance to back the same candidate in the 2018 presidential elections. That would be fine but given the current electoral situation in the nation, their timing is not merely off cue but suspect. Of what? I don’t know, but suspect.
Take into consideration that 2018, though forthcoming, is still a shot for the not yet so near offing. That alone is strange.
Thus their still unsigned memorandum of understanding (MOU) for this particular alliance comes just two weeks before the elections for governors in the states of Coahuila, Mexico and Nayarit. For the two most important states, Coahuila and Veracruz, they could not post a joint candidate. In Nayarit, they did.
In the minds of the abundant political observers watching the press conference and listening to the dubitable reasons Anaya and Barrales said they had, about the only reasonable conclusion is that they are abandoning their candidates perhaps even in the three states and giving up all hope of victory, particularly in Coahuila and the State of Mexico.
The “crown jewel” of the June 4 election is the State of Mexico where President Enrique Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) stands the chance of losing and both PAN and PRD candidates Josefina Vázquez Mota and Juan Zepeda Hernández – should the polls be right – may just kiss their hopes of winning goodbye; both are trailing badly and the election is a two way one between PRI’s Alfredo del Mazo and National Regeneration Movement’s (Morena) Delfina Gómez.
In Coahuila, PRI looks unbeatable at this point so about the only place where the PAN-PRD coalition seems to have some hopes in Nayarit.
This collusion comes also after Morena leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) let the PRD and PAN know that since they stand no chance in this election, they might just give up their hopes before election day and throw their scant votes behind Morena’s Delfina Gómez who is running a solid election and stands a chance of being the straw that breaks the PRI’s back in the State of Mexico. Both, of course, kept on chanting “victory” and PRD’s Zepeda went as far as insulting AMLO calling him a “cantina bully” for calling up for their surrender.
Some political pundits interpret the PAN-PRD alliance attempt for next year as a snubbing “no” answer to AMLO’s demand that they join him particularly in the State of Mexico.
That’s the outlook for the present political moment but keep into consideration that neither Anaya nor Barrales were talking about this election, but about the presidential one on June 3, 2018.
Being reasonable, it makes sense for these two unlikely bedfellows (PAN is Catholic right and PRD is atheist left) to start dreaming now about the 2018 general federal government election in which the presidency, 128 senator and 500 deputy seats will be up for grabs. Given the fact that either PAN or PRD have sufficient candidates to contend for those seats, it might make sense to make a coalition now. There will also be elections for mayor in over 2,000 different municipalities.
The Alliance – tentatively called Wide Opposition Front – may make sense also because PRI, even in distress today given President Peña Nieto’s flagrant loss of popularity, still wields awesome power in many states and it has proven that it can get up from a knockdown and fight again, as Peña Nieto did in 2012. Traditional PAN-PRD alliances have been against PRI.
Perhaps they are also trying to stay competitive against AMLO’s Morena, which in two years has gained an enormous amount of ground with Mexican left wingers and at this moment in history AMLO is the frontrunner to win the 2018 presidential election. And surely AMLO will represent a formidable contender to beat for any party, PRI included.
Indeed the joint Anaya and Barrales press conference Saturday left more questions than answers but in the end both are suspect of being in a political limbo in which they have more to lose than win if they don’t act together.
But for now, except for Nayarit, they are the announced losers of the upcoming June 4 election.
