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As 2021 draws to a close and the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) reaches its halfway point, the president has achieved at least one of his principal objectives: He is the only topic in Mexico. In Trumpian fashion, AMLO has extinguished any hope that anything constructive will be accomplished during his reign, and all subjects now revolve around him. ‘AMLO is a catastrophe, we are doomed!’ ‘AMLO is a saint, we are delivered!’ And on a more mundane level, will AMLO let anyone do business in this country, other than his protected devotees (who are making bank while the going is good)? He has become a political Santa Claus, who knows who’s been naughty (the private sector) and who’s been nice (the military and anyone professing blind fealty to him), and he will continue to stuff the stockings of the nice with gifties like newly-created public enterprises and juicy no-tender contracts, while the coal will keep coming for the naughty. Continue reading Mexico facing three more years of torpor under AMLO
Tag Archives: Mexican politics
COP26 and the calvary of Marcelo Ebrard
Back in 2003 or so, we attended a meeting of local business executives here in Mexico City and listened while they ranted and wrung their hands over the prospect of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) someday becoming president. In our turn to speak we downplayed the alarm level, suggesting that if AMLO were ever to reach the presidency he would turn out to be more pragmatic in pursuing his agenda at the national level. Our opinion was rejected, to say the least, by the meeting attendees. Well, fast forward 18 years or so, and it turns out we were so wrong about AMLO we really ought to be fined and imprisoned for how wrong we were. Since the day he was elected, AMLO burst forth unleashed with the ether bottle in one hand and a scepter in the other, waging unconditional campaigns against the private sector, foreign imperialists, NGOs, science, academia, wind farms, women and a long list of other personal bogeythings. The range of active fronts in his war on sense is vast, and today we would like to offer some comments on the upcoming COP26 climate change conference and how it provides an example of Mexico’s free fall in the opposite direction of sound public policy. Continue reading COP26 and the calvary of Marcelo Ebrard
Mexican mid-terms giveth or taketh away for AMLO
Mexican voters will go to the polls June 6, 2021 for what is being widely touted as the largest election in the country’s history. Citizens will cast ballots for nearly 21,000 public offices including all 500 seats in the federal Chamber of Deputies and 15 of 32 state governorships, among many local elected positions. Turnout is expected to be higher than usual for a non-presidential election, due to the polarized political atmosphere currently prevailing in the country, and the media are regularly running pieces arguing that the stakes are high for institutional democracy in Mexico. We agree that the institutions underpinning democracy in Mexico, such as it is, are under attack right now to an alarming degree, but we feel that this is most likely a short-term problem. The larger challenges to Mexico’s development as a nation-state, alas, are more long term. Here is a brief summary of how we see the situation: Continue reading Mexican mid-terms giveth or taketh away for AMLO