In the presidential morning session last Friday, a reporter asked the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López Hernández, the following: “The uncovering of the 24th because it was three years early, never seen before in the democratic history of this country. Do you want to be a candidate? Would you like to appear on the 24th ballot?
To which he replied: “Look, I don’t sweat other people’s fevers. I already told you yesterday, January 16, that, well, I have a commitment to the President, who invited me to accompany him in this task, with everything that the President represents, with a movement for the transformation of the country and that is what we focus on our efforts.”
The response of the countryman of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was similar to that given during the years of the political dominance of the PRI by all the members of a presidential cabinet when questioned about their political aspirations.
Answers such as: “At the moment I am concentrating on the tasks that the president has entrusted to me” or “I don’t think about that because the only thing that matters to me are my current responsibilities” or “I only dedicate myself to fulfilling the responsibility of the president, not I take care of other things” or “The only thing I want is to be a good Secretary of State and comply with Mr. President”, and so on.
And it is natural that this has been the response of López Hernández and not because he does not have presidential aspirations, since any politician who reaches as far as he has reached has them, but because he surely knows very well that neither he nor those who are already actively seeking the candidacy (Ebrard, Monreal and Sheinbaum) will be the ones to decide the matter.
The decision will be made by AMLO, and no one else, and it will be reflected in a rigged survey, like the ones that MORENA has always carried out.
Does the Secretary of the Interior have a chance of being the presidential candidate of MORENA?
Quite a few, I think. Let us remember that seven of the 17 presidents who governed the country from June 1920 to November 2000 previously served as interior secretaries. They were Plutarco Elías Calles, Emilio Portes Gil, Lázaro Cárdenas, Miguel Alemán, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverría.
It has been 52 years since a former Secretary of the Interior –Echeverría– assumed the presidency in 1970, and 22 since another former Minister of the Interior, the PRI Francisco Labastida, lost the election to the PAN member Vicente Fox.
From 1976 to 2012, the seven presidential candidates who won the election were before: Secretary of the Treasury (López Portillo), of Programming and Budget (De la Madrid, Salinas), of Education (Zedillo), of Energy (Calderón) and Governor ( Fox and Pena Nieto).
From 1982 to 2018 the country was governed by six PRI and PAN neoliberals. From 1920 to 1982 the 14 presidents were revolutionary nationalists, very similar to AMLO. Seven of them were previously Secretaries of the Interior.
Who will the president lean towards? For a leftist daughter and granddaughter of communists who does not accept that she is also a communist? For the ex-neoliberal Salinista who tried to win the PRD presidential candidacy in 2012? Because of his nationalist former PRI countryman who must maintain political control of the country?
Bets accepted…
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