AMLO's dedazo and brazen lie fractures his own coalition

AMLO's top-down heavily personalistic style has finally caught up with him: He is facing a significant rebellion even within his own and most loyal ranks, given his imposition of Yeidckol Polevnsky as "his" candidate for Mexico State in the upcoming gubernatorial election.

According to Daniel Ríos Ávila of Convergencia, AMLO had during his recent "Loyalty Tours" in Mexico State promised a poll/consultation/primary where leaders of Convergencia, PT, and PRD loyal to AMLO would together come up with the best-positioned candidate. This was to take place in January. Yet merely three days after the mass meeting in Toluca where AMLO concluded his 125-municipality tour, it was announced that he had already settled on Yeidckol Polevnsky after conducting his own "poll," apparently. Absolutely no figures have been released here; AMLO's allies were simply to take him on his word, which he already broke by his unilateral decision and appoint Yeidckol Polevnsky in the worst PRI-style dedazo - a party, to recall, that AMLO had belonged to his entire life until well after the infamous July 7, 1988 election, when Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas convinced him to finally ditch his old party.

Now, key allies such as Senator Óscar González says that the Partido del Trabajo (PT) "do not regard well the candidacy of Yeidckol Polevnsky; it doesn't satisfy us."

Leader of the Mexico State PRD, Luis Sánchez Jiménez, points out that, irony of ironies, Polevnsky, a non-party business woman, has long expressed deep admiration for Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, and recalls that she already had her go in 2005, when she came in a poor third, even after PAN.

As Sánchez Jiménez, a popular politician who himself would be a terrific choice as candidate, notes:

We do not accept nor will accept her as a candidate ... we are not obliged to accept impositions of her or anyone; we do not accept the authoritarianism of the former head of [Mexico City]," meaning AMLO.

It seems that many of AMLO's own followers are also reaching the same conclusion.