Whith­er Mex­i­co?

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for­mer pres­i­dent of Mex­i­co, depart­ed his home Tues­day to the seat of gov­ern­ment in the cap­i­tal one last time. Thou­sands of cit­i­zens jammed the nar­row streets around his car, des­per­ate­ly push­ing for one last view of the beloved politi­cian.

López Obrador—or AMLO, as he is pop­u­lar­ly known—was on his way to turn over the pres­i­den­tial sash of Mex­i­co, his last offi­cial act before, he says, retir­ing to obscu­ri­ty at his ranch in the south­ern Mex­i­can state of Chi­a­pas.

He arrived at the Palace of San Lázaro, the seat of the Con­gress of Mex­i­co, just after noon. He was joined by the star of the day, pres­i­dent-elect Clau­dia Shein­baum, the first female pres­i­dent of Mex­i­co and his polit­i­cal pro­tege. Shein­baum gave a speech eulo­giz­ing López Obrador’s polit­i­cal accom­plish­ments and promis­ing that her pres­i­den­cy would main­tain the course he set- the so-called “Fourth Trans­for­ma­tion” of Mex­i­can pol­i­tics. With tears in his eyes, the old pres­i­dent hand­ed over his sash, the sym­bol of pres­i­den­tial pow­er in the coun­try, to thun­der­ous applause from the audi­ence, and Shein­baum was sworn in. The sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of More­na lead­er­ship in Mex­i­co had begun.

López Obrador leaves the pres­i­den­cy with one of the high­est approval rat­ings of any Mex­i­can pres­i­dent in his­to­ry, and indeed one of the high­est approval rat­ings of any polit­i­cal leader any­where in the world today. More than 70 per­cent of Mex­i­cans had a high opin­ion of the pres­i­dent on the final day of his pres­i­den­cy.

He also leaves big ques­tions about Mexico’s future.

First, is he actu­al­ly going to leave pol­i­tics, as he has said he wants to? Or will he try to gov­ern the coun­try from afar through More­na, the par­ty he built?

Mex­i­co has a strict term lim­it for pres­i­den­tial power—“effective suf­frage, no reelec­tion” was the slo­gan that launched the Mex­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion and con­tin­ues to define the pop­u­lar con­cep­tion of demo­c­ra­t­ic Mex­i­co. That doesn’t mean, how­ev­er, that one man can’t rule the coun­try for more than a sin­gle term. Plutar­co Calles, for­mer pres­i­dent of Mex­i­co and the founder of what is now known as the Insti­tu­tion­al Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Par­ty (PRI), con­trolled the nation through the par­ty from 1928 through 1934 (a peri­od known as the Max­i­ma­to after Calles’ nick­name, el jefe max­i­mo), despite hav­ing oth­er men fill the offi­cial seat of pow­er.

López Obrador’s par­ty may seem the per­fect means for him to do the same. Found­ed in 2014, the par­ty was built almost entire­ly around López Obrador him­self as a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, and it has always been dom­i­nat­ed by his over­whelm­ing per­son­al­i­ty. His high approval rat­ings among the pop­u­lace at large are even stronger among his own peo­ple, and if he decid­ed to play king­mak­er, it seems very unlike­ly that he wouldn’t get his way. Because More­na so thor­ough­ly dom­i­nates the Mex­i­can polit­i­cal arena—winning an out­right major­i­ty in both hous­es of Con­gress as well as con­trol­ling the gov­ern­ment of two-thirds of Mex­i­can states—this would give him a great deal of con­trol over every­thing in the coun­try.

Despite wor­ries from the oppo­si­tion about López Obrador becom­ing a sec­ond Calles, there are seri­ous indi­ca­tions that this will not be the case. Great­est among them is his choice of an heir. Shein­baum, though a loy­al sup­port­er of the for­mer pres­i­dent, is a very capa­ble politi­cian of her own right, and does not seem the kind who would be con­tent to sit back and let an old­er man rule in her name. If López Obrador had intend­ed to fol­low the exam­ple of Calles and rule through pow­er with­in a par­ty, he would like­ly have cho­sen a weak­er, more pli­able suc­ces­sor, as Calles did dur­ing the Max­i­ma­to. It seems more like­ly that the ex-pres­i­dent is sin­cere in his desire to leave, if not pol­i­tics entire­ly, at least his posi­tion as prime deci­sion mak­er in Mex­i­co, and chose Shein­baum as the suc­ces­sor most like­ly to capa­bly take over and exe­cute his vision for the coun­try.

Of course, there is always the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he sim­ply mis­cal­cu­lat­ed, or even that he changes his mind lat­er on, as suc­ces­sors often dis­ap­point (think Roo­sevelt and Taft). If that is the case, it would be unwise to under­es­ti­mate Shein­baum, whose qui­et com­pe­tence makes her a fight­ing match for con­trol of dis­put­ed par­ty lead­er­ship.

The sec­ond big ques­tion is whether Mex­i­co returns to being insti­tu­tion­al­ly dom­i­nat­ed by a sin­gle par­ty, as it was for almost a cen­tu­ry after the estab­lish­ment of the PRI. López Obrador’s con­sti­tu­tion­al reforms—including but not lim­it­ed to the con­tro­ver­sial judi­cial reform that he pushed through at the end of his term last month—certainly put his par­ty, More­na, in a strong posi­tion to see that hap­pen. 

The de fac­to end of polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence for the judi­cia­ry and the Nation­al Elec­toral Insti­tute (the agency that runs Mex­i­can elec­tions) pro­vide a tempt­ing open­ing for the kind of par­ty entrench­ment that Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries have so fre­quent­ly seen turn sour, includ­ing in Maduro’s Venezuela—a regime that López Obrador was a con­sis­tent ally of. And Shein­baum seems to have no inter­est in chang­ing course on this por­tion of the ex-president’s pro­gram: her recent­ly-released pol­i­cy plat­form “100 Steps for the Trans­for­ma­tion” includes a sec­tion pro­mot­ing the recon­sti­tu­tion of fed­er­al elec­toral bod­ies, reduc­ing the num­ber of seats and end­ing pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the Mex­i­can Con­gress, and extend­ing the prin­ci­ple of “no reelec­tion” to Mex­i­can deputies and sen­a­tors, all of which strength­en the polit­i­cal pow­er of incum­bent More­na.

Despite López Obrador’s strong rhetoric denounc­ing cor­rup­tion, Mex­i­can pol­i­tics is far from squeaky-clean. The insti­tu­tion­al reforms advo­cat­ed by More­na also make it easier—and there­fore more appealing—for cor­rup­tion to enter the polit­i­cal process and for well-placed offi­cials to hand out a favor or two (and get one or two in return), and as those favors most­ly go to the par­ty in pow­er, More­na stands to ben­e­fit.

As a result, Morena’s polit­i­cal strength is like­ly to grow, at least for the imme­di­ate future—both legit­i­mate­ly and less legit­i­mate­ly. The increased pos­si­bil­i­ties for cor­rup­tion in the judi­cia­ry and elec­toral bod­ies will also make it like­ly that orga­nized crime becomes hard­er for Mex­i­co to con­trol. Nev­er­the­less, it would be very sur­pris­ing if Mex­i­co regressed to any­thing like the dic­tadu­ra per­fec­ta of the 20th-cen­tu­ry PRI.

Mex­i­co now has a tra­di­tion of democ­ra­cy, and the trans­fer of pow­er, lim­it­ed though it may be, some­thing that Pri­ista Mex­i­co, only recent­ly recov­er­ing from the rav­ages of the Rev­o­lu­tion and the dic­ta­tor­ship of Por­firio Díaz, nev­er had. More­na may be pop­u­lar, but today, Mex­i­cans demand that the will of the elec­torate be respect­ed. They will no longer tol­er­ate the kind of fla­grant elec­toral fraud that the PRI used to main­tain con­trol of the coun­try. When the par­ty becomes legit­i­mate­ly unpop­u­lar, as all par­ties even­tu­al­ly must, its elec­toral adjust­ments will not be enough to save it.

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