The bloc led by Morena kept Mexico City and won six of the other eight states in play — flipping Yucatán, formerly of the opposition National Action Party. And it won big in Congress, securing a two-thirds majority in the Chamber of Deputies. Once published, the final, official results might show it also won two-thirds of the Senate. That would give the president the power to change the country’s constitution.
And this raises a legitimate concern about Mexico’s future: The party that won big on Sunday looks set to use its vast power to dismantle the institutions underpinning Mexican democracy, rebuilding the single-party rule that existed in the seven decades before the country’s democratic turn 24 years ago.
One reason to worry is that Mr. López Obrador is a creature of that old regime, having cut his political teeth in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party — PRI, in the vernacular — in an era when its candidates would coast to win presidential elections with no credible opposition in sight, taking 74.3 (1982), 86 percent (1970) and even over 90 percent (1976) of the vote.
Mr. López Obrador knows how to deal from the PRI’s old deck, purchasing electoral goodwill by blowing up the budget deficit this year to 5.9 percent of gross domestic product, the largest in 36 years. Moreover, he reserves most of his bile for what he calls Mexico’s “neoliberal” period, which includes its entire experience with democracy, yet hardly criticizes earlier decades of single-party rule.
The main cause for concern comes from the president’s own words. AMLO, as he is known, has openly stated that he wants to hamstring the institutions built to constrain presidential power.
The effort even has a name, “Plan C,” following failed reform attempts that were thwarted by constitutional niceties. If Morena wins two-thirds of the Senate, he could submit it in September, when the new Congress will have been seated but Ms. Sheinbaum not yet sworn in. And nobody — not the political opposition; not the Supreme Court; not the constitution — could keep it from becoming law.
The plan would include dismantling the independent election watchdog, created in the mid-1990s as an essential step toward the first democratic elections in 2000. The freedom-of-information agency would go, too. The National Guard, which Mr. López Obrador created to replace the federal police, would remain under military rule, free from civilian oversight.
Most critically, judges, including justices of the Supreme Court, would be chosen by popular vote, bringing the third branch of government closely in line with the objectives of the political juggernaut of the day: Morena.
It’s unclear what the president-elect could do about this. Ms. Sheinbaum is on the record as supporting Mr. López Obrador’s plan to reform the judiciary. She might not even have much of a say; Plan C could be in place before she takes office. Still, for the sake of her own government, let alone Mexican democracy, she should try to talk AMLO, her patron and predecessor, off this ledge.
Ms. Sheinbaum must understand that by tying herself to Mr. López Obrador’s campaign against independent institutions, she is limiting her own space to govern. Addressing Mexico’s many problems — violence, corruption, inequality, stagnation — will require conversations across society. Those won’t happen if, free of normal democratic checks and balances, she must acquiesce at every turn to her patron’s wishes.
Indeed, financial markets on Monday already gave Mexico a scare, sending the peso sharply down against the U.S. dollar.
Mr. López Obrador would have Mexicans believe that checks and balances are a right-wing plot against him to stymie efforts to advance social justice. They are not. It’s Ms. Sheinbaum’s job to convince him of this, explaining that Mexico would not be well-served by the return of the untrammeled power of the PRI.
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