As happened in many previous presidential successions, the strategic functions of some of the presidential candidates generate messages and interpretations that have to do with the course of public affairs. Senator Ricardo Monreal Avila’s self-nomination as presidential candidate outside the rules of the political system is damaging the function of the Armed Forces.
The vote in the Senate on Wednesday to approve or reject the opinion to extend for five more years the participation of the Armed Forces in public security tasks seems to be depending more on the will of the presidential self-candidate than on the president of the Political Coordination Board in brunette name.
Senator Monreal had already sent a message that has had different readings: his abstention in the plenary vote on the presidential initiative to assign the National Guard to the Secretary of National Defense would have advanced signs of autonomy in his role as head of the caucus de Morena and left several data of an internal rupture in the dominant block of the lopezobradorista majority.
The problem lies in the background of political decision-making that has to do with Morena’s presidential candidacy or that would seek to send messages to the disjointed opposition that is looking for a unitary candidacy.
There are indications that would be leaving keys to unravel: in the Sunday video in which Senator Monreal reported that “there is no consensus” to complete the votes that build a qualified majority of two thirds of the senators in the plenary room, it was perceived The politician from Zacatecas without glasses and in a natural way, due to his loss of sight, can be seen by squinting his eyes. Body language readers are interpreting short-term political messages there.
In addition to the political blow to President López Obrador’s strategy of giving the National Guard five more years of advantage to finish building itself as a body of public security, the non-approval of the opinion would be turning the military issue into a political banner that is not convenient for anyone. and that he would be involving the Armed Forces in political jousting that he has disregarded, and even more so when the circumstances refer to blows in the elitist disputes for the presidential candidacy of the party in power.
The collateral messages to the bureaucratic tensions would be anticipating the threat of a rupture in the Morena bench, since they indicate that Senator Monreal would entrench himself in the JuCoPo, building a new majority without Morena and leaving the president’s party in a senatorial minority to block the entire legislative process of the strategic decisions that remain for the National Palace.
Monreal was the product of a political agreement by President López Obrador in 2018 when the presidential option for the Head of Government of Mexico City was Claudia Sheinbaum and not the Zacatecan, although with the option of supporting him for the Senate as part of the presidential political bloc and the coordination of the upper house.
There it was clearly perceived that Monreal was not on the list of presidential priorities and since then he should have strategically interpreted the signals of power. In the context of the system’s political practices, 2018 foreshadowed Monreal’s defeat in the dispute over the 2024 presidential candidacy.
Either Monreal made a mistake in the political interpretation of those events or decided to continue fighting against the grain for a position that was not on the political chessboard of the National Palace, but with the message that he had accepted the rules of the palace game.
The time has come for Monreal to make a political decision: either he accepts the consequences of his alliance with President López Obrador and his militancy in Morena or he will break the partisan unity in the Senate with the risk that he may or may not break the bottom of the party to take Morenista senators to a new bloc dominated by the PAN opposition and with the risk that the PAN supporters in the Senate could play a trick on him.
The bad thing about this power game is that it is affecting one of the fundamental decisions of the Armed Forces and will send a negative message of their loyalties, negotiating the strengthening of the military sector for a personal ambition in the form of resentment towards President López Obrador for having disdained as corcholata.
policy for dummies: Politics is the perverse game of power.
The content of this column is the sole responsibility of the columnist and not the newspaper that publishes it.
Source: Debate
