Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) won Mexico’s presidency on Sunday, July 1. It was an expected outcome. To understand it we reproduce and article published two days ago by “La Nación” (Costa Rica). Its author, Eduardo Ulibarri, analyzes the reasons behind the victory which has been confirmed today. Ulibarri answers the question: Why has a populist from the left won in Mexico? He also speculates on the consequences.
AMLO and Mexico’s future
By Eduardo Ulibarri
With his incorruptible image, Andrés Manuel López Obrador is a brand made to win. As an eventual president, the situation looks way too different.
Unless all polls are wrong, or that a last-minute radical change in intentions occurs, Andrés Manuel López Obrador will be elected Mexico’s President on Sunday. Even more, the coalition he leads could control the Congress. This virtual certainty is unsettling, but not surprising.
The population’s anger touches the entire Mexican political elite, but its major target as well as its main cause is President Enrique Peña Nieto.
It is unsettling because of his populist drives, conflicting proposals and the inflexibility displayed by AMLO, as he is known, could deliver a demolishing blow to his country’s institutions (already weak) and progress (erratic, nevertheless continuous). It is not surprising because violence, corruption and impunity, sources of deep anger among Mexicans, paved the road for him. An election system with no runoff, which grants victory to the one with the most votes, will make it easy for him, although the latest polls favor him with around 50%.
If it were in my hands, I would choose José Antonio Meade, the most competent and with no record of corruption whatsoever, but with a capital sin: he was nominated by the ruling PRI. That is why he ranks third, behind Ricardo Anaya, of the center-right PAN, in a coalition with the leftist PRD, halted at around 25%.
The population’s anger touches the entire Mexican political elite, but its major target as well as its main cause is President Enrique Peña Nieto. His major success and contribution has been the promotion of socioeconomic modernization reforms (in energy, education, telecommunications and labor, among others) vital for Mexico’s progress. His major failure, close to evil, was to reproduce, not stop PRI’s worst vices of corruption and shadiness, to create an atmosphere of heavy violence and to stop his initial push in favor of the Rule of Law. The unpunished murder in 2014 of 43 youngsters studying to become teachers, with the complicity of police bodies, is highlighted by its perversion.
With his incorruptible image, Andrés Manuel López Obrador is a brand made to win. As an eventual president, the situation looks way too different. Because if he were to insist on governing by his simplistic proposals, maintaining his contradictions, ignoring technical criteria and placing his personal will over institutions, the result would be catastrophic, for Mexico and Latin America.
Eduardo Ulibarri is a journalist, university professor and diplomat. He is a sociopolitical analysis consultant and a former Costa Rican Ambassador to the United Nations (2010-2014). He was born in Remedios, Cuba, the son of the late Rogelio Ulibarri, a Cuban patriot who migrated to Costa Rica and was a leader of the Cuban community in that country.
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