Politics: Another poll to decide Morena’s future
When the INE-supervised public opinion survey to choose the next leader of López Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement produced a tie the week before last between Porfirio Muñoz Ledo and Mario Delgado, we got another look at the intensity of the infighting in the party as well as a reminder of how dysfunctional the organization has become.
López Obrador needs two things from the party. First and foremost, he needs blind obedience, especially from his supporters in both houses of Congress as he tries to pass the remaining priority reforms of his 4T transformation project by next August. Second, he needs an efficient campaign machine to maintain or expand his congressional majority and extend his influence in state and municipal governments in next year’s elections. So far he has kept his congressional supporters largely in line, but on the second point he faces a major problem of his own making.
Determined to avoid the chronic infighting in the PRD in which he found himself on the losing end, he built a totally top-down organization based entirely on loyalty to himself, with members expected to support each one of his moves without question. Once he was in office, he left Morena to stagnate, largely devoid of neighborhood and even state committees. Such weaknesses have been aggravated by the current leadership contest and have reduced an organization that just two years ago was swept into office into one so disorganized as to be incapable of electing its own leadership.
But if the 4T project, such as it is, is to survive beyond the 2024 elections and AMLO’s time in office, it will require a strong and functional party. And that is perhaps the most daunting challenge facing the incoming leadership: to turn Morena into a real political party rather than just an electoral and legislative appendage of the current Mexican president. That task is made all the more difficult because as support for AMLO began to increase in the run-up to the 2018 contest, his pragmatism and top-down leadership style transformed Morena from a force composed of his most devoted followers to a receptacle for an amalgam of the most dissimilar and antagonistic individuals and currents. The outcome of the poll underway to break last week’s tie will offer an initial idea of how Morena might try to overcome this impasse.
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