Versión Español
Spanish – The challenge obliges. What seemed impossible became a reality. Strong rivals and opponents of yesteryear united to confront Morena, the party of the president of Mexico, in the 2021 elections.
Three of Mexico’s main political parties, the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), have reached a perhaps unthinkable agreement to form a coalition and an electoral alliance for the country’s most important elections.
Some 500 deputies of the Lower House, 15 governorships, 30 local congresses, 1,900 city councils, and presidential boards will be renewed. More than 21,000 positions of popular election will be at stake on June 6 next year.
The only “possible” option to face Morena is to unite. There is no way to compete with it separately. President López Obrador’s national acceptance level favors any candidate from his party, as unpresentable it may seem.
A recent survey conducted by (GEA-ISA) showed that the intention to vote for Morena in 2021 would be 30%, 17% for the PRI, 13% for the PAN, 10% for other parties, while the remaining 30% is uncertain.
If we do the math, the opposition alliance would have some chance. The problem is that this agreement has not materialized in all states. In fact, there are entities where the opposition parties believe they can beat Morena without forming a coalition. Hopefully, they will not regret it on June 7.
More Morenistas than AMLO’s party members
Furthermore, we must take into account that there are PRI members who are more Morenista than Morena’s own members and who oppose the alliance in question.
The main objective of the opposition is to take away Morena’s majority in the Chamber of Deputies in order to take power away from the party and thereby counterbalance López Obrador. To do this, the parties that make up the alliance must forget about pride and vanity. This is not the time to make a mistake.
Nor should they be trusted. Last October, there were elections in two states in the country, Coahuila and Hidalgo. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, which governed Mexico for more than 70 years, won all 16 districts in Coahuila and 32 of the 82 municipalities in Hidalgo. The big loser was Morena. After sweeping the 2018 electoral process, on October 18, it only won 6 municipalities in Hidalgo and did not win any districts in Coahuila. Both states are under PRI hegemony.
This “tumor” is not cancerous
The agreement between PAN, PRI, and PRD is labeled as the Tumor: “Todos Unidos contra Morena.” This is what Mario Delgado, president of the party that built AMLO, called it. Delgado believes that the formation of an electoral alliance with enemy parties to confront Morena is absurd.
https://twitter.com/mario_delgado/status/1335688840770695169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1335688840770695169%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpanampost.com%2Fmarissa-rivera%2F2020%2F12%2F16%2Finedita-alianza-partidos-opositores-amlo-2021%2F
But let’s remember that this is how Morena managed to get the PRI out of the presidency. At that time, the coalition of parties with AMLO to defeat the PRI was not an absurdity, as they characterize it now.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador does not like the opposition front and has not lost the opportunity to disqualify it. In his morning monologues, the Mexican president has said that the alliance is shameful and that he has not been wrong in pointing out the three political organizations involved (PRI, PAN, and PRD) as the parties of neoliberalism.
“They are going together against our project. Imagine the enormous joy that I feel when I am historically right and, furthermore, when the masks are removed, the simulation is put aside, and they are presented openly as what they are: representatives of a minority that now feels displaced. They felt they were the owners,” stated AMLO.
He forgets that it was in the PRI where he began his political career and that he was one of the founders of the PRD, the party that nominated him twice for the Presidency of the Republic. What’s more, as president of the PRD, a position he held from 1996 to 1999, he supported an alliance with the PAN to win the governorship of Nayarit from the PRI.
He also omits that in his attempts to reach the Presidency of the Republic, he always competed with the support of partisan coalitions. In 2006, with the PRD, the Labor Party (PT), and the Citizen’s Movement (MC). In 2012, with the PRD, PT, and MC. And in 2018, already with his party, Morena, together with the PT and the Social Encounter Party (PES).
The challenge of the opposition alliance is not simple. Andrés Manuel López Obrador will surely come out stronger in the midterm elections as the pandemic, and the COVID-19 vaccination strategy will be well used.
But let’s keep in mind that there are also citizens who are unhappy with the situation in the country after two years of AMLO’s administration.
