Politics: Initial signs of strain in the AMLO coalition

MEXICO - Report 17 Sep 2018 by Guillermo Valdes, Alejandro Hope Pinsón and Gloria Andraca Aranda

We are still roughly two and a half months away from President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador's taking office and yet the last two weeks have provided all-too-early signs of the predictable fragility of a coalition that includes people drawn from even the farthest corners of the political spectrum. Such evidence might seem paradoxical given the coalition’s historical margin of victory on July 1, and the political momentum and power it has already begun to display on both the national and local levels.

López Obrador and his Morena party sit atop a massive trove of political capital, but one that apparently seemed inadequate for the purposes of the new governing group. A decision to cut a deal with the most discredited political party in Mexico in order to artificially inflate Morena’s congressional majority appeared to offer little more than the possibility of not having to rely on the support of its own coalition allies to directly manage the Chamber of Congress and its legislative agenda. Perhaps voters will not be alienated by such machinations, but many crucial opinion leaders and even intellectuals in the AMLO camp have been harshly critical.

Such an instance of old school backroom political bargaining tarnished the incoming administration’s promise to put an end to the old ways of politics that had become widely discredited, and it may have been seen as a green light for other coalition politicians, such Morelos state Governor-elect Cuauhtémoc Blanco, whom the Morena national chairperson publicly lambasted for supposedly attempting to “buy” the support of Morena state legislators.

The Obrador coalition also sits atop structural fault lines. Many coalition lawmakers and future administration officials were drawn from across the political spectrum, making any ideological loyalties dubious at best; some only joined the AMLO camp after his election was largely a foregone conclusion. All of their loyalties will be tested as the administration nails down its positions on key issues about which major coalition players are deeply divided, such as what to do about the new Mexico City airport, and the education and energy reforms.

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