The Unknown López Obrador – NSS Oaxaca

EL PAIS
The belief that Mexico can not continue as it collides with the doubts generated by how it would govern the favorite to be the new president

JAVIER LAFUENTE

The most famous politician in Mexico turns out to be a mystery. After years of public exposure, months of interpretation and judgment of his silences and his ambiguous responses, the feeling of the inevitability of his victory has aroused both enthusiasm and uncertainty. The belief that the danger for Mexico is to continue with the exorbitant levels of violence, corruption and impunity conflict with the doubts generated by the possible victory and the way that Andrés Manuel López Obrador would govern.

Three months after the election campaign, an unreasonably long and absurd process. All the while, to which is added a pre-campaign and an inter-campaign – in total almost a year of promises and good intentions – the candidates have not managed to get themselves a concrete proposal, a definitive plan to finish, for example, with the two ills that plague the country and that will mark the next sexennium: corruption or reduce the levels of violence that bleed the country. At the time of Brexit, the rejection of a peace process like that of Colombia, of Donald Trump's victory in the United States, Mexico may have been the biggest exponent of the fact that emotions are imposed on the rational.

The election is a leap of faith, no one could have interpreted it as López Obrador, favorite for the win, according to polls, giving him a 2 to 1 advantage over his rivals, Ricardo Anaya and José Antonio Meade. Far from falling in the polls, as expected, it has continued to grow. A defeat would be considered a fraud by his supporters, a ghost that many of his supporters have not hesitated to shake in recent days. In his third attempt to reach Los Pinos, the leader of Morena had the ability to capitalize on anger and boredom with the current regime, embodied in the government of Enrique Peña Nieto and his party, the Revolutionary Institutional (PRI). The election of Mexico has a lot of referendum on the management of the president. At the time, López Obrador maintained his commitment to promoting social change, as he began in public life in Tabasco three decades ago when he began working with the Chontal Indians. His Mexico is only built if those who can not do anything can achieve something.

López Obrador is a social leader, heir to the old line of the revolutionary nationalist prism, presented as a savior. Your plan does not just make a change. He promised that he would lead the fourth transformation of Mexico after Independence, the Reformation and the Revolution. After Hidalgo, Juarez and Madero, he will be there. In a way, he wants to put an end to the cycle begun in the late eighties, Carlos Salinas de Gortari: the predominance of a center-right majority, a wide tolerance to the predominance of private interests and to the administration of inequalities. López Obrador was the par excellence opponent of this model, which led to the exclusion of the left of the executive power

López Obrador, seen by Sciammarella.
López Obrador, seen by Sciammarella.
On paper, his possible triumph would end this liberal cycle. In practice, there are many doubts. After losing in 2006 in favor of Felipe Calderón – he has always maintained that the election had been stolen – and to be beaten again by Peña Nieto six years ago with a wide margin – in both case under the umbrella of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) – for this occasion, he not only created a festival in his image and likeness (Morena), but he allied with Social Encounter, an evangelical formation.

The ultra-conservative overrepresentation in Congress worries advocates of social network rights who, for the most part, support the Morena leader. In addition, López Obrador has not hesitated to add to his project Together We Make History – which completes the Labor Party, from the far left – to the enemies of yesteryear, questioned the union leaders of the mines, in exchange for votes and structures to defend them throughout the country. "The candidate will win the elections of the parties that are more left and more right in the political spectrum.A candidate who, by the way, was in agreement with the politicians of the center, center right, left center and radical center, "summarizes the writer Emiliano Monge

In the nearby vicinity of López Obrador they believe that their political and pragmatic capacity has been underestimated.From the beginning of the campaign, it is 39, was the goal to beat and all the battles were spared.It cleared the supposed Russian interference in his campaign based on humor, posing as Andres Manuelovich; He suggested the The amnesty for crimes related to drug trafficking and, seeing that it could cost him dearly, ceased to mention it He assured that what Mexico needs is a moral Constitution , without specifying what he is referring to, he confronted the all-powerful Carlos S lim at the expense of the new Mexico City airport, which will not come back; After having charged the elite business, he met them. This back and forth has been a stimulus for his critics, who question his moderation. However, this allowed him to mark the agenda with little cost. While everyone was scrutinizing him, López Obrador did the same with Mexico. No candidate went around the country like him. When he left, his people stayed. At the same time that he perfected his image, he developed that of Morena. His greatest obsession was always to guarantee the defense of the vote. This Sunday, Morena will have representatives in more than 90% of the polls, only surpassed by the mighty PRI

"López Obrador is done, and one could almost say that alone. There are no sponsors in his biography, there are no companions, "wrote Jesús Silva-Herzog, professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey. His closest core is composed of his children, his wife, Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller and his inseparable Cesar Yáñez, in charge of the press and containment with all that he considers does not suit him. The moderation of his image was brought by his team of closest collaborators. Everyone has developed a campaign without him, for him. The most important are three who, a priori, will not occupy a portfolio in the joint government announced months ago.

The businessman Alfonso Romo was instructed to convince his peers that the victory of López Obrador is not a danger. for Mexico. Romo, businessman from Monterrey, in the north of the country; admirer of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and former critic of the candidate, that is to say, unsuspecting to be a leader of the left, embarked on a crusade of several months, d & # 39; first with leaders of small and medium enterprises, with the López Obrador meeting the elite business. "The most important blow", as described by one of the participants

Another factor that will determine the election will be the more than likely growth of López Obrador in the north of the country, the region that has traditionally turned his back on him. If there is no longer only one candidate from the south and center of the country, it has been, to a large extent, Marcelo Ebrard's work. His successor as head of government in Mexico City (2006-2012) returned home late last year to join the campaign, to build a solid structure in the muddy ground for the candidate.

If anyone helped to soften the image of López Obrador among the voters, that is Tatiana Clouthier. Daughter of a former presidential candidate PAN, a party with which she was a federal MP, managed to convince him that he must deal with all attacks with a message of peace and d & # 39; love – AMLOVE, they called – and reach the younger electorate through an intense campaign on social networks. López Obrador boasted in his closing campaign at the Azteca stadium: "Look at things, I am the oldest candidate, but young people, with their rebellion, know that we represent the new."

López Obrador's collaborators have put their personal interests before them, that they have them as politicians, to the success of their boss. A big difference with your competitors. Ricardo Anaya forged an alliance that would be impossible to join the traditional parties of right and left. He was willing to pay the price of the Conservative-Progressive division, but he did not calculate that the interests of those who accompanied him were even greater than those of those who remained on the way. In the case of José Antonio Meade, his nomination as PRI candidate opened an internal battle between the president's closest relatives and the hardest-working tricolor, who has never welcomed a sympathizer, right, was his candidate. Wounds that, far from healing, are still open without a tourniquet that slows them down.

As if that were not enough, the war that was interrupted during the campaign between Anaya and Meade and the president facilitated the path of López Obrador. In the environment of the chief of Morena they compare it, with a certain hyperbolic irony, with the Battle of Stalingrad. Then, the Germans walked towards Moscow with all that was favorable to them, until Hitler decided to take the oil wells of the Crimea. On the way, he decided to destroy Stalingrad, largely by name. It cost him a good part of the war. The promise of Anaya that he would imprison Peña Nieto was his Stalingrad. Meanwhile, López Obrador spent the summer in Moscow

There is a large part of the country that has hated it for years; who feels that to win, López Obrador will demand revenge. He insisted that it will guarantee the right to dissent, freedom of the press or that businessmen will be able to continue doing business. In this crusade to reassure, however, there has been a kind of excuse not petita, accusatio manifestes. At first, he will have until December 1 to take possession – a ridiculous transition that will be shortened over the next sexennium – to bring certainty.

What is no doubt is that López Obrador does not want to look beyond Mexico. On the contrary, see Mexico where it's going. To the extreme. During a recent trip to the north of the country, he commented that the last time he visited Cantabria, the land where his grandfather was born, everything reminded him of Mexico: "The Green and mahogany are the same as those of the Lacandon jungle ". That's why, despite the sighs of so many people, it does not seem like he'll become a regional leader. Compared to Chávez ad nauseam, López Obrador of 2018 shares only with the former president the cult of himself and his belief that only they can save the country. And although it should not be underestimated, there are more differences that separate them. The first, López Obrador, is not a military and does not seem to use them to cling to power. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine that a country as diverse as Mexico could be plunged into a situation like that of Venezuela, dependent on oil. With Lula, he shares his tenacity to achieve power, but not even the overall vision of the Brazilian. Moreover, if during his governments – not necessarily for him – the corruption has spread, the goal of the leader of Morena is to cut it

Between this desire to want to see it everywhere and with the conviction that everything is known to him, Mexico ended up wondering who it was and how Lopez Obrador could govern.