Where Mexico? – The American Conservative

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, former president of Mexico, left home for the last time on Tuesday for the seat of government in the capital. Thousands of citizens crowded the narrow streets around his car, desperately clamoring for one last look at the beloved politician.

López Obrador – or AMLO, as he is popularly known – was on his way to hand over Mexico’s presidential sash, his last official act before, he says, retreating into obscurity to his ranch in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

He arrived just after noon at the Palace of San Lázaro, the seat of the Congress of Mexico. He was accompanied by the star of the day, newly elected President Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president and his political protégé. Sheinbaum gave a speech praising López Obrador’s political achievements and promising that her presidency would maintain the course he set: the so-called “Fourth Transformation” of Mexican politics. With tears in his eyes, the longtime president handed over his sash, the country’s symbol of presidential power, to thunderous applause from the audience, and Sheinbaum was sworn in. The second generation of Morena leadership in Mexico had begun.

López Obrador leaves the presidency with one of the highest approval ratings of any Mexican president in history, and indeed one of the highest approval ratings of any political leader in the world. More than 70 percent of Mexicans had a high opinion of the president on the last day of his presidency.

He also leaves big questions about Mexico’s future.

First, will he actually leave politics, as he has said? Or will he try to rule the country from afar through Morena, the party he built?

Mexico has a strict term limit on presidential power – “effective suffrage, not re-election” was the slogan that sparked the Mexican Revolution and continues to define the popular conception of democratic Mexico. However, that does not mean that one man cannot rule the country for more than one term. Plutarco Calles, former president of Mexico and founder of what is now known as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), controlled the country through the party from 1928 to 1934 (a period known as the Maximato after Calles’ nickname, el jefe maximo), despite other men occupying the official seat of power.

López Obrador’s party may seem like the perfect vehicle for him to do the same. Founded in 2014, the party was built almost entirely around López Obrador himself as a presidential candidate, and has always been dominated by his overwhelming personality. His high regard among the population at large is even stronger among his own people, and if he decided to play kingmaker, it seems highly unlikely that he wouldn’t get his way. Because Morena dominates the Mexican political arena so thoroughly – winning an outright majority in both houses of Congress and controlling the government of two-thirds of Mexico’s states – this would give him a lot of control over everything in the country.

Despite concerns from the opposition that López Obrador would become a second Calles, there are serious indications that this will not be the case. The biggest of these is his choice of an heir. Sheinbaum, while a loyal supporter of the former president, is also a very skilled politician in her own right, and doesn’t seem like the kind who would be content to sit back and let an older man rule in her name. If López Obrador had intended to follow Calles’ example and rule with power within a party, he would likely have chosen a weaker, more pliant successor, as Calles did during World War II. Maximato. It seems more likely that the ex-president is sincere in his desire to leave behind, if not politics entirely, his position as Mexico’s top decision-maker, and has chosen Sheinbaum as the successor most likely to adopt his vision and execute. the country.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that he simply made a miscalculation, or even that he might change his mind later, as successors often disappoint (Roosevelt and Taft come to mind). If so, it would be unwise to underestimate Sheinbaum, whose quiet competence makes her a contender for control of the contested party leadership.

The second big question is whether Mexico will once again be institutionally dominated by a single party, as was the case almost a century after the PRI’s founding. López Obrador’s constitutional reforms – including but not limited to the controversial judicial reform he implemented at the end of his term last month – certainly put his party, Morena, in a strong position to see that happen.

The de facto The end of the political independence of the judiciary and the National Electoral Institute (the agency that organizes Mexican elections) offers a tempting opening for the kind of party entrenchment that Latin American countries have so often seen sour, including in Maduro’s Venezuela – a regime that López Obrador was a consistent ally of. And Sheinbaum appears to have no interest in changing course on this part of the ex-president’s program: Her recently released policy platform “100 Steps for the Transformation” includes a section promoting the reconstruction of federal electoral bodies, the reducing the number of seats and ending proportional representation in the Mexican Congress and extending the principle of ‘no re-election’ to Mexican deputies and senators, all of which strengthen the political power of the incumbent Morena.

Despite López Obrador’s strong rhetoric denouncing corruption, Mexican politics are far from squeaky clean. The institutional reforms that Morena advocates also make it easier – and therefore more attractive – for corruption to become part of the political process and for well-placed officials to dole out a few favors (and one or two in return to get), and as those favors usually go to the party in power; Morena benefits from it.

As a result, Morena’s political strength is likely to increase, at least in the near future – both legitimate and less legitimate. Increased opportunities for corruption in the judiciary and electoral bodies are also likely to make organized crime more difficult for Mexico to control. Nevertheless, it would be very surprising if Mexico were to revert to something like the dictadura perfecta of the 20th century PRI.

Mexico now has a tradition of democracy and transfer of power, limited as it may be, something that Priista Mexico, only recently recovering from the ravages of the revolution and Porfirio Díaz’s dictatorship, never did so. Morena may be popular, but today Mexicans demand that the will of the electorate be respected. They will no longer tolerate the kind of blatant electoral fraud that the PRI used to maintain control of the country. If the party becomes legitimately unpopular, as all parties must eventually do, its electoral adjustments will not be enough to save it.