AMLO is not dead yet

Despite what is presented — or not presented — in the media, AMLO is not going away.  I’ve said before (and wrote in my book… back when it was scheduled for publication in early 2008 ) that AMLO’s “alternative presidency” was as much a party think-tank as a movement.  There was an historic analogy to PAN after the 1988 elections (which they realistically expected to lose) when Manuel Clouthier set up an “alternative cabinet” (Vicente Fox was alternative Secretary of Agriculture) not only to formalize political and social programs but also to influence their own party’s future direction.

AMLO had much broader popular support than Clouthier ever did and his “alternative presidency” has been more effective as a laboratory of ideas than we give it credit for.  PEMEX reforms would have been very different without the alternative president’s objections being echoed in the Camera  by “mainstream” PRD and some PRI deputies.  Whether it’s inevidable, given the need for economic stimulus because of the U.S. crisis, or the “alternative presidency”, I can’t say, but a good part of AMLO’s original economic platform is being adopted by the “de facto” president.  Outside of his anti-crime iniatives, very little of the Calderon Administration’s actions are all that different from what would be happening under an AMLO administration.

So, this (translation from the Woodrow Wilson International Institute for Scholars new Mexico Institute blog) is no surprise:

The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has given Andrés Manuel López Obrador an opportunity to suggest candidates for the midterms elections that take place this year. The PRD national leadership is now waiting for him to present his nominations. They gave him a January 14 deadline to do so.

Hortensia Aragón, Secretary General of the PRD, clarified that the offer is a matter of internal plurality, which forms part of the policy of having alliances “with the social movement,” but it is not a concession for López Obrador.