Politics: New cracks in the governing coalition
It was just a matter of time before the ideologically and socially heterogeneous coalition held together by nothing aside from Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s leadership and political coattails would begin to feel the strain once in power, especially when it came time to concretize public policies and make budgetary decisions. The tensions have become all the greater as the administration has pushed ahead with imposing strict austerity at any cost, a policy that has starved the government of the sorts of resources that an administration could deploy to placate and otherwise keep its followers in line.
There were considerable signs of stress at the incumbent Morena party’s national council meeting in early July over a major fight on organizational matters, although that fight was largely kept out of the public eye. Not so the fight last week when the head of Morena’s senate caucus outmaneuvered the current president of the upper chamber to impose his own pick to replace him in that largely ceremonial post. But the organization will be put to a great test in the coming weeks as it prepares to hold membership votes over the next three months that will lead to the election of a new party president and general secretary.
With four candidates competing for the top job, and no clarity as to the actual number of people who belong to the party, things could get ugly fast as political ambitions collide. For the moment, President López Obrador is the crucial stabilizing or balancing factor, and he is sufficiently pragmatic to understand that he needs to hold together the broadest coalition possible.
It is a serious dilemma and it will become all the more problematic as the question of presidential succession increasingly emerges on everyone’s political radar. Once López Obrador no longer embodies the movement’s future, it will become more and more difficult to maintain internal cohesion.
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