The "legitimate president" of México.

Here I am, on Mexican politics once more. I mentioned in a previous post (14th November) the situation we are living after the presidential elections of the 2nd of July.
Yesterday, at the main square of México City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) proclaimed himself as the "legitimate president" of México. His position has been thoroughly critisized in México and abroad, branded as a tantrum coming from a bad loser. However, it marks an important moment in the political life of México.

For a start, this is not the first time the presidential elections are doubtful and as a result, the losers ask to open the packages of votes and promote protests. A similar situation happened in 1988, when the founder of AMLO's party Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas won the election, but things were manipulated to make Carlos Salinas de Gortari win. The third person in the battle was Manuel Clouthier, a member of the party nowadays in power.
Like AMLO these days, he claimed the election was manipulated and asked for the electoral packages to be opened. As it happened last summer, the packages were not opened at that time. He then recruited people in his party to form a "shadow cabinet", similar to what we see with the Tories in UK. But then, he died in a "car accident"...

So, what is different now?. AMLO has a huge power with people. Of course, not everybody likes him; if we rely on the results of the election, about two thirds of the voters do not support him. Of course he has some good proposals, but he can be overly idealistic and that can make you think that without a ground approach there will be no changes. This same attitude makes him look ridiculous at times.

At the same time, the country and specially the poor people (the majority of the population) seem ready to follow him and what he represents: a change. Social injustice has never been so clear, according to some "critics".

Also, the coalition of parties that support AMLO is much more powerful now than what was Clouthier's party in 1988. They are 31.6% of the representatives in the "Delegates chamber" and 28% of the representatives in the Senate. They also have governors in five out of the 32 states of the Republic, including the capital.

The idea of AMLO is to use two weapons: to promote bills that their representatives will fight for in the Chambers (the proposals are now included in a list of 20 points he emitted yesterday), and to use his popularity to promote social movements (peaceful ones, he says) whenever they want to put pressure.

He has in fact, an important opportunity in his hands to make changes. If he manages himself in an intelligent way, he will go far. But if he lets his pride and idealism go over his head, he will not only damage himself forever, but also the parties he represents.

I think the idea of the "shadow cabinet" is an interesting one. Of course, as the system is different, it will not work as in the UK.
Whether the representatives can make things happen will depend not only on how united they are, but also on how much does the party in the middle of the battle (PRI) negotiates with one side or the other, as none of them has the majority in the chambers.
As for the social movement, this can be a "double-bladed sword": it can be very powerful (it already saved AMLO from being incarcerated), but it can easily get out of control.

We will see...and yet again: TO BE CONTINUED...