That cool November 13, when thousands upholstered in pink walk of the reform, Juárez avenue and the streets that connect to the Zócalo in defense of the National Electoral Institute, which the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants to rebuild into an organ under its control by 2024, it was not a moment of ephemeral effervescence. It was shown yesterday.
Tens of thousands of Mexicans responded to the attacks and insults of the president, who carried out a systematic bombardment against the rally in defense of the INE, with a citizen and political participation that overflowed the Zócalo, which was equated to the demonstrations of those who believed that the streets were theirs, with a message that the journalist synthesized Beatriz Pages, one of the speakers at the rally: “Men and women of free conscience are not afraid of authoritarian displacements that try to silence us.”
Yesterday the Mexican society that believes in democracy went to the next level, and in their determined support for the electoral body, they stood up to the president. for more than a month Lopez Obrador intimidated and stigmatized with lying analogies, slander and foul language typical of a neighborhood joint, not the Chief Executive, followed by his court that reached excesses such as those of the Secretary of the Interior, ADan Augusto Lopez, who called those who went to the concentration “brazen”.
The march on November 13 and yesterday’s rally had a cause, but the scope is greater. What is at stake, with the symbol of the INE, it is the choice of a democratic system or an authoritarian one, which are two exclusive visions. Either you bet on a liberal democracy, where the rule of law, counterweights, autonomous bodies and freedoms flourish, or you bet on an illiberal democracy where none of this survives the centralized power of the man who occupies the Presidency of the Republic, and that before handing over the presidential sash -if he hands it over-, he wants to destroy the electoral scaffolding that paradoxically allowed him to reach power.
Yes, it is a clash for the country that is desired, not in the reductionist caricature of the presidential discourse of the confrontation between conservatives and liberals, but because the annihilation of the INE as we know it will eliminate fair, free, authentic elections from the national landscape. and competed, will annihilate respect for minorities and the most disadvantaged population, at the same time that it will legally and legitimately stimulate, even if it is a contradiction, the electoral participation of those who live outside of it, the drug cartels, which will be able to repeat the mobilizations and the inhibitory tactics they made in the 2021 elections in favor of Morena.
López Obrador has said that there is a political struggle for the destiny of the nation, which is true, but not in terms of the struggle of rich and poor, as is his deceptively binary discourse, because his policies have harmed the poor most than any other sector of the population, but rather against the restoration of an authoritarian regime that began to be dismantled at the end of the 70’s and that almost half a century later, without having consolidated a democracy, they want to restore. His speech, which continues to have an echo in a part of the population that is not electorally minor, but not in many more.
There is no fear in civil society anymore, and their protest has been heard in other parts of the world. Last week there were expressions of concern on Capitol Hill over Plan B, and in an institutional editorial this Monday, the influential Financial Times pointed out that the attack on the electoral body reflects what other populists on the continent, such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro They tried, and can’t afford it. “It is time for Mexico’s allies and friends to speak up,” he said. “The European Union must find its voice, but more important is the United States… How can a country with a growing intolerance of political opposition and a free and open society be its partner and friend?”
All this is not enough, if the opposition is not up to it. This Sunday the opposition leaders joined the rally, without seeking leadership roles and even mobilizing militants, but everyone knows that despite the success achieved, it is still an effort of limited scope if the energy shown by the citizens does not translate into political-electoral organization and a cohesive opposition candidacy.
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Perhaps it is too premature and optimistic to maintain, as various politicians and activists have said, that López Obrador’s attacks are due to the fact that he knows he has lost the elections. The president’s attacks are probably due to another, more immediate type of fear, which is that the opposition will really build a broad front against him and Morena in this year’s state elections and in the 2024 presidential elections, and go to the polls together without internal betrayals.
López Obrador has a hard vote of 14 million votes, which will be transferred to whoever he decides is his successor or successor, which will only be enough if the opposition arrives split. If the opposition add up all their votes in a single candidacy, it will be a contested election despite the asymmetry of the resources that will be injected. There is no comparison in them, if the march of November 13 and yesterday’s concentration were taken as references, with the counter-march of López Obrador on November 27.
That presidential tantrum against the defense of the INE last November resulted in a great march whose fuel was provided by the Morenista governors with millions of pesos to mobilize people with payment and free food, in a thousand buses provided by a trucker magnate. What was achieved by society without these resources then and now, far from detracting, is a message to the opposition: there is civic muscle, but an opposition is required that, until today, is not up to the task of a society that has already said enough is enough to the president.
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