Mexico City - A diabolic paradox, as the journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski would say. The PRD [Party of the Democratic Revolution] becomes Enrique Peña Nieto's promoter. Jesús Zambrano [PRD President] and Jesús Ortega [former PRD President] transformed into promoters of their worst enemy. Making decisions--within the Pact for Mexico--that weaken their position and strengthen those of their opponents; making statements that reduce support and move it to those who want to fight but end up underpinning. The PRD as a counterproductive conductor; as a self-destructive actor; as a paradoxical party that leads a left bent on empowering the PRI [Party of the Institutional Revolution]. A dysfunctional PRD that, rather than acting as an effective counterweight to the PRI, justifies the PRI's progress.
The reality is revealed in survey after survey, poll after poll. The electoral support grows for the PRI while electoral support for the PRD sinks. The popularity of the tricolor [PRI] rises as the Aztec sun sets. The support extends to Enrique Peña Nieto while support for what remains of the PRD shrinks. Seeds sown by a hazy and blurred left are being harvested with interest by a triumphal and indulgent PRI. The PRD's post-election, consensual behavior has not closed down spaces for the PRI. On the contrary, it is increasingly opening them up.
In recent days, Jesús Zambrano has said that the PRD is here to "to say yes". To deal. To agree. To stop ordering institutions to the devil, because he knows that this position just creates more Mexicans willing to defend them, they already prefer reform to their destruction. The PRD is trying to fill their ranks with those who want agreements in order to govern before vetoes can block them. Yesterday's maximalism by López Obrador and his followers has been replaced today by the PRD's gradualism. The responsible left is setting the table at the PRI that never asked it when it was in the opposition. The Pact for Mexico that the PRD supports is propping up the presidency that at the same time the PRD insults.
The PRD has worsened its position by inciting fears. By awakening conservatism. By the rejection by moderate voters that the [PRD itself] produced. By acting as he did before leaving to found Morena, AMLO [Andrés Miguel López Obrador] resuscitated all the outdated stereotypes, all the filed-away adjectives. The PRD as the party of the furious and the recalcitrant; the PRD with the highest percentage of negatives and the lowest percentage of voters; supported only by its strongholds; rejected by independent voters, doomed to lose in 2012 and ensuring that outcome. A flammable left, which paved the way for a PRI that feels increasingly legitimized.
The PRD has worsened its position by inciting fears. By awakening conservatism. By the rejection by moderate voters that the [PRD itself] produced. By acting as he did before leaving to found Morena, AMLO [Andrés Miguel López Obrador] resuscitated all the outdated stereotypes, all the filed-away adjectives. The PRD as the party of the furious and the recalcitrant; the PRD with the highest percentage of negatives and the lowest percentage of voters; supported only by its strongholds; rejected by independent voters, doomed to lose in 2012 and ensuring that outcome. A flammable left, which paved the way for a PRI that feels increasingly legitimized.
López Obrador denied that [the outcome] might have been certain; he denies responsibility for an outcome that he helped to create. Insisting on maximalist positions that hurt rather than helped the PRD, insisting on assembling in the street and plazas [town squares] when he could not help the poor or produce the profound transformation that Mexico needed just by shouting from there.
The denial of reality that prevented transforming that same reality. Denial as a defense mechanism to inhibit self-criticism. The denial of drug addicts and alcoholics and abused women and all those who ignore the truth because they cannot face up to it. That inescapable truth that accompanies the left wherever it might want to go: the PRD as victim of the consensual, and AMLO as victim of the division that Morena has caused.
These are bleak realities for those who know that Mexico needs a good left. A left that might temper Peña Nieto instead of helping him to govern alone. A left capable of agreeing but also of criticizing. A left that might be the spur of progressive change and not a pretext for conservative conformity. A left that might be a main political character and not just the President's extras. A left with viable ideas and not just symbolic positions. A left that knows how to speak to the middle classes rather than alienating them. A left capable of rejecting both the capitulation that the PRI wants and the sacrificial immolation that AMLO demands. A left that knows how to be the opposition, because the country needs it.
Abstraced from the 1903 edition of the magazine Proceso, now in circulation. Spanish original
* Denise Dresser is a professor of political science at the Autonomous Institute of Technology of Mexico (ITAM), writer and political analyst for newpapers and television. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
These are bleak realities for those who know that Mexico needs a good left. A left that might temper Peña Nieto instead of helping him to govern alone. A left capable of agreeing but also of criticizing. A left that might be the spur of progressive change and not a pretext for conservative conformity. A left that might be a main political character and not just the President's extras. A left with viable ideas and not just symbolic positions. A left that knows how to speak to the middle classes rather than alienating them. A left capable of rejecting both the capitulation that the PRI wants and the sacrificial immolation that AMLO demands. A left that knows how to be the opposition, because the country needs it.
Abstraced from the 1903 edition of the magazine Proceso, now in circulation. Spanish original