Politics: Governability at risk, Part I
No one ever doubted that this year’s midterm elections would greatly magnify political tensions, especially as the contest begins to hit its stride, with competing camps' getting down to the work of defining one another and their respective candidates with the usual mix of negative and sometimes dirty campaigning. That is even more the case given a debilitated opposition deeply alarmed that the current administration poses a threat to democracy and established institutional norms, and an incumbent camp determined to consolidate its hold on power and assure the survival of its Fourth Transformation project. But we can expect such tensions to further intensify as we prepare for the formal start of campaigning at a time of heightened social polarization routinely stoked by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government, the latter’s increased aggressivity and political radicalization, and the country’s weakened state under the impact of an enduring pandemic and economic crisis that has adversely affected industry and employment and has severely worsened the living conditions of millions of Mexicans.
Sources of governability risks, such as the challenges we can expect all sides to file over how the campaigns are being conducted as well as their eventual outcomes, will put the country’s electoral authorities’ impartiality and credibility to a major test at a time when the best informed segment of the population has developed the impression of a pro-AMLO bias on the part of the Federal Electoral Tribunal. One of the immediate challenges involves an upcoming decision by electoral authorities on the extent to which the president can continue to use his nationally broadcast, extensive daily press conferences to demonize the opposition.
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