A big lesson Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) should have learned from past elections is that in a splintered political parties in order to gain political clout does not guarantee a win. In this past weekend’s Congress of AMLO’s National Regeneration Movement (Morena) at the Tlatelolco Conventions Center in Mexico City, however, AMLO made it clear he did not learn the lesson again.
In his keynote speech, Mexico’s foremost left-wing leader told a strong following that he was adamantly against forming a covenant with what is left of his former alma mater Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), which managed to garner a significant 17 percent of the vote in the June 4 elections for governor of the State of Mexico, an amount large enough to have given Morena’s candidate Delfina Gómez the win.
Yet AMLO showed this time some congruence with reality in regards to the final decision as to whether there will be alliances with other political parties or not to the upcoming congresses next September and November. It will be majority of Morena membership that decides whether there will be covenant with PRD or not, but AMLO made it clear he’s standing his ground.
“Whether [an alliance] approved or not, the one decision made is that we’ll go together with the Labor Party (PT) in the 2018 presidential elections. Out of congruence, this is my point of view: we can’t march together with all the parties, and to be clear and precise, those parties are PRI, PAN, PRD, PVEM, Citizens’ Movement and New Alliance.”
In specific reference to PRD, the other contending left wing party, he scornfully referred to the PRD’s leadership as a group of “opportunists, cheap politicians and mercenaries,” particularly of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has opted for going the covenants’ way in order to attract votes.
Of PRD for which AMLO ran twice for president in 2006 and 2012, he spoke his mind in anger against what it is nowadays.
“We’ve had enough simulations. This is a party made up of corrupt leaders and governments that purchases votes, that trickles down, crumbles, who traffics with the poverty of people. And that only moves according to the political interest of its leaders and does not sincerely fight for the transformation of Mexico. A party like this one cannot be considered a left wing party,” he told a cheering audience.
In this past election, AMLO adamantly demanded that PRD candidate for governor in the State of Mexico Juan Zepeda decline in favor of Morena candidate Delfina Gómez. AMLO’s demand was definitely arrogant and out of place and Zepeda outright refused to do it even knowing that he was a loser only snatching certain districts from Morena.
PRD national leader Alejandra Barrales even went into a fit of arrogance claiming that Morena candidate Delfina Gómez should be the one declining in favor of Zepeda. Gómez came out in second place with over 30 percent of the vote in a highly conflicting election.
Yet at PRD there is one “tribe” (ideological movement) called Left Wing Militants that is demanding that Barrales listen to AMLO and sit down with him to negotiate, besides fully recognizing Delfina Gómez “victory” in the State of Mexico.
“What we are proposing is that we have to unite the left wing parties to win in 2018 and we have to help defend Delfina’s victory last June 4.”
The big point for the Mexican left now is that even if the past elections shuttered gates of understanding, it also opened up other possibilities of having Morena and PRD come together which would make them a formidable and perhaps unbeatable electoral power for the 2018 elections.
Only of course if the eternally feuding Mexican leftists get their act together. They are already in agreement that the political party to beat is none other than President Peña Nieto’s ailing PRI, which is also gearing up to come up with an ace under its sleeve with the 2018 election in mind.
The horses are lined up. Giddy up!
