Rodrigo Camarena, over at the Brazil blog, has published a briefing on the cooperation between Mexico’s PAN and PRD in state elections. The awkward coalition pairs the relatively stoic process for internal disputes and leadership changes in the PAN, and the squabbles that saw the PRD’s rapid fall from grace after the 2006 presidential election. Camarena writes:
As the current mayor of Mexico City and the PRD’s most prominent politician, Marcelo Ebrard would normally be the clear candidate to lead the leftist coalition into 2012, but he has agreed to let an “open process” decide whether he or López Obrador will be the coalition’s 2012 candidate. Judging by López Obrador’s response to his 2006 upset, it is clear that he will not take defeat easily. Yet it is also clear that the PRD’s moderate wing is intent on nominating Ebrard in 2012. Given the combined appeal of both candidates, no member of the PRD’s coalition wants a divisive or distracting contest.
Nevertheless, divisions between the two have already become public. López Obrador has repeatedly criticized any suggestion that the PAN and PRD ally in the 2011 gubernatorial race for Mexico state, Peña Nieto’s base. By contrast, Ebrard has accepted such an alliance as a given. Political strategists believe that a PAN-PRD victory in Mexico state a year before the presidential elections would deliver a crippling blow to Peña Nieto’s presidential aspirations and drastically improve both the PAN and PRD’s chances in 2012.
Although the likelihood of a PAN-PRD ticket come Mexico’s next presidential election seems, for now, to be an appetizing thought to those concerned about the PRI’s strength, the likelihood of the PRD fracturing in the intervening months should temper enthusiasms.
