If Mexicans voted tomorrow, it’s likely Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would be elected president. Surveys show the center-left politician polling between a quarter to a third of voters, an amount sufficient to beat as many as five other candidates who could appear on the July 1 ballot.
Long derided by his opponents from the right as an intolerant radical, and clearly inconvenient to the Trump administration in its campaign to construct a regional anti-Venezuela alliance, Lopez Obrador’s unbending political determination might finally pay off in his third run for the presidency.
But is the leader of the Morena party, who is popularly known as AMLO or “El Peje,” the same man who faced down the system in the 2006 and 2012 elections he denounced as frauds? Yes and no.
In a Feb. 18 nomination acceptance speech, Lopez Obrador rattled off 51 concrete actions he will promote as president, among other things an “end to privatizations,” raising workers’ wages, transforming the 50 Mexican consulates in the US into defense centers for migrants, and dismantling the CISEN national intelligence agency implicated in political spying.
True to his left nationalist politics, AMLO proposes reforms that seek to reclaim at least part of Mexico’s oil sovereignty from foreign interests; revive a countryside devastated by governmental neglect, corporate globalization and narco conquest; ensure popular access to costly secondary and higher education; and improve senior pensions.
To achieve such lofty goals he pledges to sell off the luxury presidential jet, terminate the hefty public pensions paid to ex-presidents, slash corruption, and restore peace to a nation shattered by years of drug-stoked violence.
“We are going after the roots of the regime of injustice, corruption and privilege that exists in the country,” Lopez Obrador vowed to thousands of supporters at a February rally in Guadalajara closing the primary stage of the 2018 elections.
As role models for a future Lopez Obrador administration, the candidate invokes the names of Benito Juarez, Francisco Madero and Lazaro Cardenas, all historic presidents who confronted powerful enemies at home and abroad.
A President Lopez Obrador pledges to maintain a firm stance against the Trump administration’s border wall. Assuming the posture of a statesman, he has extended an olive branch to Trump — with caveats.
“If Trump insists (on the border wall) we will go to the United Nations to present our complaint. We will do what (Mexican president) Peña Nieto has not done,” AMLO said while on the primary campaign trail.
As for NAFTA, the former Mexico City mayor has declared that a new trade deal should be postponed until after the July 1 elections.
To achieve victory, candidate Lopez Obrador has pivoted to the center, softened old rhetoric and opened his tent, for better or worse, to former enemies, ex-officials and thousands of disaffected members of political parties across the spectrum. Proceso magazine documented more than 34 individuals connected to Mexican economic, political and media elites who hold important campaign positions or are slated to serve in Lopez Obrador’s cabinet if he wins the race.
Tatiana Clouthier, daughter of the 1988 presidential candidate for the conservative National Action Party (PAN), the late Manuel Clouthier, serves as Lopez Obrador’s campaign coordinator. German Martinez, former PAN president and a nemesis of Lopez Obrador in 2006, is now a vocal proponent of El Peje.
In an important development that could tip the balance in the 2018 race, the nearly two million strong National Education Workers Union, once a major prop of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that later brokered its votes with the PAN, is split between one faction back in the PRI’s camp and others tilting toward AMLO.
Yet Lopez Obrador still counts many enemies, some of whom are almost certain to resort to dirty tricks like vote-buying and ballot box manipulations. Meantime, stories attempting to portray AMLO as a Russian and Venezuelan stooge are surfacing in both commercial media and on social media. A new website containing tales of nepotism and corruption allegedly surrounding Lopez Obrador, pejeleaks.org, surfaced in February but lacked information about the origins, politics or financing of the producers. The website, however, accepts Bitcoins for donations.
Humorously countering the Russia story, the presidential contender released a video of himself appearing as an “Andres Manuelovich” who was seeking “Moscow gold.”
Besides his traditional opponents, AMLO faces criticism from sectors of the left. His electoral alliance with the Social Encounter Party (PES), a newer grouping with an evangelical base and conservative stands on sexuality, raised eyebrows among longtime supporters, like prominent writer and women’s advocate Elena Poniatowska and actress Jesusa Rodriguez, who was a leading activist in the 2006 post-electoral protest that accused the government of staging a fraud in order to deprive Lopez Obrador of victory.
“Many people are indignant and disposed to make sure this alliance doesn’t happen,” Rodriguez was quoted by Proceso/APRO at a December protest against the PES’ presence in AMLO’s campaign. “Morena is respect and Social Encounter is intolerance ...”
Unruffled by the criticism, the leader of the “We Will Make History Together” electoral coalition formally accepted the PES’ backing at a February event in Mexico City. In his speech Lopez Obrador insisted there was no contradiction between a lay state and religious beliefs, and attributed Mexico’s crisis partly to a “loss of values.” The 64-year-old politician cited Jesus Christ, Tolstoy, Oaxacan indigenous communities and the late Uruguayan anti-imperialist writer Eduardo Galeano as sources for inspiration.
Lopez Obrador appealed for the drafting of a “moral constitution” flowing from a broad national conversation. “A dialogue of believers and non-believers, a dialogue to make Mexico moral,” he proposed.
Confident he will win, AMLO claims his campaign can mobilize four million members of the three political parties making up his electoral coalition as well as a 30 million strong base of voters. But similar claims in 2012 fell short, though the loss was again punctuated by evidence of fraud. To win this time, Lopez Obrador will need a massive voter turnout and a symphonically orchestrated ground game before, during and after July 1 election day so any attempts at vote rigging are decisively deterred. Expect the political fireworks to reach new heights after the general campaign begins at the end of March.
Kent Paterson is a freelance journalist who divides his time between Mexico and the US Southwest.
From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2018
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