Potential contenders in 2018 - Mexico’s new political reality

Since President Enrique Peña Nieto won in 2012, the Mexican presidential elections of 2018 has had one clear contender: Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Not one to give up easily, Mr. Lopez Obrador has twice run for president as candidate of the left-wing party the PRD (in 2006 and 2012) and has already expressed he will do so again, as the Morena candidate.

Since its undeniable success in the mid-term elections, Morena, will now have a substantial amount of funding and a visible platform from which to prepare Mr. Lopez Obrador´s candidacy.

Regarding Mexico´s three main political parties, there is less certainty, yet there are clear indications and potential candidates from each group.

A series of corruption allegations have made for less clear forecast of who in the PRI may be chosen to become the President´s potential successor. Mr. Peña Nieto´s right-hand man and Secretary of Finance, Luis Videgaray, is most definitely a possibility, given that he is known to have been one of the masterminds behind the many structural reforms approved under the current administration. Yet if the effect of the reforms isn´t fully felt by 2018 and his planned budget cuts backfire, then Mr. Videgaray´s well-known closeness to the President might leave him out of the race.

A second rumoured possibility is another close political operator of the President, the Minister of the Interior and former governor of the state of Hidalgo, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong. Mr. Osorio Chong, had been quick to champion victories in the fight against organized crime, whilst distancing himself from governance blunders, such as failed negotiations with the radical teachers union known as the CNTE. However, after “El Chapo” Guzmán´s escape, his chances to take part in the 2018 race have been all but wiped out, even allowing for the unlikely possibility that Guzman is promptly recaptured.

A third possibility is that of the highly experienced and savvy political operator, Manlio Fabio Beltrones. Despite having been careful in his approach to the President, he is known for not being part of the same political group within the PRI and given that his term as member of the lower house of congress has come to an end, is now in search of a new job. Whether this ends up being as President of the PRI or as a new member of the cabinet in the wake of the expected reshuffle due to “El Chapo” Guzman´s escape or whether he is completely sidelined, as some of his rivals within that party would prefer, will largely affect his odds.

Regardless of who runs for the PRI, the more pressing question is how that person is chosen. If one thing is clear from the rise of independent candidates in 2015, it’s that citizens are demanding not only a greater say in choosing their public officials, but in choosing who runs to become a public official. The party´s longstanding culture of vertical decision-making, will most likely need to be revised (or disguised), in order to not alienate non-core PRI supporters, who will be pivotal in what is likely to be a tight election.

The crisis facing the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) since the Calderón presidency is no secret. There are two main and rival groups to consider, those that support the current president of the party, Gustavo Madero, and those behind the former President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón. Mr. Madero has come under pressure due to what his critics describe as an authoritarian approach and the fact that he presided over the biggest electoral defeat for the PAN in 25 years. This is a huge loss for Madero as he was a clear contender prior to these mid-terms

This crisis in the elections restored some power back to the other strong group within the party; the one that still backs ex-president Felipe Calderón and who now will support his wife, Margarita Zavala, who officially announced that she will be running for president. In a two-minute video, she said she could turn around the results the PAN faced, and give back power to its citizens. Mrs. Zavala is an undoubtedly charismatic politician, yet she will need much more than charm, in order to persuade voters that she represents a fresh alternative, given that she is married to a former President.

Another much touted potential candidate for the PAN is the current governor of Puebla, Rafael Moreno Valle. Puebla has the fifth largest voter base, thus represents a formidable platform for Moreno Valle, who had been running a slick PR campaign, until a protestor died after state police shot him with a rubber bullet. However, since he secured the PAN´s largest victory in Puebla´s history in the mid-term elections, he has regained his stride.

Finally, there are the independent candidates. These mid-term elections gave power at the state, local and federal level power to six candidates that were running without a party, for the first time in Mexican history. This has created unprecedented conditions for the next presidential election. One of the underlying themes to each independent candidate is that there were “citizen” candidates, as opposed to political ones. As illusory as this might be –many of them have longstanding careers in Mexico´s main political parties (and after all politicians are also citizens)- it is a theme that voters found compelling, given their exasperation with corruption in the political establishment. In the remote case that the main political parties were to catch on to this and put forward a candidate that had little to no history among the party ranks, then all bets are off.

Yet what the success of the independent candidates in the mid-terms almost guarantees is that there will be independent candidates running for the presidency in 2018. One obvious option is that of Jaime Rodriguez “El Bronco”. Another possibility is that of Miguel Mancera, the current mayor of Mexico City by the PRD, who has not only expressed his interest in running in 2018, but has insistently distanced himself from the left-wing party. However, if Mr. Lopez Obrador unites the left under his candidacy, then Mr. Mancera might be tempted to go it alone.

Mexican - US relationships see-saw back and forth.
The Marxist Revolution in Mexico was the same time as in Russia. But unlike Lenin, in the early years of the victory, Mexico welcomed Trotsky and took a “moderate” Marxist position.

Then in the mid and late 1920s, atheist Marxist President Calles came to power and tried to eliminate the Catholic Church and Catholicism and murder all devout Catholics.

Republican President Coolidge, Hoover supported the Marxists and gave the Marxists automatic weapons to use against the hunting rifles and pistols/revolvers of the Catholics/libertarians who fought (literally) for religious freedom. Thus, to many Mexicans, the Republicans are seen as the Marxists sympathizers supporting their genocide. But those people are now the strongest supporters of the second amendment because 1920s are a lot fresher in memory than the 1

Fast forward 1950s. The Republicans supported Bracero farmworkers and from the 1950s to 2003 the Republicans were overwhelmingly open borders, pro-immigration. Large numbers of illegals were fleeing Communist countries. All Republicans supported those Illegals. The Democrat Labor Unions were strongly opposed to immigration, both legal and illegal.

Reagan gave amnesty and 100% of Republicans and Conservatives supported it..with the exception of Pat Buchanan.

Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Rubin destroyed the Mexican peso and Mexican economy, allegedly for their own good. Of course, Goldman Sachs benefited greatly. The maquiladoras went from Mexico to Asia. The workers and populations that depended on the maquiladora money were out of luck and came to the US. The main reason there was such a big increase in Mexican immigration in the latter Bill Clinton years was because Rubin destroyed their jobs and economy.

A Collateral factor was that PRI, the party of Chicago style
corruption, had controlled the Presidency and Federal patronage in Mexico since the Revolution. Most of those coming north during the Clinton years were PAN members. PAN is the party of libertarians, small businessmen and devout Catholics. They came to the US with the memory that it was the Republicans that provided to Marxists the automatic weapons for the genocide of PAN.

In a direct rejection of PRI kissing up to Clinton at Mexico’s expense, PAN won the Presidency just a couple months before Bush II won in 2000. PAN President FOX was a libertarian leaning Club for Growth, Jack Kemp type Conservative. Mexico prospered economically under him.

But the immigration north continued. This time, there were more PRI immigrants heading north during the Bush years. Many were corrupt bureaucrats and corrupt PRI party leaders no longer in power.

Then, in 2006 PAN Social Conservtive Calderon followed Fox. Curiously, Calderon’s domestic policies are much like Pat Buchanan. Fox had focused on removing corruption from the bureaucracy ... draining the Mexican swamp. To do that he did not focus on the Drug Cartels ... partly because he had libertarian leanings, and partly because it would just increase the corruption in the bureaucracy before he could root it out.

So Social Conservative Calderon went after the Drug Cartels. Hundred thousand plus Mexicans died in the Drug Wars, tens of thousands of Drug Cartel workers, tens of thousands of military, police and anti-cartel politicians and citizens ... and untold thousands of innocent bystanders.

Most Mexicans could not stomach the carnage. In 2012 they threw PAN out and brought Nieto and PRI back in with all its corruption.

Now in 2018 Mexico politics is a zoo. I find it hard to keep up with the latest. The right-wing PAN is split between the social conservative and anti-Calderon factions. The PRI is split between the pro and anti Corruption factions. The PRD is split between the Bernie Sanders eggheads and the antifa type mobs.

In off year elections many independents won or ran strong. So now nobody knows how June 2018 will turn out. Right-wing PAN won in 2000 and 2006 with strong support from Mexicans in the US voting absentee. But not 2012.

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