Politics: Massive protest against AMLO’s political reform, potentially upending politics
The upstart National Civic Front (FCN) and five other civil society organizations that have all now banded together in the "Unidos" citizens' initiative staged protests nationwide on November 13 to defend the National Electoral Institute and oppose the electoral reform of President López Obrador. While organizers had originally expected a modest turnout, up to a million participated, with about half of them taking to the streets in the nation’s capital.
Although the opposition parties remain greatly debilitated, with scant capacity to mobilize supporters and their credibility in tatters, a part of the citizenry, organized civil society, burst onto the scene as a powerful political actor with a capacity for mobilization rarely seen. The same middle classes that caused defeats for AMLO in Mexico City and various other urban areas around the country in the midterms have now once again pointed out that they remain against him, and with more reasons for that defiance. We are in a new phase of the dispute for power and the direction of the country.
The official response came when AMLO called for a march in Mexico City on November 27 to mark the fourth anniversary of his swearing in as president and supposedly, in the president’s own words, aimed at "finding out if the people are happy with the country’s transformation,” on his watch. It is, in fact, to demonstrate that he can turn out more people than we saw on November 13.
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