Politics: Morena internal elections plagued by massive irregularities
Over the weekend of July 30-31, Morena held internal elections to select delegates to its national congress slated for September 17-18. The congress will elect a new National Council and National Executive Committee. This coming weekend the same delegates will meet to elect their respective state leaderships, which in most cases ceased to function after the 2018 presidential election. In other words, the party is seeking to shore up its organizational structure and renew its leadership ahead of both the 2023 elections, particularly in the crucially important State of Mexico, and the 2024 presidential race.
But despite its claim to be different from the country’s other political parties and represent a break from the traditional and widely repudiated political culture based on election fraud, vote buying, patronage politics and other anti-democratic practices, Morena has clearly failed to deliver on its promises. Even before the dust settled after the polls closed, discontent from the Morena ranks was loud and widespread. While the central party leadership around Morena President Mario Delgado and even Andrés Manuel López Obrador praised the internal elections as a huge gain for Morena, with between 2.5 and 3 million voters participating, and described it as an exercise in direct democracy, they admitted to "a few minor and isolated glitches" that they attributed to forces outside the party.
The avalanche of challenges alleging a massive and wide array of irregularities mainly involving corporatist practices has badly tarnished the party’s efforts to portray itself as an alternative to the discredited traditional political system and has fed widespread discontent in the ranks. However, the rank-and-file dissidents have no place to go.
It remains to be seen if and when the damage can be repaired, and whether splits from the party can be averted or contained. But in the face of a discredited opposition, with AMLO's continuing to rack up impressive poll numbers, sustaining his attacks on the electoral authorities and promoting a constitutional reform proposal that would strip the National Electoral Institute of much of its power and independence, an organizationally strengthened Morena, with its central leadership firmly in control and not having to answer its internal critics, could be in a better position to compete at the ballot box in 2023 and 2024.
Now read on...
Register to sample a report