López Obrador makes self-criticism after the elections: "You have to work more with the people"
The rapid recount of the largest elections in the history of Mexico has left a bittersweet taste among supporters of the ruling Morena party. President López Obrador has positively assessed the progress made by his party in the fight for governorships, but has been self-critical when analyzing the results in the Chamber of Deputies and Mexico City. As of Wednesday, the country will be able to know the official results that end up endorsing the new political scenario that will mark the second half of the six-year term and the race for the 2024 presidential elections..
According to the latest data, Morena would prevail in 11 of the 15 governorships that were at stake, while the conservative PAN would add two and the remaining two would be shared between Movimiento Ciudadano and the Green Party.. The ruling party continues to be the most voted among Mexicans -with 35% of the votes- and also manages to expand its territorial power with new federal and local strongholds, but it falls short of the objectives set in the Chamber of Deputies. In 2018, Morena had 256 seats and a simple majority alone, this time they could reach 197 and, to overcome half of the seats, they will need to rely on their allies from the Workers' Party and the Green Party.
Khemvirg Puentes, director of the Center for Political Studies of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), believes that this defeat of Morena in the Lower House will force them “to completely depend on the Green Party, which is not a great fan of the AMLO's project. The fate of the transformation proposed by the President will be subject to blackmail”. The Government and its allies will not reach a qualified majority in Congress either, which would have allowed them to introduce changes to the Constitution and approve without resistance some of its most controversial reforms, such as energy.
In the arc of the opposition, the preliminary results have filled with optimism some parties in need of good news after the electoral disaster of 2018. In the Lower House, the traditional PRI and PAN rise, with a maximum of 75 and 117 seats respectively. His unprecedented coalition 'Va por México', together with the leftist PRD, would have around 200 seats and will serve to raise an important legislative counterweight against the Executive. This opposition formula has successfully passed its first electoral appointment and, as Puente explains to EL MUNDO, “it is a confirmation that together they can resist more and stop the authoritarian impetus of the Government. The big test will be the 2024 presidential elections.”.
Fiasco
The battle for the mayoralties of Mexico City has been a jug of cold water for Morena. After being governed for two decades by the left, the ruling party has lost six of the eleven capital city halls it had won in 2018, leaving its head of government, Claudia Sheinbaum, surrounded by opposition councilors.. President López Obrador has recognized that “we must work more with the people” and has blamed the defeat on “the dirty war of the media”. As he explained yesterday from the National Palace, under the watchful eye of the journalists, “everything is here, they turn on the radio and it's all against it, they change the station and it's the same. So they do stun and confuse”.
The academic Puente has another interpretation regarding what happened in Mexico City: “It has more to do with the profile of the voter, who is much more informed, with greater education and income stability than in the rest of the country.”. He also points out the existence of collateral damage in these results “it is wear and tear on the party, but also a vote of punishment against the performance of the two favorite candidates to succeed López Obrador: both Claudia Sheinbaum and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard , who was in charge of the capital during the construction of the damaged metro line 12”.
Despite having been held in the middle of a pandemic, these midterm elections have been the most participatory in the last 10 years, with an estimated rate of 52%.. The authorities have confirmed that only 30 of the 13,175 polling stations could not open and that 21 violent incidents were recorded, although isolated. Some of them have left surreal images: wads of money flying at the doors of the voting centers, human remains abandoned next to lines of voters, theft of electoral material, attacks on officials, armed attacks, kidnappings and the arrest of a hundred persons suspected of having committed electoral crimes.