Emptiness and PRI
Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero
The resignation of the Institutional Revolutionary Party by a group of distinguished politicians and militants led by Miguel Osorio Chong has demonstrated the insufficiency that distinguishes the former Official Party towards the political process of 2024. The PRI is a party that remains and this constitutes a drag more in the configuration of the Broad Front for Mexico.
The turncoat ended up generating the total migration of PRI cadres and professional politicians to leave the political institute as a barren land, a Castile, full of nostalgia and the dead.
Although the recent electoral process in Coahuila and the State of Mexico made the PRI appear strengthened by the level of competitiveness demonstrated in both electoral processes, the departure of important lineages in the configuration of the historical PRI leaves the political party in the hands of a leadership who behaves like a goat in glassware from the beginning of his hierarchical responsibility.
The corporatism and the operational structure of the PRI had time to be managed at a distance from the institutional decisions of the leadership. The output starring Osorio Chong is an example of the catastrophic scenario that Manuel Camacho Solís envisioned in the face of the lack of regeneration of the regime of the Mexican revolution: Argentinization. That is to say, the anarchy and pragmatic rationality of the fundamental actors in mass politics. It finally happened. The PRI is no longer a party of the masses and the social actors have been left free – some think of the old revolt hypothesis of the headless proletariat. However, this also translates into an increase in electoral vices such as clientelism and vote buying. The destructuring of political parties devalues democracy. The lack of organization of the collective groups can set the tone for the extremism of electoral crime as well as the appearance of strange populisms that, together, put governability in check.
Social movements have concentrated on MORENA and the government of the Fourth Transformation. Probably, the current government regime will incorporate corporatism as a preponderant actor in the new power relations by 2024. The departure of PRI notables, cadres, and militants constitutes yet another blow to the weak convening power of the Broad Opposition Front. The right-wing groups concentrated on it do not understand the meaning of social participation in Latin American regimes, it is one thing to buy the vote and another to gain legitimacy. Hence the importance of observing what will happen to the collective agents and fractions that leave the PRI. The departure of the PRI members should also translate into an abandonment of the Broad Front because, then, it would be interpreted as a universal inconsistency to leave the PRI, but support it in the opposition coalition.