For now, there are at least 50 challenges before the Electoral Tribunal. And most of the images that circulated on social networks and media were, let’s say, the opposite of exemplary. The perception, in short, is most unfavourable. In short, some morenistas admit that the party is getting out of hand. In public, however, almost everyone still squares off with the president. That is, I maintain, a key to interpretation: how do you combine so much disorder with so much discipline?
Morena, it is a common place to say it, is a very deinstitutionalized party. Not by mistake or default, but by nature. From its origins, its raison d’être was not to establish itself as a space to manage differences but as an instrument to bring them together, not around a political program but around personal leadership.
The origin of the figures and groups that make it up may be more or less diverse; however, his drift in power has been clearly anti-pluralist. It was born as an opposition, dissident and critical social movement, but as a party in government it has never been able to accommodate criticism or dissidence. His vocation, more than resolving conflicts, has been to multiply them. And his priority, more than governing, has been to accumulate power – although power understood less as the ability to do than to control.
It is not that Morena lacks organization, it is that it is organized in a way that works to successfully compete against other parties but not to process the tensions of its internal life. It has a very large tent (where almost everyone fits), great recruiting capacity, a charismatic leader like López Obrador and a lot of popular support. In addition, it has in its favor the discredit of the traditional parties and continues to be the one that most people associate with “change”.
These characteristics explain its competitiveness towards the outside and also its conflict within. It is not a party of rules or procedures, but of leadership and groups; in it abound more appetites than skills, more tricks than civility. It is a recently created institute, which has trained fewer cadres than those it has recycled and which bring with them ways of doing politics that do not correspond to the discourse that things are no longer the same as before: how can they not be the same if in how many cases are they the same?
