Guest Column
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has simply gone mad
- By Denise Dresser
- September 10, 2006
Many in Mexico and abroad have begun to think that
defeated presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has simply gone
mad. His fiery speeches, his increasingly anti-institutional stance, his
decision to create a "parallel government" and name himself the president of
it, all seem to suggest a man who has gone off the deep end, dragging the
country behind him. Yet there is method to the apparent madness. Lopez
Obrador has chosen the path of unabated confrontation because he wants to
bring down the government of President-elect Felipe Calderon, or at least
make it very difficult for him to govern. Lopez Obrador doesn't want to be
the Al Gore of Mexico; he'd much rather be its John Brown.
The slash-and-burn approach Lopez Obrador has taken since the election
suggests that he has renounced his presidential ambitions and is not
positioning himself for the next race in 2012. Quite the contrary. All of
his decisions underscore that instead of governing Mexico, he wants to make
sure nobody else can.
From this perspective, his increasing radicalism makes
sense: The takeover of Mexico's main avenue and the massive sit-in there.
The parallels Lopez Obrador constantly draws between the current situation
and the tension that preceded the Revolution of 1910. The push for a
national democratic convention that would draw up a new constitution. The
refusal to accept the Federal Electoral Tribunal's ruling against him. The
calls for peaceful civil resistance, accompanied by the veiled threats of
ensuing violence. The recent speech in which he yelled "to hell with your
institutions."
All this points to a man who doesn't want to work within the existing
institutional framework but wants to burn it down instead. He doesn't want
to act in the dignified, responsible and reasonable way that Gore did when
the Supreme Court ruled against him. He doesn't want to win elections but to
become the combative, critical, radical conscience of a country that is
changing, but not fast enough for his taste. He doesn't care whether he
reaches the National Palace, preferring to confront its occupants from the
public square.
And unmoored by the constraints of conventional politics, he can do what he
knows how to do best: fight, denounce, mobilize. Become a permanent thorn in
the political system's side. Go down in history not as just another
president but as a revolutionary icon like the ones he so admires.
The problem is that by metamorphizing into a modern version of Francisco
Villa or Emiliano Zapata, Lopez Obrador may end up hurting Mexico instead of
helping it. Mexico is no longer the oppressive dictatorship it was at the
turn of the 20th century, or even the authoritarian regime dominated by one
party that it was in 1988, when massive fraud against left-wing candidate
Cuauhtémoc Cardenas did indeed occur. At least in the electoral arena,
Mexico has undergone significant and positive reform, which explains why
Lopez Obrador was able to be elected mayor of Mexico City in 2000 and how
his Democratic Revolution Party has become the second-largest political
force in Congress.
Lopez Obrador is calling for the destruction of a political system in which
the left just achieved its largest gains ever. He is undermining the very
institutions that his party helped build and are an integral part of.
Lopez Obrador's maximalist, scorched-earth stance runs counter to the kind
of modern, tolerant, institutionalized left that Mexican democracy needs. A
left that can come up with concrete proposals to combat poverty, fight
inequality, promote transparency and push for the reform of institutions
that represent entrenched interests instead of ordinary citizens. A left
willing to renounce the easy immediacy of confrontation for the difficult,
long-term commitment of changing Mexico law by law, institution by
institution. A left willing to fight for a better cause than Calderon's
political demise.
The kind of deep transformations that will benefit the poor and strengthen
Mexican democracy will not occur by merely fueling legitimate grievances
instead of addressing them. And Mexico will not end up in a better place if
hatred of a flawed political system precludes the possibility of reforming
it. Lopez Obrador needs to understand that Mexico's post-electoral crisis
should be used to make the country better, not the reverse
DENISE DRESSER is a columnist for the Mexican newspaper
Reforma and a professor at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.
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