Politics: AMLO makes considerable progress in his political-military project and his drive to split the opposition
In the past week and a half President López Obrador succeeded in his controversial proposal for putting the ostensibly civil National Guard under the direct control of the Ministry of Defense until 2024. The initiative fast tracked through both chambers of Congress and deepened divisions within opposition parties in the process. In his own way, AMLO managed to buy time to strengthen his alliance with the Armed Forces as the key power factor of his political project.
All deputies from opposition parties opposed the measure when it came up for a vote in the Chamber of Deputies, but a PRI deputy surprisingly made a proposal to extend the de-facto militarization of the NG for an additional four years without offering any credible public security rationale for the measure. That stoked suspicions that the proposal may be part of a maneuver to take some administration pressure off PRI party leader Alejandro Moreno, who has been the target of relentless political attacks as well as steady leaks of phone conversations from his time as a state governor suggesting probable acts of corruption. The two other parties in the Va por México opposition alliance, the PAN and the PRD, reacted angrily and said they were at least temporarily suspending their political coalition with the PRI.
López Obrador thus delivered a precise strike on the coalition, although it is not yet clear if it was a fatal blow, However, collateral damage included a renewal of infighting within the PRI, with eleven of the 12 PRI senators calling for Moreno to resign .
AMLO could also claim another major victory last week, when the Supreme Court let stand, at least for the time being, mandatory pre-trial detention, a highly controversial concept that allows public prosecutors to have a person suspected of committing certain crimes detained in prison while prosecutors continue to develop their case against the accused. In the past, López Obrador has successfully exploited mandatory pre-trial detention and the simple threat of applying it, including effectively pressuring a Supreme Court chief justice to resign in October 2019 following an ongoing investigation by the country's Financial Intelligence Unit. A similar investigation last year prompted 2018 PAN-PRI-MC presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya to leave for the US to avoid prosecution.
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