Four years later, PT still refuses to meet with Calderón: A note on the "Workers Party"

While both PRD and Convergencia agreed to join today's "Dialogue on Security" arranged by President Felipe Calderón, the Partido del Trabajo (Workers Party, PT) refused to sit down with the president of Mexico and contribute to a national debate of the current crises in Mexico.
The party thus continues its line established after the 2006 debacle to refuse to have anything to do with what it still claims is an illegitimate government. Yet this has nothing to do with principles, but is just  another indication that the PT, desperate to retain its party registry, continues to jump as soon as AMLO says so. The party is completely beholden to him, just as AMLO, seemingly paradoxically, is also very much reliant on the PT's official party registry. It is also irresponsible to reject even sitting in on, let alone participating in, such a national debate. 


The PT poses as a leftwing, more "radical" alternative to the PRD, a party it declared as its "electoral enemy" in the 2009 Federal elections yet has joined in an uneasy coalition called DIA, short for "Dialogue for the Reconstruction of Mexico," but the history of the party exposes it as an electoral outfit that is only challenged by the Green Party (PVEM) for the prize of Mexico's must utterly opportunistic and unprincipled party. Its support for AMLO has very little to do with ideology or programmatic affinity, but everything to do with practical matters. 


One can go all the back to the very beginning, when the PT was set up in the late 1980s-early 1990s by none other than Raul Salinas, the "inconvenient brother" of Carlos Salinas, in an attempt to siphon off votes from the left. While the PT eventually took on a life of its own, I think it is very much worth recalling that before the 2006 elections, it took months of hard negotiation to bring the PT on board behind AMLO's candidacy. The PT almost went with PRI, and only joined AMLO's coalition due to generous concessions from the PRD, as the PT was handed a number of secure seats for deputies and senators far beyond what its vote tally would warrant (this was part of the pre-2007 electoral reform coalition negotiations). It is no small irony that the party that is now in true Stalinist spirit ultraloyal to AMLO in 2006 almost joined the archenemy, the PRI. 


I find the PT's lack of willingness to join this national dialogue, far from reflecting anything resembling a principled ideological stand - the party doesn't have an iota of this - to be more of the same: Pure opportunism, and irresponsible politicking.