Over the last two weeks two significant events have taken place that will impact the future of the AMLO government. The first was a referendum (one of many AMLO promised throughout his presidency) that gave voters the opportunity to recall the president or allow him to finish out the course of his six year term. The second was right-wing parties voting down in the Mexican Congress of the long-awaited Electricity Reform, a key plank of AMLO’s program, one that would take back into state control significant sections of the energy sector now in the hands of private companies.
The contradictory results between the recent defeat of the Electricity Reform and the results of the recall referendum undoubtedly mark a turning point in Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government. A turning point marked by the contradiction between the mass support for the President and a growing inability to push forward the long-awaited reforms.
On a purely formal basis, the recall referendum and the rejection of the Electricity Reform are different processes. One expresses the popular support for AMLO and the other the relationship of forces in the Chamber of Deputies. However, analyzed together, they express more clearly the current political situation. While the recall referendum demonstrated the enormous support for the president with more than fifteen million votes for him to stay in office (out of an electorate of 93.69 million) it also showed a weakness in his ability to mobilize compared to the thirty million votes he got in 2018. At the same time, the rejection of the Electricity Reform shows that mass support is not enough if it is not expressed politically to advance policies that benefit the masses, first in the streets and then in the institutions.
Demobilization and Parliamentary Cretinism: the Defeat of the Electricity Reform
As we pointed out in our declaration in support of the Energy Reform:
“it is not through “parliamentary cretinism” — the term Lenin used to describe the reformist tactic of simply pursuing negotiations to win reforms for working people — that we will win an energy reform in the interest of the working class. Mobilization and struggle in the streets, neighborhoods, schools and workplaces is the only road by which workers will win an energy reform that, like the one presented by Obrador, is in the interest of the majority of working people. Therefore, it is only through mobilization and democratic organization that we will be able to wrest from the bourgeoisie and the right wing one and a thousand conquests for the benefit of the majority.”
In that sense, attempting to negotiate first with the PRI deputies by calling off mobilizations in order to reach agreements with some of them (like the one on April 12), and then later calling them traitors to the homeland is absolute nonsense. Like the story of the frog and the scorpion, they tried to convince the scorpions to stop being what they are: scorpions. But, in addition, it has been of little or no use to concentrate all the energy on a secondary battle such as the recall referendum rather than focusing on the key battle of the Electricity Reform.
The defeat of the Electricity Reform is no small matter. It is the most important reform of this six-year term, characterized as such by López Obrador himself. This defeat marks, first of all, a change in the political situation because it will further embolden the right-wing opposition, which will lose its fear of confronting the President’s policies more openly. Contrary to their goal, the results of the recall referendum will no longer be used to pressure the right wing, who have inflicted a defeat on the regime. But, in addition, this defeat will produce a greater demoralization among a layer of the movement that has mobilized and taken to the streets to win this reform. Above all, this defeat will produce even more political confusion among a broad layer of the movement that will observe the contradiction between the support for the president in the recall referendum and the results of the Electric Reform.
New Turning Point, Let’s Build a Fighting Socialist Left!
This contradiction, however, will also be a stepping stone in the political conclusions of a growing layer of the movement. For thousands of people, it is increasingly clear that neither institutional nor parliamentary maneuvers are enough to transform reality. No matter how much support you have, if you do not have a mobilized force ready to do battle against the right wing — rather than trying to negotiate with it — little can be achieved.
With this it is also clear that, contrary to the notion that the problem is corruption and the immorality of politicians, the fundamental problem facing millions of workers, women, youth and campesinos is that of a system that prioritizes the profits of a few over the wellbeing of the majority. In other words, the fundamental problem is not corruption or the prevailing morality, but capitalism. A system where a tiny social class that has everything, uses its resources and the state to continue to reproduce itself as a class and to benefit from the situation, while the majority class, the working class, survives by working from sunrise to sunset and confronts a state that is designed to harm them and benefit the ruling class.
This first defeat for Obrador will not be the last. On the contrary, as we have pointed out, the right wing will feel more and more emboldened. Despite the fact that the right continues to be very weak, without significant social support and undergoing a crisis of its organizations, Morena will continue its political approach of negotiation and conciliation, as part of a policy that prioritizes bargaining with these sectors rather than the mobilization and organization of working people. This is why it is indispensable to build a fighting socialist left alternative in the face of the increasingly clear crisis Morena is going through, as a result of its policies of inaction and leaving the door open to right-wing politicians.
