Politics: The fate of the latest energy reform bill hinges on how PRI lawmakers line up
Mexico has been drawn into a debate over what type of electric power system the country needs, and clearly there is some room for improvement. But there appears to be a serious risk that opponents of President López Obrador’s efforts to establish strict state control over the electric power sector could lose that battle in relevant issues before even putting up a serious fight. While AMLO and some of his cabinet ministers have been actively campaigning for his counter reform, the leading big business chamber (CCE) has confined itself to a single rebuke of claims made by the official campaign – a rebuke that has gone largely unnoticed.
Where the administration has clearly lost the debate is with the decision-making groups and opinion leaders engaged in a more rational debate: the political and economic analysts, academics, business owners and social leaders, often referred to in Mexico as the "red circle". Their weight has been most apparent in the media. By the government’s own count, a mere 3.5% of articles published to date favor the proposal while 43% have come out decidedly against. But their arguments have yet to swing public opinion: a recent poll showed 62% support for the government’s idea that the electric power industry be exclusively managed by the Federal Electricity Commission, and only 30% opposed it.
Ultimately the court of public opinion may be especially crucial. The governing coalition has only one possibility of securing the necessary votes in Congress for its constitutional amendments, and it involves winning over a majority of PRI deputies and senators. Should the public remain inclined to support the reform, it could facilitate the negotiations and serve as a pretext for the party to back the government.
As a member of the opposition alliance that appears to be the only conceivable obstacle to a continuation of the governing Morena party’s rule beyond 2024, the PRI is clearly divided. Some of its most prominent members have leveled blistering attacks on the administration’s proposal, but the current head of the party and its congressional caucuses have been more circumspect in their remarks, and appear to be reading from the same script of keeping an open mind and considering whether the reform proposal might yet be possible to amend, depending on what the government offers. But such open mindedness may also reflect the latent threat of criminal investigations into the finances of PRI politicians more than any nostalgia for the party’s "revolutionary nationalist" past.
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