Bernardo Bátiz V.: Morena and the future

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l February 5, celebration of the Constitution of 1917, and in the Monument, also historic of the Mexican Revolution, a large group of Morena militants met; many of them from the first hourthe veterans, who supported the leader López Obrador since before the party existed, through thick and thin.

They were the historic ones, those who without looking for any advantage for themselves, filled the Zócalo again and again, collected signatures, guarded polling places, distributed flyers, walked streets and squares, went up and down buildings and in cities and towns carried the message of change and the newspaper Regeneration. Many, perhaps most, participated, after the 2006 fraud in organizing the legitimate government and managed to get a very large number of Mexicans to obtain the credential that accredited them as participants in that government no budget, no public force and no authority other than morality.

The group that met on February 5 was not only critical of the recognized directive, it also proposed organizing it from the grassroots, from the municipal and district committees, that is, from the bottom up, and to do so, they divided into work groups and They dealt with the essential issues, as if the party were in its founding stage. And indeed, that happened; they raised their voices against the officially recognized leadership, but they also proposed that the important decisions and the organization will take place from now on from the base groups, from the bottom up; it seemed important to them that their voice be heard and that their decisions count in the political organization.

During the campaign, when sympathizers and militants from other groups were called and the slogan together we will make history, it was understood that the traditional supporters of the candidate who had participated in the 2006 and 2012 elections alone would not be able to overcome the electoral fraud and vote buying; it was necessary to accept allies.

That was then, now is another time, to organize the party not to win an election, but to create a permanent institution that in the future ensures that the progress made in this 4T in power is not ephemeral.

Each one of the eight tables in which this first morenista national convention, dealt with some fundamental issue for the existence of a political party; It is worth remembering the objective of each one: 1) internal democracy; 2) ideology; 3) road to the next national congress; 4) defense of the founding principles; 5) political formation; 6) party-movement; 7) party-government relationship, and 8) transparency and accountability.

The themes are those necessary to ensure that the party is a permanent institution. The neglect of any of these chapters can either bring the party closer to its extinction or, worse still, divert it from its high political and moral motives that prompted its birth and turn it into one more of the traditional Mexican parties, which seek power and lose. of view its origin, its principles and its internal rules.

Morena obtained its registration as a party in 2014. Obtaining the signatures for this feat was not easy at all, but the massive participation of supporters working full time overcame the challenge; many citizens became interested in politics and joined active militancy. Then, the first discussion was to determine if Morena would be a great political movement or a formally constituted party under the current laws; the final decision on that question was the best possible. Morena would be movement and simultaneously party. The classic classification of parties of cadres and parties of the masses was overcome, Morena would have a broad social base directly participating in the great causes, but it would also be a party in search of power through democratic means.

Robert Michels in his classic work The political parties, published for the first time in 1915, and since then pointed out as the greatest risk that a political party runs, that a bureaucracy takes over it; When that happens, Michels wrote, a distance opens up between grassroots militants and leaders, interests different from those that moved the first fighters are awakened; bureaucracies are limited to administering, to surviving themselves and maintaining their positions. The other risk is that, as Carlos Castillo, from the PAN, pointed out: By gaining power you are at risk of losing the party.

This Morenoite national convention has the great merit of having identified very well the two great risks: the stagnation of the structures in the hands of a leadership that owns the internal organs and the other, not least, that the party becomes only an appendage of the government and lose their chances of a life of their own. In good time, that’s the way, organize from the grassroots.

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