Daily Times

Mexican leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has forged a coalition of voters of all stripes in a bid to win the presidency at the third time of asking and now, with victory within his grasp, he must work out how to hold it together.

The 64-year-old former mayor of Mexico City, whom opinion polls give a wide lead over rivals before the July 1 election, will have to balance the interests of leftist economic nationalists, social liberals and religious conservatives.

Aside from loyalty to AMLO himself, as Lopez Obrador is commonly known, the broad group is united by little more than opposition to the status quo and to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Lopez Obrador has made a career of denouncing corruption, electoral fraud and economic mismanagement by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the centre National Action Party (PAN), which governed from 2000 to 2012.

Yet, a week on Sunday, dozens of former politicians for the two parties will line up alongside him, amplifying his appeal to a wide swathe of the electorate but also creating a divergent platform with no clear centre of political equilibrium.

“The cohesive element in this whole mix of elements and ways of thinking is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,” said Abraham Gonzalez, a deputy interior minister in the last PAN government who now supports Lopez Obrador.

“So his actions, his ability to find common points of agreement, are crucial.”

So far Lopez Obrador has kept a lid on potential conflict within his alliance by adopting ambiguous stances on contentious issues such as abortion, gay marriage and economic liberalization.

Still, Mexico’s next president will face a more challenging start than his predecessors. Murders are at record levels, the peso currency is languishing close to historic lows against the dollar and a trade war has been brewing with Trump.

However, the U.S. president could prove useful. If Trump stays hostile, insisting Mexico will pay for his planned border wall and seeking to repatriate jobs to the United States, it could help Lopez Obrador paper over divisions on how to move Mexico forward.

“If Trump continues on the path he is on, he could easily help Lopez Obrador bring the country closer together,” said Andres Rozental, a former deputy foreign minister.

Published in Daily Times, June 23^rd 2018.