Even floor. The difficult construction of internal democracy in political parties

 Even floor. The difficult construction of internal democracy in political parties

Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero

During the last days the problem of the methods for the designation of candidates in the electoral coalitions and political movements of Mexico persists. The disagreement with the rules of internal competition and its interpretation makes it clear that the appointment of candidates motivates the defense of political rights, turncoatism and political entrepreneurship in Mexico and Latin America.

These phenomena are linked to a disease of political institutes and party systems that seems to find no solution. Will we reach a scenario, similar to the French one, in which we see people who are far from partisan alignments govern? Perhaps this happens in Latin America and explains the lack of institutionality in our political systems.

Given the natural partisan factionalism, as well as the discontent of some leaders, it has become a common currency for rulers and public representatives to decide to found new political parties. This situation, already widespread, means that -as in the French case- political systems have as many parties as wines and cheeses has the French country. Multipartism -more nominal than real-, in any case, generates problems for governance and the production of public policies with a high social impact.

Just as it is impossible to affirm conclusively that the parties are oligarchies and that each character must understand where they are getting into; it is absurd to conceive them under the model of Plato's Academy. Internal democracy counts; if not, why propose rules of participation? "For PRI members, better PRI members," said Granados Chapa and, up to now, observing their behavior, it seems that PRI members of all parties continue to govern us.

In Mexico, political parties do not end up consolidating. 2018 meant a hurricane that swept away the flimsy institutionality they had left. Years later and even with the vast experience of their leaders, they have not yet developed an institutional design capable of regulating organizational mechanisms, formation of militants, aggregation of interests and construction of a government plan.

Visceral factionalism in Latin America forces us to think seriously about the Sartorian proposals for the Second Round of elections or about semi-presidential mechanisms that reduce the negative influence of particularisms. The divisions do not benefit anyone, much less the country. Mexico's main concern has been national unity, and the internal life of the parties demonstrates the distance we keep from a community project.

In this failure, the most frustrating role has been that of electoral institutions, which underutilized huge budgets to develop civic political culture and make democratic principles the only way to make decisions. Everyone ended up agreeing with the president, but no one recognizes him.

The democratic rules generate that uncertainty typical of those who participate, knowing that they meet the requirements, respect the guidelines, compete and hope that their talents will produce a result. Without clear and functional competition mechanisms, the internal life of the parties generates gangrene and poisons the organization and the country.

Ebrard adheres to social liberalism

 Ebrard adheres to social liberalism

Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero

The video presentation entitled "El Camino de México" that seeks to promote Marcelo Ebrard's career as a public figure, actually shows the distance that the former Mexican foreign minister has from the principles that distinguish the government of the Fourth Transformation. The material seems to be aimed at an electoral sector that seeks the economic integration of Mexico with the United States, the promotion of capitalism and the development of technological modernization in the areas of government security and education. It explains little about any social work that the former Head of Government of CDMX has carried out, even the issue of public transport that could have been useful, was not taken into consideration -for example, the issue of the Metro-.

Since his incorporation into the technocratic team of Manuel Camacho Solís, Ebrard Casaubón appreciated politics as a managerial bureaucrat. That is to say, keeping due proportions in what is called Enlightened Despotism, Ebrard like Camacho, develop a strategic thinking of the government moving away from the influence that society has. Camacho opted for the integration of a compact group that would take over the main areas of the government and that would become essential to remove the direction and control of empirical politicians; what finally happened. Ebrard continues to be technotronic, now digital and cybernetic, trusting that artificial intelligence can replace empiricism even in relations with Yankee imperialism.

Marcelo forgets the lesson of politics, as Jesús Reyes Heroles said, it happens with many. The technocrat says how, but the politician says when. Both things are essential in a society like Mexico, a nation severely confronted between the republic of catrines and the republic of outcasts. Camacho Solís was the architect of an elite that seized power from power and sought transformation from within the system. Ebrard, as happened with Camacho, was expelled from the technocratic group and forced to engage in politics, to seek survival among the empiricists, and they did not do so badly.

Ebrard, like other candidates, should reflect on the political capacity that they have developed in these times and that has positioned them in the most competitive spaces to achieve the presidency of the republic. Márquez's Why did Camacho lose? should also be a bedside book for Ebrard Casaubón; Beyond getting closer to the cliques of the political group in power and the national oligarchy, it is also important to get closer to the masses, the formal attachment to the popular sectors and the serious construction of public policies for a people that has enormous social gaps .

Armenta: Fallen Soldier?

 Armenta Fallen Soldier?

Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero

There has been speculation regarding the interest of the oligarchic groups in the entity to sabotage Alejandro Armenta, in the same way that they did - and do - with Mario Marín.

The competition for the morenista candidacy for the government of the state of Puebla has generated ups and downs in the profile of the applicants. A singular case in recent times has been that of Senator Alejandro Armenta: he went from considering himself Incitatus to the center of marine polemics.

Indeed, the coverage and sponsorship of a political clique is not always the best letter of introduction in political contexts such as those that Puebla has experienced.

There has been speculation regarding the interest of the oligarchic groups in the entity to sabotage Alejandro Armenta, in the same way that they did - and do - with Mario Marín.

Puebla's political elites distinguish between the officers, the troops and the Indians -according to their own speech- and Armenta is a soldier, so he was not going to pass.

As in the marine scandal, the main responsible parties were not affected in any way, only the bureaucracy and middle managers.

The internal competition in Morena to designate the candidate who, most likely, has the greatest support of the electorate is still distant.

The situation of Senator Alejandro Armenta has forced him to purge his team of collaborators, listen to the environment of social demands and seriously propose a government project for Puebla committed to the Fourth Transformation.

It's the right thing to do, even from a turncoat perspective; people who abandon a political cause do so to reinvent themselves in another, to be someone different, not to disguise the usual hindrances and ghosts, change is a rupture or it is not change.

The Alejandro Armenta who faced morenovallismo and made the feat of facing it alone, probably constitutes the political asset that transforms the environment in his work team from a vicious circle to a virtuous circle.

In any case, the elites and the godfathers always know how to accommodate themselves to the rising sun, they never lose because they don't fight with their money.

The invisible power that turned marines into a plague constitutes the sphere from which Alejandro Armenta must guard.

In an instant the negative capacity of this force causes structural damage

Did they betray Armenta to benefit another Morenista aspirant? What awaits Morena in Puebla if he is kidnapped by these powers that be?

The INE. cultural montage

 The INE. cultural montage

Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero

Companies are forced to live in regimes of limited participation by oligarchic groups and authoritarian public officials like Córdova himself.

A few days ago, the former president of the INE, Lorenzo Córdova, interpreted the results of the Latinobarómetro survey in light of the role that the IFE/INE has played in the construction of the Transition Model via Competitive Elections.

In addition to hypocritical lamentations, the racist and authoritarian official commits the excess of attributing the social disenchantment of democracy with the Fourth Transformation.

The way in which sectors sympathetic to Lopezobradorism, as well as the holder of the federal executive power, are judged negatively, shows that Córdova could never affirm himself as a neutral arbiter of the electoral processes in Mexico, much less as the positive channel of Mexican democratic consolidation.

AUTHORITARIANISM

No society prefers authoritarianism, the cretinism of the former INE adviser and his intellectual chapel spreads.

Companies are forced to live in regimes of limited participation by oligarchic groups and authoritarian public officials like Córdova himself.

Throughout its history, the IFE/INE forgot its commitment to civic culture and democratic education. It is not only that the people have the government they deserve, as Lorenzo Córdova wants to say; is that the INE never did anything to control the voracity and authoritarianism of the political class, mainly the neoliberals, whose most extraordinary case was the 2006 elections under the immoral arbitration of Luis Carlos Ugalde.

DISENCHANTMENT

The disenchantment with democracy is not only the responsibility of society but, mainly, of organizations such as the INE -on a national and local scale- and of electoral officials such as Ugalde and Córdova, exalted practitioners of bureaucratic patrimonialism and electoral concessions.

The political transition via competitive elections was only a cultural assembly headed by intellectuals at the service of the hegemonic historical bloc that never materialized participatory democracy, fair arbitration and authentic recognition of popular preferences.

The INE and the OPLEs are monuments of bureaucratic patrimonialism and political science fallacy. Ugalde, Córdova and company represent snobbery and intellectual imposture to recognize reality.

The current political circumstance not only demonstrates the excessive cost of electoral councilors and organizations, as well as their uselessness.

The current context has triggered a democratic deepening that has surpassed the coyote of the electoral official and generated a political agonism thanks to which it has been possible to recognize the real values of the multiple political tendencies and their factions; mainly the racist, pro-Yankee and classist right.

The INE, under the direction of Córdova Vianello, never respected the will of the Mexican people who attended the 2018 elections. Like Ugalde, it entered Mexican history on the side of discredit, and it will stay there.

The cultural montage of the electoral organizations is so untenable that even the Broad Front abandoned it.

Mexican democracy is not the liberal capitalist democracy as anyone with a minimum of comparative politics knows, and the Latinobarómetro should adjust its measurement instruments to other indices and variables.

Lozano and Verastegui. The marginalized radical right

 Lozano and Verastegui. The marginalized radical right

Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero

The neoliberal economic modernization preferred by Claudio X. González and the Broad Front as a political option, has generated that the Catholic nationalist groups show themselves as cliques of rednecks at the service of pragmatic economic groups.

In the electoral process of 2024, the independent participation of the tendencies that, at some point, reflected a singular part of the National Action Party is glimpsed.

While it was considered that the Hispanic VOX effect would allow the structuring of a radicalism similar to that developed in some European political processes, the truth is that -as in the Synarchist era- Catholic nationalism becomes the true shameful right for the groups neoliberal and business articulated around Claudio X. González.

The divergence of Gilberto Lozano and Eduardo Verástegui with the profile of Xóchitl Gálvez -probably the ideal candidate of the Broad Front for Mexico for the presidency of the republic- goes beyond a difference due to inclusion or religious moral conflict. Synarchism has been dying out along with the decline of the Mexican peasantry, neoliberalism has done what neither the State nor secularization achieved: make Catholic Tridentism in politics bizarre.

The neoliberal economic modernization preferred by Claudio X. González and the Broad Front as a political option, has generated that the Catholic nationalist groups show themselves as cliques of rednecks at the service of pragmatic economic groups.

Therefore, the separation of Lozano and Verástegui from the Broad Front for Mexico means a unique challenge in the evolution of the right for the country.

After the meeting of the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) and the visit of Santiago Abascal from VOX to Mexico, the scenario marked better paths for the religious right; now, Lozano and Verástegui play the role of Muñoz Ledo and Cárdenas in 1987. With Xóchitl Gálvez, what the Broad Front represents is a pro-American and neoliberal right, assuming the progressive liberal social modernization that this implies.

So far, the political preferences for Lozano and Verástegui are low. Even the structure of the ecclesiastical hierarchy seems to abandon them for the sake of electoral profitability. The radical right in Mexico is extinguished and the 2024 elections constitute the stage to lead a Numantine fight against accelerated social change or retirement in the concealment of discreet and reserved groups such as the white guerrilla of the national oligarchy.

And although the apparent agony of Hispanic Catholic nationalism and philonazism should generate tranquility, the strength of invisible power and human evil as equivalents are sufficient reasons to distrust.