Allow me, reader-reader, this Saturday to play that old and exciting extreme sport of national politics: the cover art and the presidential succession.
Last Tuesday, on the front page of The financial, A poll was published that caught my attention: Claudia Sheinbaum’s approval rating plummeted from 65% to 49%, a brutal 16-point drop between October and May. And of course, the same measurement marked a vertiginous growth of those who disapprove: from 28% to 48%, twenty more points of rejection in the same period.
It was his worst level since he governs Mexico City, only comparable to the repudiation that Metro Line 12 had when the tragedy occurred. The indicators on his government in public safety, economy, public transport and pollution, well, in all areas, were disapproving.
I tweeted: “It’s just a picture from today, nothing more, but it seems to me that someone I won’t mention (even though @m_ebrard) is smiling at this poll coming down, and I’m assuming someone else (also not quoting even though it’s @ Claudiashein), is uncomfortable.”
He will have smiled a lot Marcelo Ebrard.
Immediately, and as her mentor usually does, Claudia said that she had other information. And look, the next day a lucky coincidence occurred for her: EL UNIVERSAL published a survey on voting intentions for the Head of Government in Mexico City (Morena and her allies win by beating, 53% against 40% of the opposition) and , as collateral data, produced completely different numbers for Sheinbaum: 64% of people approve of his work, a very high rating, even above the 59% of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador reflected in the same measurement. And, better news for her, only three out of ten censor it, 34%.
Now Marcelo’s smile will have vanished.
Then I tweeted: “I was telling you: the polls are just a photo of the day and this morning’s image reverses yesterday’s roles, so that the one who smiles today is another person (@Claudiashein) and the one who will have fallen silent is another (@ m_ebrard). ‘Ouch’, I would say @JSantibanez00”, I typed, alluding to the writer who in response to my previous post had just that keyboard: “Ouch”.
Auch double, because, beyond polls, a daily war has already been unleashed that both politicians wage on several fronts: on the partisan, for control of Morena; in the election, to see who supports more candidates of their party and in a better way, as happens these days in the electoral campaigns for six governorships, where both submit to the applause meters, to that ridiculous contest to see which fanatics shout louder “President or president; and in the National Palace, where they do the impossible so that the President and those close to him have them by his side, in his political lap, where the unconditional rest and are protected.
Will the President and the people who lead his party be clear that this war for succession between Sheinbaum y Ebrard Is he going to blow up the victorious and smooth succession that López Obrador himself intends and imagines?
Do you understand that Ebrard, let’s say loyally, or disciplinedly, or submissively, has already given up twice what he considers his place in the political history of Mexico, that is, the
Presidency of the Republic (or at least a candidacy), and that on this occasion he is not going to back down or accept that Claudia, or someone else, be imposed on him?
Are you aware that, if Ebrard does not obtain that nomination, he is not interested in being Sheinbaum’s chancellor, nor his secretary of the Interior, nor his vice president (if such a figure existed), nor his chief of staff, or anything at all, as confirmed by people who presume to be in your closest circle?
Ebrard is going for the presidency yes or yes, and if the President opts for Sheinbaum, Marcelo will burn his ships and seriously consider being a candidate for another political force, which will naturally be the Citizen Movement, that party of an old acquaintance of his, Dante Delgado, who will be delighted to have the current Secretary of Foreign Affairs as his candidate, while the young lawyer who is mayor of Monterrey gains experience and matures, Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas.
Those who in the National Palace believe the story that Ebrard will once again submit to the presidential will are very wrong: the gentleman will not wait for his 71st birthday to be president, or to try to be (in 2030). His time is now, at 62 years old, never again, say those close to him. “Marcelo will be on the presidential ticket in 2024, not in the next decade, period,” they stress.
And what is Claudia going to do if AMLO, through a partisan poll (that is, via his consultative finger), anoints Marcelo? Will he do and star in “a Monreal”? Is he going to kick his ass, threaten, swear he’ll go it alone as an independent and cause a schism? No. he won’t do anything. His loyalty to the President is absolute and he will obey because she knows that otherwise she would be branded a traitor and would be fired. Neither, his collaborators swear, is an independent “anger” candidacy proposed.
The issue now is how the President is going to control the annihilating instincts of those close to Sheinbaum, who want to sink Ebrard, either through provocations (remember a few days ago when a claudista rebuked him outside the National Palace), through scandals such as that of Line 12 (the last opinion went wrong, as we saw), or outright with a dirty war on his personal life. Their strategy, according to the Marcelistas, is to leave Ebrard so muddy that he falls abysmally in the polls that pit him against Sheinbaum, and thereby cause the President to be convinced that the chancellor cannot be a candidate, because he would be beaten at the polls. for the opposition.
How is AMLO going to prevent Ebrard from reaching 2023 and then 2024 on the canvas of discredit, splashed by Sheinbaumnist friendly fire?
Little problems have in National Palace, because there, several already know that, if Marcelo is not the candidate and a devastating rupture occurs that gives victory to the opposition, in the summer of 2024 there will be an angry tremor in the Plaza de la Constitución…
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