AMLO puts democracy in Mexico at risk: The Wall Street Journal

The US newspaper warns that López Obrador’s economic policy could unleash an economic crisis

MEXICO, (June 05, 2021).- President Andrés Manuel López Obrador may represent a risk to democracy after the leaders of his party threatened to weaken the bodies that are responsible for reviewing presidential actions and providing transparency to citizens, the US newspaper warned in an essay by The Wall Street Journal ahead of the 2021 elections.

In a new article, similar to what was done by The Economist and Die Welt in the last week, the economic newspaper gave an overview of the country towards the elections this Sunday, June 5, in which 15 governorships, 31 local congresses are decided and renewed the Chamber of Representatives.

In the text, it warns that the economic policies of President López Obrador may unleash an economic crisis from which it may be difficult to return, as happened before the global Covid-19 pandemic, in which Mexico decreased by 8.5%, leading to country to a recession and the loss of 850 thousand jobs.

If this crisis happens, they anticipate, Mexico would not be the only country affected, but it would also damage the US economy.

“If López Obrador creates a political or social crisis, the effect can be profound, affecting everything from migration to international trade, to cooperation against organized crime,” the WSJ said.

Given these scenarios, what worries the experts consulted by “The Wall Street Journal” the most is that in the elections of this June 6, President López Obrador manages to take the step he requires to concentrate power and recalls that Morena has already proposed to end the autonomy of independent bodies.

Likewise, it takes up the recent declaration of the president in which he announced that Alejandro Díaz de León will not be reelected as governor of the Bank of Mexico, months before the end of his term. Instead, AMLO said that “someone with a greater sense of “moral” economy would have to arrive”.

“The next three years will be marked by increased uncertainty. The electoral body, autonomous institutions, the court, the central bank, the energy reform, public finances, the USMCA, and the constitution itself are at risk,” Carlos Ramírez, the chief, told the digital newspaper Integralia.

In a simile, The Wall Street Journal compares López Obrador with a series of leaders around the world, such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the US, who, in his view, created a bond with the poor who felt that democracy had failed to improve their standard of living.

One of the problems, as the journalist Leonardo Curzio mentions, is that López Obrador sees himself as the savior of those who have been historically oppressed, in such a way that he calls his government the “Fourth Transformation.”

The political analyst José Antonio Crespo affirmed that Mexico is losing what it took 30 years to achieve . “We are going backwards,” he lamented.

For his part, Lorenzo Meyer, a historian sympathetic to the president, considers that the idea that López Obrador is authoritarian or that he plans to become a dictator is already “withered.”

“There is no single politician in prison, the Army has not acted against any political opponent, the intelligence service has been dismantled and no newspaper has been closed,” he argues.

While from the economic point of view, the Secretary of Finance and Public Credit, Arturo Herrera, announced that Mexico is prepared to grow in the coming years thanks to the USMCA Treaty between Mexico, the United States, and Canada since investors have begun to reconsider Mexico as a key country in its supply chains, a point that agrees with the Mexican recovery estimates projected by the JP Morgan development bank, which foresees 6% growth in the economy during 2021.

Source: Sipse