Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, a political acrobat par excellance who has been a member of or campaigned for virtually every one of Mexico's parties, and returned from obscurity when he latched onto the post-2006 movement of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said of the PRD that the "time had come" for the party to fold:
"There is no risk; if the PRD disappears, nothing will happen to this country - I renounced in 1999; the country, that's another thing."
Yes, the "country" certainly survived Muñoz Ledo leaving the PRD in 1999. Indeed, let's recall what happened: He resigned when he lost out both nomination to be mayor of Mexico City as well as to be the PRD's presidential candidate, then lined up behind the candidacy of Vicente Fox and PAN, for which he was awarded a plum ambassadorial position in Europe, which of course makes a mockery of his current "radical" stances and opposition to a PAN electoral alliance.
Yes, parties come and go; PRD itself is only 22 years old, and maybe, though I doubt it, the current crisis of the party will be mortal. Yet the party remains nonetheless the largest party of the left in Mexico; it has played a key role in the Mexican political transition, and continues to be a serious governing party in municipalities and states throughout Mexico. A recent editorial in El Universal made a solid run-down of the importance of a "strong and united" PRD for Mexican democracy.
I also want to add that the PRD is the only real left party in Mexico: The Convergencia, and certainly the party to which Muñoz Ledo now belongs, the Partido del Trabajo, or "workers party" - a misnomer if there ever was one - are not left parties, but highly opportunistic parties that turn their cape wholly to the wind wherever they can reap benefits from it. Without a serious leftwing political party in Mexico, I don't think it is an exaggeration to posit that much of Mexico's current social conflicts might explode and turn violent, unless channeled through the PRD.
As for Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, his political relevance has far since vanished, and also apparently his once-sharp political insights; he would be better advised to use his federal deputy seat for something constructive rather than calling for the destruction of Mexico's only democratic leftwing party.
Yeah, I don't get it. If the PRD were to disappear, there would be a million reasons to create a party that looked, well, almost exactly like the PRD. But that party would not benefit from the set of invented traditions that all parties (and nations) develop over time, the legacy of 88, and so on.
ReplyDeleteThere would seem to be many reasons for an actor (one in particular, obviously) within the PRD to threaten to break it apart, but it's hard to imagine that even he would actually benefit from carrying out the threat.
De acuerdo. Though Muñoz Ledo, and AMLO, do stick to their own maxims here: If they can´t control it, they will rather see the party beaten and battered in the short and medium range, as one is either with them, or against them. It would be a tragedy for the Mexican political party system and democracy if they in the end they would manage to destroy it. As you note, a party is not something you create from one day to another.
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