SOCIALIST ORGANIZER
After the second presidential debate [on May 20 in Tijuana], it is clear that Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or AMLO, as he is commonly known) will receive the overwhelming vote of the Mexican workers and people. According to the polls, the massive AMLO vote is also likely to be transferred to Congress, where it is estimated that his coalition “Together We Will Make History” will obtain between 236 and 298 of the 500 contested Assembly seats, and between 51 and 128 of the contested Senate seats.
A massive vote that says, “Enough is Enough!”
This massive support for AMLO reflects the people’s anger and despair after more than 30 years of policies that have handed over the nation’s wealth and resources to a handful of billionaires and transnational corporations. These have been decades of wage cuts, unemployment, and loss of labor and social rights. They have been decades during which the country has been dislocated and torn apart by the so-called “war on drugs,” which has only fueled more violence and militarization, and more killings of women and disappearances.
The massive support for AMLO is a plebiscite against the corruption, grotesque opulence, and influence peddling that the politicians of the PRI, PAN and PRD have displayed over the past six years.
Many mainstream politicians and Big Business groups have read the writing on the wall; they have understood where the vote is going and have joined Morena, AMLO’s political organization, in their quest to retain their posts and privileges, in keeping with the maxim, “join the movement for change to ensure that nothing changes.”
There have been many complaints from political activists about how these people, some of whom are tied to the powerful “mafia elites,” have taken over a number of Morena’s slates, opportunistically riding the coattails of AMLO’s immense electoral support.
AMLO himself has changed his discourse and political platform with the intention of appearing as a “moderate” and as the “responsible” candidate, thus seeking to capture a wider number of votes from the “middle class” and “centrist” voters, so that no pretext can be found to tamper with the election and so that his expected victory is not overturned this coming July 1st.
An aspiration to change that is in contradiction with AMLO’s program
What is at the heart of the massive support for López Obrador is a will for change that is in open contradiction with the electoral program put forward by AMLO and Morena in this 2018 campaign. AMLO’s program today is far different from the one he put forward in 2006 and 2012, when he called to defend Mexico’s national oil corporation — with the slogan, “Pemex is not for sale, Pemex must be defended!” — and when he called to defend the public-power utilities, public education, and public health services —in short, when he called to resist the wholesale imperialist assault on Mexico’s national sovereignty.
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