Raphael on PRD

Ricardo Raphael offers a sharp insight into what the breakup of the PRD means for Marcelo Ebrard:

What’s true is that if the PRD divides, the first victim of the events will be the mayor of Mexico City. It’s necessary to rememeber that here the majority of the perridistas in the Mexico City legislature belong to the New Left; that is, the political current headed by Jesús Ortega.

[break]

If the PRD splits in the capital, Marcelo Ebrard could lose a big part of the support that [the New Left] has offered until today. He would be left with a minority insufficient to govern this extremely complicated city.

Being as pragmatic as he is, the mayor can’t abandon the political institution that brought him to power. His best option in this dry season is to use the jackhammers, bulldozers, and earthmovers at his disposition to reconstitute the relationship between the New Left and Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

In that last part, Raphael means that now that it is not raining daily in Mexico City, Ebrard should try to spread the building projects around (and hurry them up, I assume, because it doesn’t stay dry for long) to please everyone on the left in DF. That sounds to me like a Hail Mary, but then again I don’t live there, so what do I know?

It’s worth pointing out that Ebrard created the mess he’s in now. The split in the PRD was certainly no unforeseen calamity; the path has grown increasingly visible over since the election, and it was all but inevitable following the election for party presidency in March. Navigating this minefield would have (and will) required some finesse on Ebrard’s part, but failing to distance himself from the López Obrador wing of the party is hard to justify politically, especially since Ebrard has admitted to wanting to stand for the presidency in 2012. The AMLO group has steadily lost credibility among the electorate at large since the 2006 election, and López Obrador himself hardly seems resigned to accept an Ebrard candidacy in 2012. Perhaps Ebrard is a true believer in López Obrador’s movement, but given Ebrard’s pragmatism, and the fact that López Obrador’s movement amounts to little more than the man himself at this point, Ebrard’s alliance with AMLO seems like more of a grave political miscalculation.