AMLO will seek to retake control of the PRD this weekend

Despite having failed to have Alejandro Encinas elected as PRD president in 2008 - a cochinero that took 8 months to resolve, and nearly tore the PRD apart - AMLO is going again on the offensive to retake control of the PRD, through calling upon his followers, loyalists or opportunists alike, to kick out the national PRD leadership.

This weekend, the movement-advocates within the PRD - those who are often labeled as "radicals," yet who like AMLO are often socially conservative and want the PRD to remain intimately tied to AMLO - are launching a direct attack on the leadership of Jesús Ortega and his social democratic Nueva Izquierda faction, which currently controls the party. 


Eight corrientes have signed on to a declaration that calls for Ortega to step down in December 2010, but that also attacks the recent alliances with PAN. Judging by the statements of some, the goal is also to simply have Ortega ousted as leader this weekend.

Ortega, to recall, only started his 3-year presidency in December 2008 and his three-year term would then end in 2012. More important still, party disunity and yet another harrowing internal fight - the 2008 internal election took eighth months to resolve, and nearly destroyed the party - is simply the last thing the PRD needs. Especially given the hugely important elections in Guerrero and above all Mexico State next year, it seems hard to fathom that Ortega's opponents are going on the war path. Yet this infighting can only be understood from the logic of movement-advococates: While Ortega and Nueva Izquierda, along with his principal ally Alianza Democrática Nacional (ADN), seek to build an institutionalized organization autonomous of its old strongman, AMLO and the movement-advocates want the PRD to remain a loose movement-like party that is chiefly a tool at the disposal of a "cause," which, it is now clear, remains AMLO's presidential bid. Amazingly, AMLO and the movement-advocates are willing to risk yet another brutal internal party war by launching their nth attack on Ortega.

Yet while eight corrientes or internal party factions have signed on to the war document against its leadership, they do not appear to have the votes: Only IDN, led nominally by Dolores Padierna but de facto by her disgraced husband René Bejarano, has a significant number of councilors, but all the others, including Izquierda Social of Martí Batres, who holds the powerful portfolio of secretary of social development in Mexico City, and Red de Unidad Nacional de las Izquierdas (RUNI), which was recently launched by AMLO ultraloyalist Alejandro Encinas and also attracts some old cardenistas, have still very little presence on the PRD's National Council, and it seems doubtful they will get the 160 or so votes required to oust Ortega. 

Miguel Borbosa, who took over as national coordinator of Nueva Izquierda after Jesús Zambrano, in turn, accused some of the Ortega opponents within PRD to be tied to Enrique Peña Nieto. To be sure, should Ortega be ousted, the PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State will tumble, and Peña Nieto is almost certain to have a priísta succeed him as governor of Mexico State. As such, Peña Nieto can only hope that Andrés Manuel López Obrador's attack on Ortega will be successful. Regardless, expect quite a ruckus this weekend.