World News – CA – Party chaos threatens Mexican presidential administration

MEXICO – Andrés Manuel López Obrador has created his own party to win the Mexican presidency Now its internal weakness and divisions threaten to undermine its administration

López Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement – known to everyone in Mexico as Morena – has been trying in vain for a year to choose a party president, and things are not going well

In response to a lawsuit over the delays, judges ordered a leader to be chosen through a poll conducted by federal election officials But it ended in a technical tie Election officials say they will try to new

The result is a bitter argument between an 87-year-old political warhorse who previously led two other parties and his lesser 48-year-old rival

At stake is the president’s now dangerously low majority in Congress, with midterm elections slated for next year and the party lacks formal organization in most of Mexico’s 32 states It only holds seven governorates

Beyond that, there is the question of whether Morena, in its current form, will survive the presidency of its creator, who is constitutionally barred from re-election.

Morena only exists because López Obrador has not been able to fully control the leftist party that sponsored his first two unsuccessful runs for president, the Democratic Revolution

When legal maneuvers left rivals for the head of the party known as the PRD, López Obrador – by far his most popular figure – led a mass exodus and turned Morena into a party in 2014

He woven his dissident PRD colleagues with dissident members of other parties – some true believers, some jumping on the train of a man who was clearly favored to win the presidency in 2018 and others who hoped to erase controversial pasts in a man renowned for his personal honesty

With the other major parties discredited by their recent shifts in power and a seemingly endless string of corruption scandals, López Obrador took Morena to a 30% winning margin, vowing to start a ‘transformation’ towards cleaner politics and more honest, closer to the people

“Morena is everything, and nothing at the same time,” said Hugo Concha, professor of political science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “One day you hear crazy proposals, and the next day they change opinion, « said Concha » It’s very difficult to send a signal to people: ‘Here are different ideas « 

« We are caught in an absurd dispute, » said Aurora Pedroche, 64, a retired pharmaceutical industry executive who joined the party in its early days. « Morena is badly broken, but we will close ranks around whoever wins

The only good news for Morena is that the two main opposition parties – the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the conservative National Action Party, are arguably in worse shape

The PRI ruled Mexico uninterruptedly from 1929 to 2000, and still has the most governorates.11 But its brief return to the presidency in 2012-2018 was so marked by debilitating corruption scandals that the PRI now appears to be scared and rudderless

López Obrador has proven himself to be a master in the genre of politics – charismatic leadership, fiery nationalism and government documentation programs – the PRI once specialized in

National Action, a conservative party that offers the clearest alternative to López Obrador, is still wary of many due to two lackluster presidential terms from 2000 to 2012 Some factions of the party have been drawn into protests against -productive rage against the president

Morena’s two presidential candidates are Porifirio Muñoz Ledo, a former PRI leader who has occasionally criticized López Obrador, and Congress leader Mario Delgado, considered more obedient to the president

Muñoz Ledo claims he won last week’s ballot, although the National Electoral Institute claims it was in fact a statistical tie and is planning another ballot to settle the issue

Muñoz Ledo has moved from party to party throughout a career that began as a student leader in the mid-1950s and established him in Mexican history as the first leader opposition party in Congress in 1997 He was prepared to criticize López Obrador’s harsh approach to catching and deporting Central American migrants trying to cross Mexico to reach the United States

As Concha puts it, Muñoz Ledo offers « a relationship of mutual respect, but not unconditional submission », while Delgado appears more of a workhorse for the centrist secretary for the party’s external relations, Marcelo Ebrard, the one of the president’s long-time allies

« A leader cannot listen only to the voice of the servile (followers), but rather to those who are critical, » Muñoz Ledo said in an interview with The Associated Press. He said he wanted the administration goes from a « caudillo presidency, » based on a charismatic leader, « to a parliamentary presidency »

But it is not clear that Morena can become more than a shadow of López Obrador

« In Morena it is the charismatic leader who is in charge, regardless of the bureaucrat who holds the presidency of the party, » said Flavia Friedenberg, professor at the National Autonomous University « A party only becomes an institution when it outlasts its leader »

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Pope Francis, President of Mexico, Catholic Church