Part 1: Polarization, client politics, and manipulation to eliminate political opponents characterized the presidency of Andres Manuel López Obrador. That’s the baton he passes to his successor.
By Telésforo Nava Vázquez
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo triumphed as the first female president in Mexico’s June 2 elections.
She began her political career in 2000, when Andrés Manuel López Obrador (also known as AMLO) then head of government of Mexico City, appointed her Secretary of the Environment. In 2018, she was elected Mexico’s City’s head of government.
Twenty-four years after that appointment, the country that former president AMLO hands over to Sheinbaum is a minefield saturated with serious problems. WIth a doctorate in energy engineering by training, the new president will have to decide whether, after she took office on October 1, she will change course to get things back on track, or continue the same path the former president has left her. She never tires of describing the man who has been her political mentor as the best president Mexico has ever had, and assures us that the country is moving forward with full force.
Among the land mines, perhaps the most serious is the militarization that has been imposed de facto in the country, with no legal basis for doing so. During his election campaign, AMLO promised that in the first six months of his administration he would return the armed forces to their barracks. Instead, he kept them in the streets and has super-empowered them. The National Guard he created to take charge of national public security with civilian command was immediately placed under military command, and with a recent constitutional reform he legalized this act and made it an organic part of the National Defense Secretariat — that is, total militarization.
Likewise, he has turned the armed forces into corps dedicated to civilian public works. He has entrusted them with the administration of merchant ports, airports, customs, and even granted them a commercial airline. The new president has expressed her total agreement with this militarization. In a recent event organized at the Military College, she promised everything will remain the same under her government.
No less serious is the social polarization bomb imposed from the National Palace as a way of governing aimed at denigrating and crushing all opponents — as well as critical intellectuals and journalists — a task that has been carried out in all the morning conferences held daily throughout AMLO’s six-year term. Submission to what the ex-president says is accepted, while whoever opposes him is declared an enemy and labeled as neoliberal, right-wing, conservative, opportunist, corrupt and so on. For this job, he relied on the public finance sector to pressure and corrupt.
Claudia Sheinbaum not only endorses but continues to repeat this strident script.
Polarization reached its highest levels throughout the electoral campaign, a period in which the ex-president, violating electoral laws (“Don’t tell me the law is the law — my moral authority is superior,” he publicly stated), became the coordinator and main promoter of candidate Sheinbaum. Just as the PRI — the party in power for 71 years — did with its candidates when it monopolized power, the finances and other resources of the State were put at the party’s disposal.
Many months in advance, the Morena party that Lopez Obrador and Sheinbaum belong to began its candidates’ campaign with the pretext that it would choose coordinators. Then the internal campaign to choose the presidential candidate followed, although AMLO had already decided who he would pick. Electoral officials looked the other way, knowing the then-president had a heavy hand. Where the billions of pesos spent on this effort came from is unknown.
Just like the PRI used to do. To paraphrase Marx’s well-known phrase: history repeats itself, “once as tragedy and later as farce.” Once, as the PRI; later, as the Morena party.
One price paid for direct, cash support to certain sectors of the population is that public hospitals lack medicine and surgical supplies — as evidenced by the deaths of children with cancer due to lack of medicines.
The return of ‘client politics:’ using social programs to garner allies
The jewel in the crown of the farce, which succeeded in consolidating the party’s electoral quid-pro-quo clientele, were the social programs created and applied from the beginning of AMLO’s term — cash delivered directly and personally to the recipients in the name of the president. In this way, the web that trapped the political clientele who voted on June 2 was spun, part and parcel of the State’s political operations.
Now Sheinbaum promises to expand these client politics programs.
One price paid for direct, cash support to certain sectors of the population is that public hospitals lack medicine and surgical supplies — as evidenced by the deaths of children with cancer due to lack of medicines. Daycare service for single working mothers was canceled, supposedly because it was a source of corruption — which was never proven. Yet the daycare business of an allied party leader’s wife continued to be supported.
Full-time basic education schools (an excellent project) — which offered free meals to students — were closed. Shelters for abused women suffered the same fate. The budget for equipment and maintenance of schools was reduced (under the current government, educational programs have gone backward). The budget for higher education and scientific research was drastically cut, and attempts were made to stifle research centers because they did not submit to official dictates — as happened to the venerable Center for Economic Research and Teaching. The same was true for postgraduate studies scholarships.
Consolidating power throughout the government
The aggressiveness of AMLO’s discourse against his opposition and the social programs aimed at the most needy sectors helps explain why the former president’s popularity remains at around 70%, which weighed in Claudia Sheinbaum’s favor.
Before election day, with polls predicting the Morena candidate would win, the election centered on the legislators and the governorships that were also at stake. But with all the power of the State behind him, AMLO also pulled off a landslide victory for his party in the legislative chambers.
Of the 500 deputies who make up the lower chamber, 300 are elected at the polls, called uninominal; another 200, known as plurinominal, are appointed by the National Electoral Institute based on the overall votes for each party, giving priority to the minorities. A reform agreed upon in the late 1990s ensured that no party could have more than 300 deputies. The reforms included the creation of plurinominal deputies, whose central objective was to end the PRI’s practice of holding onto a qualified majority in one round through fraudulent measures while marginalizing the opposition parties. The same methodology was agreed upon for the Senate.
Working well in advance of the full-bore 2024 election, AMLO was also creating a framework that, with the support of his deputies and senators, would guarantee that the heads of the major electoral authorities would be his allies. He and his party even prevented the election of new electoral magistrates to replace those who finished their term, leaving their empty positions ripe for manipulation.
As a final step in consolidating legislative power, an interpretation of the law was finagled so the Morena party could illegally seize more than the 300 deputies to which it was entitled.
Mexico’s Congress is composed of two chambers: the Senate or upper chamber with 128 seats, and the Chamber of Deputies with 500 members.
As a final step in consolidating legislative power, an interpretation of the law was finagled so the Morena party could illegally seize more than the 300 deputies to which it was entitled. The first step was to register — a.k.a. disguise — Morena candidates as representatives of the Green Ecologist Party and the Labor Party, mercenary parties that rent themselves out to the party in power, as they did previously with the PRI.
Then came the distribution of representatives. The law states that it must be done by party or a registered coalition. Morena came up with its own interpretation of the law, with the active support of the heads of the National Electoral Institute and the Electoral Court: even though it had registered as a coalition along Labor and Green parties, when it came time to distribute the seats, it acted as if it was out there by itself. Legally, no one party can make up more than 8%, but by distributing seats among the three aligned parties, 8 became 24 (8X3) percent. As a Mexican saying goes: They served themselves with a big spoon.
This allowed the Labor Party, which won zero electoral districts — not even a single deputy — to be assigned 51 seats under the plurinominal route. The Green Party, which only won seven electoral districts, got 77 seats by adding the plurinominales, which placed it as the second-largest electoral force. These extra deputies are the members Morena registered (that is, disguised) as if they were from the stooges’ parties. The PAN party, which got twice as many votes as the Green Party, was left with only 72 seats in total.
Under this electoral magic manufactured by Morena, the coalition it formed with its two mercenary parties — despite obtaining only 54% of the votes — ended up with 75% of the deputies. This electoral alchemy guaranteed Morena a spurious majority in deputies and senators.
To top off the comedy of Mexican political roguery, on the day the Chamber of Deputies was installed, the Green Party notified Morena in writing that it was handing over its deputies, so the Morena party would have enough votes to take control of the chamber.
The laughter was heard throughout the country.
The above examples illustrate the deeply polarized country that Sheinbaum is inheriting from AMLO, a president who never sought agreements with political opponents — instead, he only conjugated the verb “to impose.” As for state governors from the PRI party, AMLO’s strategy was to co-opt or crush them; in fact, he put a kind of sword of Damocles over their heads. At the end of their terms, they mysteriously handed over their positions to AMLO without offering any resistance. In exchange he granted them impunity and diplomatic positions.
Will Claudia Sheinbaum seek to dialogue and reach consensus with the opposition? Will she treat their members as competitors or as enemies? Will she resist using state resources to subdue them and impose spurious electoral victories? Will she make sure the funding of social programs is transparent, which was not done during AMLO’s term?
To this day she celebrates everything her political mentor does, always showering him with praise.
At some point, she quipped he was the best president in the world.
Coming in Part 2: Mexico’s new president will face nearly empty coffers
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