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If Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was punished for his losses in this month’s midterm election, he hasn’t proved it.
The morning after the June 6 vote, the government issued a law to extend the term of Supreme Court President Arturo Zaldívar, who is close to the president, in which critics fear they may provide a template for López Obrador extend its own term beyond 2024.
A few days later, the president pledged to pursue constitutional reforms in energy, elections and security, despite having them lost the two-thirds majority necessary for these changes in Congress. He accused the “evil, slanderous and immoral” media of intoxicating voters against him and attacked the middle class as selfish social climbers.
Despite the fiery rhetoric, for some this seemed more common than López Obrador instead of moving to a more radical agenda after his Morena party lost about a fifth of its seats in Congress and more than half of the city’s districts. of Mexico.
“It is clear that Amlo will remain Amlo, and this is what companies and society must learn to live with, we will not change it,” said Antonio del Valle, head of the Mexican Business Council that represents the largest companies in the country. , using the president’s nickname.
“But after three years, we can understand that, just as it will not change politically, it will not change its economic policy. . . and that reassures me a lot ”.
Top business leaders have learned to overlook the veteran populist’s incendiary messages and applaud the way he has resisted pressure to borrow heavily for significant spending, like other Latin American leftists.
A chief executive, who asked not to be named, said “the president’s bark is worse than his bite.”
While his rhetoric remains confrontational, many observers expect little deviation from a plan he drew up long ago to achieve his revered “transformation” of Mexico: social programs to address deep-income inequality, infrastructure projects in the poor southeast to create jobs and energy. self-sufficiency based on fossil fuels.
After a stint as mayor of Mexico City in 2000-05, in which López Obrador showed a pragmatic streak, “he expected it to be more moderate and it hasn’t been,” said Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, a totemic figure of the Mexican Left and one of the few in the Morena government that criticizes the president.
López Obrador’s desire to extend Zaldívar’s term to ensure a more potentially compatible judiciary and his attacks on the respected INE electoral authority, as well as against independent regulators, have sounded alarms.
“I hope he doesn’t harden the presidency to oppose the institutions,” Muñoz Ledo said. “Mexico’s presidency is already very powerful.”
Claudia Sheinbaum, the protégé of López Obrador and the mayor of Mexico City, ridiculed what she said had been the opposition’s efforts to portray the election as a springboard for Mexican democracy with “this idea that would be the “Last time we voted because we were heading for the dictatorship.”
Graham Stock, a partner at BlueBay Asset Management, saw “a limited opportunity” for López Obrador to radicalize without a congressional surface and rejected comparisons with Venezuela’s late authoritarian leader Hugo Chávez.
“He’s a tax conservative, so he won’t spend money on some growth,” he said. “The story of the chaos and destruction that his opponents have always tried to tell would happen: I don’t buy it. . . He is not the next Chávez, he is quite unique ”.
After winning a landslide in 2018, López Obrador has maintained the loyalty of supporters with subsidies, higher pensions and large increases in the minimum wage. His stubborn refusal to take on more debt meant that there was no Covid-19 stimulus program, which caused a deeper recession last year than in many Latin American peers.
Jorge Castañeda, a former foreign minister in the conservative PAN party, said he believed Lopez Obrador had missed an opportunity to use his “enormous legitimacy” to enact far-reaching reforms.
“What you have to do is what he hasn’t done, even though he could have done it: serious tax reform,” he said. López Obrador has promised to close the gaps instead of raising taxes.
“It might seem short-term, but it’s a pragmatic logic,” said Gerardo Esquivel, deputy governor of the Bank of Mexico. “All previous attempts at tax reform have been political failures. . . In his opinion, it is more transformative to make people pay what they should have and get salaries where they should be ”.
Mexico’s economy is now on the rebound after contracting 8.5% in 2020 and heading for growth of 6% or more this year, helped by President Joe Biden’s $ 1.9 million stimulus package in the US.
But a climate of uncertainty persists, caused by the cancellation of López Obrador’s partially built airport and brewery projects, which weigh on the investment Mexico needs to get out of its traditionally weak growth rates.
López Obrador’s relentless attacks on political enemies, including the rich, the media and the business class, have also fueled concern about the risks of further dividing a violent and already deeply fractured society.
“The most important thing is to stop the country’s polarization: rich versus poor, north versus south,” the chief executive of a Mexican bank said. “We all have to row in the same direction for the boat to move forward.”
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