The twin parties of Mexican elites and capitalists suffered an unprecedented defeat in the July 2018 general elections. This electoral result shattered the shared control of Mexico’s government and presidency by the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) and PAN (Partido Acción Nacional), organs of corrupt politicians notorious for ‘stealing elections’ and plundering Mexico’s wealth.

Mexicans voted for an end to misery, oppression, exploitation and corruption. They want an end to the relentless terror of drug cartels that are claiming the lives of civilians on a rapidly expanding scale. Impoverished, exploited and oppressed Mexicans voted for livelihood security, the exact opposite to the neoliberal nightmare that a succession of PRI and PAN presidencies imposed on them!

With 60% of the country’s 89 million eligible voters participating in the elections, it gives the incoming government of president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a powerful mandate to push forward with an anti-capitalist model of socio-economic transition. Does the programme of López Obrador echo the hopes for a higher quality of life for Mexico’s poor and working majority? Will the López Obrador government implement the bold and resolute policies demanded to end the crises in living and working conditions that afflict Mexican workers and peasants?

Capitalists Welcome Electoral Outcome

Answers to these questions cannot ignore how the capitalist rulers assess the outcomes of the July elections and what the results mean for their economic and political domination in future. A closer look at reactions of the bourgeoisie, particularly from the enlightened guardians of their interests, reveals their aims.

Mr Carlos Slim, a Mexican capitalist ranked among the top 10 billionaires in the world, does not see López Obrador’s victory as a threat to bourgeois interests. On the contrary, this owner of Mexico’s largest telecommunications network and major banks views him as a proponent of “a more austere government, reducing costs substantially and focusing on the internal sector of the economy more.” The ‘economic nationalism’ that features in López Obrador’s political statements dovetails with Slim’s tongue in cheek retaliation to the anti-immigrant bigotry of President Trump in America: “the best wall is investment and creating opportunities in Mexico” (Reuters Press, 31 July 2018).

This critic of Trump’s campaign for a border-wall across the desert that separates Mexico and the United States, a case of brutal state-sanctioned xenophobia, is not a defender of working class interests. Far from it! Mr Slim’s call to place Mexico’s fate in the hands of investors amounts to nothing but the unbridled enrichment of a privileged minority at the expense of the majority! In other words, the accumulators of private wealth through worker exploitation and looting of Mexico’s natural resources, with Carlos Slim a prominent member of this class, should be supported in their pillaging without any obstacles. It is an insidious scheme to prolong and intensify the exploitation, impoverishment and repression of Mexican working people.

The Economist magazine, an authoritative voice and reference for capitalists globally, responded to the electoral outcome with guarded optimism. July’s electoral outcome, it argues emphatically, was “the most momentous occasion since the revolution that began in 1910” because it “has destroyed the political duopoly” of the PRI and PAN (The Economist, 5 July 2018). The tone reverberates with militancy and euphoria, equating the elections with a revolution. Its reference is not an anti-capitalist revolution. On the contrary, it refers to the peasant revolts against colonial domination and imperialist invasion, of more than a century ago – essentially a bourgeois revolution. Moreover, electoral victories, no matter how momentous they might be, are far from social revolutions in which one class overthrows another and opens the way towards a radical overhaul of the socio-economic system and the state.

 Whither Lopez Obrador?

The election results highlight a dual message. On the one hand, voter turnout on its own attests to widespread faith in Mexico’s parliamentary system among the population. In other words, illusions in parliamentary elections run deep even among working people. On the other hand, voters threw their weight behind the presidential candidate standing for a seemingly progressive alternative to the discredited traditional parties of the bourgeoisie and elites.

It is in this political atmosphere that Lopez Obrador, ex-mayor of Mexico City and presidential contender in two previous elections, launched yet another bid for the presidency. His political party, Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (MORENA), is a leading force in an electoral front known as juntos haremos historia (together we will make history). This broad coalition includes centre-left formations and radical left parties that will be part of the new cabinet. MORENA, launched in 2014, has an alliance with prominent trade unions in Mexico. When Constituent Assembly elections took place in Mexico City in 2016, MORENA emerged as the main political force in the capital, capturing 32,87% of the votes. In the 2018 elections, it also received critical support from ‘Izquierda Revolucionaria’ (IR), a Mexican Trotskyist organisation.

López Obrador started his political career several decades ago in the PRI, leaving it in 2000 for the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). When he contested the 2006 and 2012 elections, he did so as the PRD presidential candidate.

What does López Obrador stand for beyond his anti-corruption and clean governance populism? The election platform of MORENA, dubbed “National Project: 2018-2024”, resembles the character and substance of tried and failed neoliberal development experiments. Compared to the political aspirations of working people, this programme is hollow. It is conspicuously silent on the need to displace bourgeois democracy with workers’ democracy and the political means for doing so. Using government and private sector partnerships for the building of highways, railroads and rural roads is bound to ruin Mexico as has happened elsewhere.

Lowering the cost of living for the vast majority of Mexicans is a pressing necessity. López Obrador promises to do this through energy and agricultural subsidies, among other schemes. This forms part of the flawed model of government-business partnerships. It is indicative of his populist fallacies.  In his victory speech, López Obrador committed himself to ‘an orderly transition’ and the maintenance of ‘economic and financial stability’. His promises of prudent budgeting and no tax increases are the centrepieces of fiscal austerity.

The incoming administration’s stance on the United States is a crucial indicator of its international outlook.  The Trump administration in Washington has recently locked Mexico into a new trade deal – or a ‘new NAFTA’. In addition, the orientation of López Obrador towards the divergent political currents in Latin America is unclear. It confronts him with a test that he cannot dodge. Will he champion the Bolivarian Alternatives for Latin America (ALBA), the anti-imperialist current spearheaded by Venezuela and Bolivia, or align himself with local and foreign elites who are enriching themselves through dispossession, plundering and heinous repression?