Can the left survive López Obrador?

Mexico will go through a second season of Fourth Transformation governments almost with absolute certainty. Less than five months before the elections, the possibility of the opposition candidate overcoming her gap (between 20 and 25 points) is almost impossible, judging by the correlation of forces that prevails today. Claudia Sheinbaum will be president of the country starting next October. If that is a reasonable certainty, what follows is pure uncertainty.

The underlying question is to what extent it will be able to maintain, deepen or modify the government's proposal for change promoted by López Obrador. This question is pertinent because the electoral seizure of power and then its exercise was centered on the will, charisma, idiosyncrasy and popularity of López Obrador.

The beginning of the change was born in 1988 as a reaction of PRI members (Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo and AMLO himself) against the technocratic drift led by Salinas de Gortari; It was not strictly leftist, but progressive currents joined it. The PRI dissidents and the left together formed the PRD, but in the following years López Obrador's leadership ended up dominating the different factions, to the extent that “obradorism” is the quickest way to define this movement. And what is the workshop? What López Obrador conceives, says and does.

In addition to that, what else would the cadres who are active in the Obradorism today have in common? The conviction that Mexican society is indebted to those most in need and, therefore, it is a priority to correct inequalities and social injustice. How and with what intensity until now has been personally defined by López Obrador. The big question is how it will be interpreted from the moment he disappears from the stage, in ten months.

Much of the answer will lie with Claudia Sheinbaum, who has a very different background than the founder. Urban, modern, progressive, scientific and more cosmopolitan middle class. Loyal to López Obrador but with a different worldview. She was not trained properly in the opposition but in the scientific academy and in the Public Administration, she was a member of the PRD, never of left-wing radicalism or of the tribes.

The problem for Sheinbaum is not only one of conceptual redefinition of a workerism without López Obrador; Perhaps that is the easiest thing: to modernize and make the proposals for change more viable and in favor of the majorities. The difficulty does not lie in “what are you going to do”, because that will be answered with the diagnoses that your teams are carrying out. No, the challenge will lie in the “hows”.

And this is so because López Obrador is not only the ideologue of change, he is also the factotum who made it work: operator, arbitrator, disseminator, controller of factions, link with the rest of the real powers, leader of the masses, dominant shaper of Public opinion. How to replace all that?

The rearrangements after the departure of López Obrador will be major because the movement is a constellation of cadres of all kinds, with no ideology other than the agreement to favor the poor, but always subordinated to the task imposed by the conquest and consolidation of power. The workerism of a recently arrived PRI member is very different from that of Pablo Gómez, former communist leader, or Román Meyer, a member of the cabinet, trained in the academy. The main mortar of this whole shebang is loyalty to the founder and his ideas, but now he will disappear of his own volition.

You don't need a crystal ball to know that strong groups, inside and outside of the Obradorismo, will seek to expand their power once the personalized style of such a strong leader disappears. Governors who count the days, generals who will want to consolidate their spaces, businessmen who will try to impose conditions and reestablish privileges, left-wing radicals who will declare themselves true heirs of the movement and vigilantes of purity, de facto powers that will challenge the new mandatory. Everyone will test its consistency and push where they feel soft.

Sheinbaum will have to develop an enormous ability to neutralize some, give in at times and hit back at others. Find a balance necessary to project an image of firmness without it being interpreted as hardness or rigidity. All of this means putting into play personal political skills that he is currently developing. It seems to me that, without it being simple, the doctor has the intelligence, the spirit and the discipline to achieve it.

But it does not reside only in personal attributes. It goes beyond an adequate strategy regarding your leadership style. The difficulty lies in how to operate a system that is based on the support of the majority for a person, on the polarization nourished by charisma, on the enormous capacity to impose a discourse above the media, on the ability to subordinate without cost political to any protagonist within the movement (and sometimes outside it).

To succeed you will have to solve several challenges. I mention a few: first, quick results in relation to the expectations of the vast majority. The polarization that López Obrador managed with such skill to make the people feel that there was a leader who spoke in his name and from his claims cannot be repeated. Sheinbaum will have to seek popular legitimation through results.

Second, it will need loyal and very capable cadres in political operation. It is impossible to replace AMLO in that sense, but it can be alleviated with high-level teamwork, with greater autonomy and personality than this cabinet was.

Third, a different relationship with the media and public opinion, based on professional respect and the legitimacy of words and actions. Only López Obrador could confront the media and emerge victorious. A complex topic that would require further breakdown.

Fourth, a conciliation strategy with the private sector to generate a favorable climate for job creation and economic growth. There is no transformation possible with growth of 2% annually or less. The redistribution in favor of the poor was already done with the margins that existed, what follows is to grow or take away those who have (something that is not going to happen either because of the conviction of the Obrador movement or because of Mexico's international context). But such conciliation with the productive forces will have to be done without losing legitimacy in the eyes of the majorities, nor being boycotted by the radicals.

Sheinbaum has the difficult task of demonstrating that a progressive government is possible in a context of market economy and integration such as the one in which the country finds itself. How to resolve the resistance of the system, leave polarization behind and not lose ideological identity. How to grow and distribute at the same time in a market society. In short, how to survive López Obrador.

@jorgezepedap

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