This is representative of how our electoral system works. Despite the legal locks that have been imposed and despite the meticulous surveillance of the INE, Mexico has not been able to rid itself of clientelism, the coercion of the vote and electoral tricks. All parties carry out these practices. Nobody is saved.
Moreover, these practices are so common that we have developed a broad language to refer to them and the characters that execute them: “carousel”, “pregnancy” of ballot boxes, “bursting” boxes, participation of “raccoons” and “territorial operators” , etc. I am afraid that to end these practices it is not enough to have a strong electoral referee (such as the INE) or rigorous legislation (such as the one that already exists).
As long as levels of poverty and inequality prevail, there will be room to buy votes or form patronage structures. As long as there are territories with little or no State presence, organized crime, shock groups and political operators will be able to mobilize voters with impunity and will continue to co-opt voters.
The rules of the electoral system are a dead letter if the political parties keep looking for mechanisms to jump over them. Here the hackneyed maxim of “there is no democracy without democrats” applies.
In second place, the weekend vote is illustrative of our current political situation because Morena is the only party that could mobilize so many people in an internal election process. According to the party’s own figures, around 2.5 million people went to the polls.
Even if the official data were inflated, this internal process, together with the electoral processes of 2021, 2022 and the mandate revocation consultation, shows that Morena is the party with the greatest capacity for mobilization. I doubt very much that the PAN or the PRI could summon such a number of people to participate in an internal process.
In third place, the fights that took place in the middle of the voting clearly show the conflictive and disorganized nature of the party in power. The internal divisions in Morena are more evident every day and will be even more so as the election of the presidential candidate approaches.
In any case, the important thing is to underline that Morena does not have institutional mechanisms to resolve its internal conflicts and these are so critical that they sometimes lead to violence (this is not the first time this has happened). He worries that the dominant party in the Mexican political system lacks the instruments to ensure peaceful coexistence and civilized debate among its supporters.
