MEXICO ELECTIONS: Claudia Sheinbaum, First Woman President, Elected by 35.7 Million People

Report by OCRFI-Mexico

“Mexico has rejected the oligarchy and its traditional parties. With the majority in the two Chambers – the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate – we must demand that the new government carry out the people’s mandate: the approval of the reforms promised under Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO)’s Fourth Transformation (4T) and the renationalization of all the country’s privatized industries and sectors.[1] … In this context, the need becomes more urgent for the workers of Mexico to build their own independent political option that genuinely expresses their interests and carries forward the true national transformation.”

The rejection of the oligarchy and its traditional parties

The people of Mexico have rejected the oligarchy and its old parties. The right-wing candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez, obtained 26% of the votes, which represents a loss of 12.5% in relation to the vote of the parties of her coalition in 2018 — that is, almost 12 million votes fewer. This represents a debacle for the electoral coalition formed by the PRI-PAN and PRD[2], which could not even maintain their current number of office-holders.

PAN went from being the second electoral force to third place, surpassed by MORENA and the Partido Verde (Green Party). The PRI became the fifth force, surpassed by the PT. Movimiento Ciudadano remained as the sixth force, while the PRD lost its national electoral registration.

The candidacy of Jorge Álvarez Máynez registered a vote of 10.4%, double what was expected. His party, Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), managed to increase its vote thanks to a marketing campaign focused on the youth vote, but it also attracted sectors of the intelligentsia and progressives being the only candidate that set clear positions in relation to social rights, such as the legalization of abortion, the fight against militarization, and the reduction of the working day. However, this phenomenon only occurred at the level of the presidential candidacy; MC regressed in the number of elected legislators and municipal presidencies. The old parties were only able to retain two of the nine governorships at stake.

The rejection of the neoliberal model, corruption, discrimination and loss of rights was very clear: Most Mexicans do not want the old parties to return.

A mandate given to Sheinbaum and the MORENA coalition

35.7 million Mexicans voted for Claudia Sheinbaum, giving continuity to the 4T project initiated by AMLO, the outgoing president. They obtained five million votes more, in relation to 2018; Sheinbaum won more votes than any other candidate in Mexico’s history.

To the electoral triumph must be added the victory represented by the election of a woman to the presidency, the first in 200 years of our nation’s independent life. Her triumph is an affront to the conservative and macho culture, an advance that shows the power of the women’s movement for struggling for their rights and against the violence they experience. It marks a change in the population’s consciousness.

Although for months it was clear that Sheinbaum was leading the polls, the surprise was the forcefulness with which she won (margin of 2-to-1) in addition to the massive vote for the coalition of MORENA-VERDE-PT in the governor and legislative elections.

Preliminary data show that MORENA, its allies of the PT and the Partido Verde will obtain a qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies and Senators, giving them no impediment – at least formally – to modify the Constitution. They will not have to negotiate with the opposition to pass any of the reforms presented by President AMLO last February. The famous Plan C, which consisted of achieving a majority in the Congress, has been attained!

But the sharp opposition by the oligarchy and imperialism was not long in coming. The parties of the right wing that on Sunday recognized their defeat, only a few days later claimed fraud in the legislative elections and filed appeals to annul the results. The “intellectuals” of the mass media speak of a democratic regression and an authoritarian drift, inciting those who voted for the right wing to take action against the new government.

For their part, the “international markets” reacted to the MORENA majority vote at all levels of government, by putting pressure on the country’s economy, pulling investments out of the stock market (6.7% drop for two consecutive days) and speculating on the peso-dollar exchange rate, which in 48 hours went from $16.5 pesos to $18 per U.S. dollar so that a peso (Mexican$) is worth today only a little more than five cents.

The Mexican corporate elite, and behind them U.S. imperialism, are aware that an opportunity has opened up to overthrow the institutions and laws inherited from the PRIAN[3] They are aware that the majority of the people have given Sheinbaum a mandate to move forward on a progressive path, in particular by implementing the reform of the judiciary, which was one of Sheinbaum’s campaign slogans, as well as the recovery of the energy sector by the Mexican state

A contradictory majority

The election of this new majority contains a great contradiction. The majority vote for MORENA and its allies expressed the will to move towards change and the rejection of the traditional parties by broad sectors of the population. But the construction of the electoral alliance was based on a previous pact by the leadership of MORENA and the government of the 4T with the national power groups and local oligarchies. The latter agreed to negotiate their support for MORENA in exchange for maintaining their positions.

While the majority of the population exercised their vote freely, we should not overlook that this was also a federal, state and local election, where the same people who years ago organized corporate voting and vote-buying for the PRIAN now acted in favor of MORENA, as was evident with the union leaderships such as SNTE [national teachers’ union], the oil workers, the miners… who openly operated in the electoral process.

The AMLO-Sheinbaum agreements with these groups meant that hundreds of the candidates of the MORENA alliance were people who until a few months ago were members of the PRI and PAN, who maintained political bosses at the local level and/or who represented business groups.

So, despite the fact that the population voted against the parties of the regime, the politicians of these same parties will remain in power under the shelter of MORENA, due to their previous agreements.

So the question arises: Is the majority in the two Houses of Congress really committed to Sheinbaum’s project, to the reform proposals made by President AMLO? As workers, can we believe that those who just a few years ago promoted privatizations and neoliberal reforms, and who repressed the people, have changed and now represent the interests of working people and the nation? Will AMLO and Sheinbaum, moreover, have the will to impose the approval of the reforms on the new legislators?

The lack of workers’ own political expression

The popular will for change was expressed in these elections, but as we analyzed above, it is given in a deformed way, in the absence of an alternative from the workers. Millions of Mexicans have seen in AMLO and now in Sheinbaum the option to confront the policies of dispossession, poverty and the loss of rights.

MORENA and its allies, however, do not represent a revolutionary option. In the best of cases, as evidenced in the current AMLO government, they seek to negotiate better conditions with U.S. imperialism — but in essence they have submitted to its geopolitical needs, deepening economic integration with the United States (through NAFTA 2.0), maintaining the militarization of the nation and leaving intact the domination of finance capital over our nation (as in the case of the AFORES or the payment of the debt).

The reforms proposed by President AMLO in February of this year present this same contradiction. On the one hand they propose to advance the reforms necessary for the Mexican people to recover some rights and maintain some autonomy in strategic sectors, but on the other hand, economic plans of subordinated integration to the United States are maintained. In addition, the immigration policy is maintained and the militarization of the country is deepened in a global warmongering context.

In this situation, the need becomes more urgent for the workers of Mexico to build an independent political option that genuinely expresses their interests and carries forward the true national transformation, putting at the center the interest of the nation and the organization of the working class in an independent manner.

A united front front policy, demanding the vote in support of the reforms, is needed immediately

As we have stated repeatedly, in order to carry out a true transformation of the country it is necessary to dismantle the institutions inherited from the PRIAN[3] regime, that is, all the laws and treaties that limit national sovereignty, that legalize the looting and destruction of rights, replacing them with institutions that respond to the interest of the workers and the nation.

At every moment of our national history it has been with the convening of a free and sovereign Constituent Congress, with the drafting of a new constitution, that outdated institutions have been destroyed. The simplest way to bring about change. The election results show that the right wing as a political force and alternative has failed and is in a minority. A new political situation is opening up in the country, where the working class and the oppressed people must act to take advantage of this new correlation of forces.

In this sense it is essential to organize a broad campaign for the respect of the mandate, addressing President AMLO, incoming President Sheinbaum and the legislators, to demand a vote in support of the reforms that benefit workers, such as the 40-hour workday, the guarantee of a decent pension, the renationalization of the privatized sectors, the reform of the judiciary.

We cannot wait for these reforms to come from above. It is necessary to reorganize the popular sectors and movements to demand a new government, a working-class government, and impose the vote in the Congress, resisting the pressure of the oligarchy and imperialism.

For this it is necessary to develop an anti-imperialist united front policy with the sectors that are demonstrating in support of these demands, maintaining our independence, addressing the leaderships in which the people of Mexico have placed their trust. This is the moment to raise our demands with massive numbers.

At the same time, it is necessary that we turn to the activists and militants to dialogue about the need to build a workers’ party that sets itself the task of implementing fully the mandate of the people of Mexico.

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ENDNOTES

[1] The Fourth Transformation is what outgoing Mexican President López Obrador calls his overall program for radical change. The First Transformation, according to this formulation, is Mexico’s independence from Spain. The Second Transformation is the Reform Movement of Benito Juarez in the 1860s. And the Third Transformation is the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920.

[2] The PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) ruled uninterrupted for 71 years until the end of the 20th century. The PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) split from the PRI in the mid-1980s, led by Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas, son of revered president Lázaro Cárdenas, who in 1938 nationalized Mexico’s vast oil industry. The PAN (National Action Party), founded in 1939 is the primary Conservative Party with ties to the Catholic Church. Its presidential candidate in 2000, Vicente Fox, was the first non-member of the PRI to win the presidency.

[3] The PRIAN refers to the entire institutional framework that is in place, combining policies of the PRI and the PAN.