Monday, September 25, 2006

 

Democracy According to AMLO – Politics As Farce

 

By Allan Wall

 

What do you do if you lose a hard-fought election by a razor thin margin of a quarter million votes?  What if you exhaust all legal means of challenging the election results and you’re still not the winner?  Do you gracefully concede, congratulate the winner, and bow out with dignity to fight another day?

 

Not if you are Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), who lost the Mexican presidential race to Felipe Calderon.

 

If you are AMLO, you invite your supporters to the Zocalo, the main plaza in Mexico City, and on September 16th, 2006, you hold a “National Democratic Convention” to choose a “legitimate president” for Mexico.

 

How were the delegates to this National Democratic Convention selected?  Were they elected across the length and breadth of Mexico, to duly represent the 31 states and Federal District?

 

Well, not actually.  Everybody who was in the Zocalo on the afternoon of September 16th was considered a duly authorized “delegate” of “the people.”  And they had been invited by AMLO.

 

So, during this Democratic National Convention who was chosen as Mexico’s legitimate president?

 

Surprise, surprise!  The winner was none other than Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador himself.  They took a show of hands, and AMLO was the winner.  In another surprising development, AMLO accepted his triumph: “I accept the position of president of Mexico….”

But when Cuauhtemoc Cardenas was mentioned there were boos, hisses and cries of “traitor!”  Cardenas, after all, had the temerity to publicly criticize AMLO.  And that can’t be tolerated, certainly not by a National Democratic Convention!

The newly “elected” legitimate president of Mexico is set to take office on November 20th.  Another individual you may have heard of, Vicente Fox, is under the impression that he’s still president until December 1st.  But the Convention has spoken.

 

So after all is said and done, Lopez Obrador has finally gotten what he wanted all along. He’s been elected president of Mexico!  AMLO rejected the ruling of the electoral court that declared Calderon the winner.  AMLO even rejected the validity of all Mexican political institutions, sending them all “to the devil!”

 

But in the Zocalo things were different. This wasn’t a carefully planned election, with voter rolls and ID cards, and a minutely orchestrated system of polling stations and voter districts.  To the devil with all that says AMLO.

 

This “National Democratic Convention” in the Zocalo was a real democratic convention, where “the people” spoke.  And “the people” have chosen AMLO.  So anybody who opposes or questions AMLO is not “of the people,” and is obviously trying to steal what’s rightfully his.

 

But just who are “the people” anyway?  Most politicians throughout the world, and not only in Mexico, talk about the people.

Usually what they mean by the people are the people who agree with me, or my supporters, or the people who, given half a chance, would agree with me. Or something similar.

 

This can be illustrated by AMLO’s curious comment about the Mexican military.

As is the custom, the Mexican military marches each year through the Zocalo and the streets of Mexico City on September 16th, Mexican Independence Day (hereafter to be referred to as the Anniversary of the National Democratic Convention).

 

This year, before the day arrived, AMLO graciously granted permission to the Mexican military to do what it does every year.  But isn’t the Mexican military one of those institutions AMLO sent “to the devil?”

 

Well, not exactly.  AMLO clarified all that in the week prior to the National Democratic Convention.  The military, you see “is not an organ of the government. It belongs to the State and has to defend all Mexicans, the people….  We have no problems with the military institution … we are very conscious that the majority of the troops, of the soldiers, belong to the people.”  That’s AMLO’s explanation.

 

But if most of the soldiers in the Mexican Army are “of the people” that means that, according to AMLO, some Mexican soldiers aren’t “of the people.” So where are they from? Are they extraterrestrials?

But that’s the sort of absurdity one arrives at when he thinks he is the sole legitimate voice of "the people," and that a Zocalo rally can make him the "legitimate president" of Mexico.

 

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Allan Wall, a MexiData.info columnist, recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.  He currently resides in Mexico, where he has lived since 1991. He can be reached via e-mail at allan39@prodigy.net.mx.