It was enough for former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to make his appearance, not even live, but through a video on the YouTube platform, to tear down in minutes what the opposition had been building in recent weeks. A lukewarm Felipe Calderón wished success to the work of updating the party that he abandoned years ago when AMLO, unexpectedly, became the central topic of the agenda with his book “Greatness.”
The official narrative, on the one hand, has its main actor in President Claudia Sheinbaum, but it continues to have its main support in López Obrador. On the other hand, the official narrative continues to search for a great generator of messages, someone who could hardly be former President Calderón, distant as he is from the party and without the media strength of AMLO.
The opposition narrative had been taking advantage of several episodes in its favor, even showing a certain solidity. Of course, what happened after the death of the municipal president of Uruapan, Michoacán, Carlos Manzo, stands out. A situation that dramatically positioned a figure with enormous potential for electoral scalability, such as Grecia Quiroz.
The hat movement already has a cause, something essential for the production of a successful campaign. Furthermore, it is not just any cause, but one that makes sense to Mexican society: ending the high rates of insecurity and violence in the country.
Within this fabric is a very important transformation of PANism, whose leadership has understood the need to open the party despite the risks that this entails. It was not minor news that was published on Sunday in the media: the statutory changes of the PAN.
The relaunch of the PAN must go through a painful transition so that it goes from a party of cadres to one that manages to meet at least the minimum number of registered militants to maintain the national registry, which as is known is the equivalent of 0.26% of the federal electoral roll. The PAN cannot gather even 300,000.
To take a first step towards this transition, the party approved that the candidates be chosen by polls or by open election. Regarding the first mechanism, it imitates what was done by Morena. Furthermore, any citizen may compete under the acronym of the PAN. The aim is to provide freshness to the party’s range of candidates, including social, community or academic leadership.
Another big change approved is the possibility for affiliations to be generated with a single click and to eliminate cumbersome processes that only hindered the official inclusion of people in the organization, as if it were not already difficult to convince citizens to officially integrate into party life.
The intention is to recruit, first, an army of 150,000 people to go to the territory and, later, they can add thousands of new militants through an application. This constitutes a disruption to the traditional way of conceiving membership in the PAN, more concerned that the new members know in detail the glorious party history.
What there will not be much change is in the values that the blue and white organization will defend, waiting for it to find a cleavage in Mexican society that shares them: homeland, family and freedom.
