May the Institutions Be Welcomed Back from the Devil!

Ricardo Raphael says the time has come for Andrés Manuel López Obrador to put aside his cult of personality and take his movement inside the institutional tent by running for a deputy position in this summer's elections.

His sought-after moral force requires supporters in the Chamber of Deputies. The recent evidence shows it. This force has had voices --but above all votes-- in energy, fiscal, electoral, and security debates, thanks to congressional representation.

The force of his movement can no longer disdain the only political spaces in which it can have synergy. Renouncing the formal path of representation has translated into a weakening of his own political force.

The achievements of the Mexican left have come about, and they will continue coming about, only if it exists within the perimeter of the institutions and no outside of it. And this is a virtue --not a tragedy-- of the present democratic Mexican regime.

What there is no longer much time left to do is cook up an electoral single apparatus between so many factions infected by resentment and distrust: "How do you achieve that a new perredista leadership, accepts the detractors from Convergence and the Workers Party? How can you ensure that the radicals in each wing of the Aztec Sun reconsider costs of division and schizophrenia? How do you make the leaders of the lopezobradorista movement surrender to the logic of campaigning?

AMLO declares that his call for unity is not about satisfying personal ambitions, but rather strengthening a social movement that privileges principles and values. If what he wants is ensure the left of a robust congressional caucus, AMLO will have to do more than make declarations.