40 days after leaving office, López Obrador continues to open battlefronts that he will not fight. Why? Let us first look at the fires he has set in motion. He did everything necessary to ensure that the approval of the judicial reform was rocky, to the point that today the country is facing a strike by workers and public officials in the sector. A strike that could have been avoided with a little tact and the political tolerance that the president has displayed in so many other conflicts.
Let us remember that days after the elections, when alarm bells went off due to López Obrador’s announcement that the new constitutional majority would be established in September with the judicial reform, Claudia Sheinbaum tried to calm the waters. She proposed a series of meetings with judges and ministers, consultations with bar associations, workers in the sector, academics and experts. From there the necessary adjustments would emerge to avoid an open confrontation or, at least, to minimize it. A few hours later, Morena’s coordinators in the chambers killed Sheinbaum’s proposal, stating that in any case they would be merely informative meetings, because they would not change the president’s project. Needless to say, such a disavowal of the president-elect could only come from the National Palace.
From that moment on, the path to confrontation was guaranteed. So was the result: Morena and its allies will end up approving it unilaterally and the president will have had the pleasure of inflicting a defeat on ministers he ended up seeing as personal rivals. Is that it or is there something more?
This bellicose determination could be attributed to a personal matter, the product of frustration over the resistance and boycotts to the 4T, carried out through injunctions and judicial determinations. The so-called lowfare or political warfare by legal means.
López Obrador may be convinced that no process of real change will be possible as long as there is a structure with the power to be used by the interests of the system, which seek to stop a change of regime in favor of popular causes. Under this thesis, the president would prefer to go to the bottom, “clean up” the problem in his own turn, free Sheinbaum from this headache without her being forced to such a rough task or to suffer this “nightmare.” Play bad cop, so to speak.
One may or may not agree with the above characterization of the judiciary, but we could assume that it is very close to the one conceived by López Obrador. In that case, there is a political logic in what he is doing, consistent with his perspective. It is claimed that the famous “December error,” the devaluation and subsequent crisis that Ernesto Zedillo faced in the first month of his government, was the product of the irresponsibility of his predecessor, Carlos Salinas, who did not want to devalue the peso so as not to see his image tarnished. López Obrador would have learned that lesson and would be vaccinating Sheinbaum against the worst ailment that he himself suffered during his six-year term. A deep reform, without half-heartedness.
However, that does not fully explain what the president has been doing on other fronts. In recent days, he has raised tension in the relationship with the United States in two ways: the claims about information regarding the arrest of Mayo Zambada and, above all, the accusations of interventionism by that country by financing Mexicans Against Corruption, the president’s pen of choice, through a third-order agency. Zambada’s case could be understood by its circumstantial nature, although the tone would seem out of place five weeks before leaving power. The MCC case, on the other hand, does not seem to be relevant because it is an old issue, except to remove a thorn and make a nationalist statement with a direct claim to Biden.
The president’s harsh response to the letter from the Business Coordinating Council regarding the debated issue of overrepresentation would also seem gratuitous. It is understandable that López Obrador sees himself as the main asset of the 4T in the battle for public opinion against the opposition. The Mañanera has been the strategic space for the presentation of the legal arguments for Morena and its allies to receive the constitutional majority. If the CCE chose to participate in the debate, it is understandable that the president would respond to that invitation. What is surprising is the factional tone that it chose, especially because the CCE has been an accessible and relatively responsible body in the face of a good part of the government’s proposals regarding the minimum wage, outsourcing and investment plans. Challenging the country’s five leading businessmen to take sides is not only uncomfortable, it also opens up open trenches in what should be a conversation of arguments and reasons.
No one can ignore the efforts made by Claudia Sheinbaum to start her government on good terms with the private sector. Next year, public investment will be constrained by the need to balance the deficit in public finances, so that private investment will have to more than compensate if the country wants at least moderate growth. And that is only possible by creating conditions of trust and certainty. I wouldn’t say that the president is blowing them up, but it will require a great effort to clean up the rarefied atmosphere that he is leaving behind in this final stretch.
If the harsh judicial reform is intended to be a laxative way of clearing obstacles, we should ask ourselves what the purpose of this latest attack by the president is. Is it personality reasons? Is it going to be a fast-track move, in the face of the imminent absolute silence that will come? Perhaps.
But I do not rule out that another variable is at play. The president knows that a shift towards the center is coming. He has anticipated it, he assumes that the country needs it. He supported Sheinbaum’s candidacy because he understands that she is the only one who could do so without declining in substance and making it consistent with the movement’s banners. But it is a shift and there is a possibility that it goes beyond what is desirable. In his own way, the president would be taking advantage of the last few weeks to give a push in the opposite direction, straining the relationship with the opposition, businessmen and the United States.
I am inclined to think that there is a bit of all three reasons: the removal of obstacles to clear the way for Sheinbaum, a personal (emotional?) reaction to her departure, and radicalization in the face of the moderation to come. There will probably be more expressions of this strategy in the remainder of the six-year term. A genius and a figure until the grave.
@jorgezepedap
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