The two main governing parties in Spain and Mexico, the PSOE and Morena respectively, have signed an alliance this Wednesday with a view to strengthening progressivism in America and Europe and confronting the advance of the international extreme right. Morena, the party founded by Andrés Manuel López Obrador a decade ago, has won the presidency of Mexico for the second time – with Claudia Sheinbaum as candidate -, the majority of the governorships in the States and the majority in both Chambers of the federal Congress. The leader of Morena, Mario Delgado, has received in Mexico City the Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, and the Secretary of International Policy of the socialists, Hana Jalloul. “Mexico is becoming a great reference at an international level, because López Obrador, with facts, has demonstrated that the model he has created is a real alternative to neoliberalism in the world,” Delgado said during the signing of the alliance. Cerdán replied: “More than 9,000 kilometres separate us, but there is much that unites us: the fight for social justice, for equal opportunities.”
The Morena leader and the socialist representative have pointed out that the extreme right is regrouping through international connections and financing networks. “Their threat is real and serious: not only do they seek to stop progress, postpone the great social transformations, but they also seek to turn back the advances in rights that we have already won. Hence the importance of progressive parties identifying ourselves and weaving joint alliances,” Cerdán said. “Their aspiration is to try to deceive our people to return to power, but, fortunately, progressive and left-wing thinking has been imposing itself,” Delgado said. Rafael Barajas, director of the Morena Institute of Political Training, has specified that the new reactionary wave shares signs with fascism. “The fight is international because what we are facing is an international movement,” he summarized.
Representatives of the PSOE arrived in the Mexican capital on Tuesday to also participate in a series of workshops with representatives of progressive parties in Latin America, sponsored by the Pablo Iglesias Foundation. Mexico is currently a hotbed in political terms. Almost a month after López Obrador hands over power to Sheinbaum, Morena is preparing to approve in Congress the controversial reform to the Judicial Branch promoted by the Executive, which proposes that all federal judges, magistrates and ministers of the Supreme Court be elected by direct vote at the polls starting in 2025. The amendment has encountered great resistance among thousands of employees of the judiciary, who have paralyzed dozens of courts in the States, while large foreign investors have put pressure on the value of the peso, fearing that the Judiciary will lose independence. In turn, López Obrador has decreed a “pause” in relations with the United States and Canada, whose ambassadors spoke out against the reform.
The Morena leader has stood up to defend López Obrador’s initiative against the judiciary, which he defined as a stronghold at the service of the Mexican right. “These autonomous bodies and the Judiciary function as a dam of containment and resistance to conservatism, protecting oligarchic privileges and anti-national interests in our country,” Delgado said during the start of the workshop cycle. The Morena leader has taken as a perch the judicial case against Begoña Sánchez, the wife of the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and has said that the reform of the judiciary that will be implemented in Mexico can be a good example to follow for other countries. “This strategy of the extreme right with the Judiciary is not exclusive to Mexico, in Spain we are currently seeing a ruthless persecution of some judges against President Sánchez and his wife,” he said. “Like Spain, we have [en México] a Judicial Power that acts in a factional manner defending the interests of the right,” he added. Barajas said that the progressive government of López Obrador in Mexico, like that of Sánchez in Spain, are the object of a media war and the lawfare (legal war) from the far right.
Cerdán did not want to comment on the judicial amendment promoted in Mexico by López Obrador’s party. He stated that the PSOE is respectful of the decisions promoted by democratically constituted governments. The socialist representative, on the other hand, praised the merits of López Obrador’s government in terms of the historic reduction of poverty, and praised Sánchez’s government for raising the minimum professional salary, protecting the public pension system and increasing employment figures. “In Mexico as in Spain, the right predicted dire consequences due to our policies, false omens that time has been unmasking,” he said. “The governments of López Obrador in Mexico and Sánchez in Spain faced great criticism from conservative ultra-liberal sectors, prophets of an apocalypse that never came,” he concluded.
The socialist has highlighted the formation of Morena and the drive of López Obrador, of whom he said that “he understood very well that for good politics it is necessary to listen very closely to the people”, in addition to basing his movement on “institutions, peaceful mobilization and the fight at the polls”. He added that the “overwhelming and historic” triumph of Morena in the last elections “is not the result of chance, but of the arduous effort” of López Obrador. Cerdán has endorsed the ties of the PSOE with the incoming Government of Sheinbaum, whose electoral triumph, he said, the Spanish socialists assume as their own.
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