The changes in its National Executive Committee (CEN), which reduces its positions to 12 and incorporates state governors as a reference factor, as well as changes in its statutes, the declaration of principles and the political program, makes it an organization that makes its party more adult and stable.
Morena basically continues to be a movement whose rapid and pragmatic growth atrophied the party structure, into which it has gradually become over almost four years of government, with all the dangers that stem from internal trends, many ‘imported’ by the origin of its new members.
This reality founded the key points of the congress regarding the changes in the CEN, the rationalization of positions and the ideological precision of its basic documents, especially its political program, aimed at strengthening its philosophical base that is the fourth life transformation of Mexico, and its slogan: the poor first.
It was intended to eliminate concepts that have acted until now as the foundation of that fourth transformation, such as the first paragraph of the statutes, in which Morena is defined as ‘a leftist and anti-neoliberal party-movement made up of free Mexicans who promote the Fourth Transformation of Mexico’.
The word ‘left’, it seemed, annoyed some, but the majority prevailed and was not eliminated. In the other two basic documents (action program and declaration of principles), the definition that gives reason to the existence of Morena was maintained: The party defines itself that it fights to eradicate corruption, anti-democratic practices, injustice and the factual powers that still exist in Mexico, which in the recent past led the country to decline, as well as ‘eradicate the hindrances’ left by the neoliberal period.
However, in the vote on these basic documents, the approval was not unanimous, but won by 1,807 votes, 520 against and 38 abstentions, and a good number of the more than 2,800 delegates did not vote, which is an alert to take into account in the efforts of unity.
In this sense, the decision of the majority of the delegates to confer preponderance in the approved statutes on the Committees for the Defense of Transformation (CDT) as the basis of the organizational structure of this political force, which must operate from the neighborhoods to communities of Mexicans abroad.
Delegates warned in the debate that this mechanism is not one-person nor should it be taken as the flag of the candidates to be elected as Morena’s presidential candidate for the 2024 general elections.
On the contrary, presidential candidates ‘must commit to this project as a strictly essential requirement to be considered in the survey process provided for in the call issued by the CEM to define said candidacy’.
The election of Alfonso Durazo as president of the CEN, a trusted man of López Obrador, governor of Sonora and the state leaders, representatives of district assemblies, is seen by members as a necessary balancing factor within the party’s top leadership, especially its president and general secretary.
The integration of the 12 positions to which the structure of the CEN was reduced, even points to this, since with each one of the elected secretaries it is intended, apparently, to have a representation of the most outstanding political tendencies. There are rumors that the CEN, which was chaired by Bertha Luján, will now have more powers under Durazo, including that of participating in the processes of appointing candidates for popularly elected positions.
Although the continuity at the head of the party of President Mario Delgado and Secretary General Citlalli Hernández may imply sustaining the excessively pragmatic style that has been used until now to open the door to candidacies of characters without real attachment to Morena’s postulates.
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