Mexico post election 2018

Presidential Campaign in Mexico Gets Dirty

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It’s clear the big data is being employed here. I got the call on foreign investment. Others got calls on education, security, and other issues. Experts have noted that the call can also generate a database by registering whether voters are for or against the candidate. They seemed to be aimed at changing votes. Given the margin AMLO has, the opposition, whoever it is is behind this, would have to flip at least some voters because it can’t even win with undecideds. On Twitter the hashtag #GuerraSucioElectoral is trending: Electoral dirty war. The special prosecutor on electoral crimes has agreed to take complaints and look into the calls.

Calumnious phone calls from anonymous sources are an ominous sign for the days to come, but it gets worse. There have been over 110 political assassinations since the campaign period began on September 8. Most have been candidates, especially on the local level. These elections are already among the bloodiest in Mexican history. On June 2, for example, four women politicians who were assassinated, including Juana Maldonado, a candidate in Puebla, and Pamela Teran, a candidate in Oaxaca who was murdered with the young photographer assigned to cover her campaign, Maria Del Sol Cruz.

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Mexico Update: Mexican and International Media Focus on Discrediting Lopez Obrador

With the results of Mexico’s presidential elections practically a foregone conclusion, his opponents and conservative sectors are lashing out. Meanwhile, Mexican society and the candidates weigh in on Trump’s unconscionable zero tolerance policy on migrant children. Mexican Elections Update courtesy of: Rompeviento.tv

What Does López Obrador’s Cabinet Say About His Upcoming Presidency?

On July 2, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) of the recently formed Morena Party swept to victory in Mexico’s presidential election with 53 per cent of the vote, the first time since 1982 that a candidate won more than half the vote. His closest competitor, Ricardo Anaya of the National Action Party (PAN), took 22 per cent, while José Antonio Meade, candidate for the PRI though not a member of the party, finished with 16 per cent. Morena also replaced the PRD as the leading party in Mexico City, capturing the Mayor’s office and a majority of the local assembly. Mexico City’s Mayor is often considered the second most important political figure in the country.

AMLO was ahead in polls throughout the campaign, but even so, the breadth of the victory, including majority control in both houses of Congress, caught many observers by surprise, although apparently not Mexico’s political class. Prior to the election, and at the invitation of López Obrador, many previous stalwarts from the opposition abandoned their parties to run on the Morena ticket. Even important elements of the business class joined the Morena effort, led by Monterrey industrialist Alfonso Romo, who will serve as AMLO’s Chief of Staff. During his first two presidential runs, López Obrador faced opposition from a united business class. This time he made sure to highlight his pro-capitalist credentials in the proper forums, guaranteeing that he would not challenge privatization of petroleum or the construction of a new airport. These will likely be Mexico’s biggest boondoggles ever.

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“Leftist” or “Populist”?

López Obrador has been considered a “Leftist” by the mainstream press. The Zapatista movement disagrees, characterizing López Obrador as the furthest right of the three main candidates. It is probably accurate to call him a populist nationalist with modest tendencies toward redistribution to stabilize a decaying society without threatening the fundamentals of capital accumulation. As Mexico City Mayor from 2000 to 2005, he was best known for three programs designed to keep everyone happy. His “segundo piso” was a massive highway infrastructure project that sped the trip from tony suburbs to downtown Mexico City. His re-development of the historic city center provided real estate tycoons, particularly Carlos Slim, one of the world’s wealthiest men, with unparalleled opportunities for gentrification and immense profits. His small monthly cash handouts to single mothers, seniors and handicapped citizens were straight out of the PRI clientelist playbook but without the corporatist organizational intermediaries. AMLO built a direct and uncharacteristically personal relationship with his “viejitos” who eventually formed part of Morena’s electoral base.

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While AMLO presents a clean public persona (he drives an older model sedan, lives in a modest apartment and eschews a personal security detail), the same cannot be said of his many new allies imported from the PRI, PAN and PRD. Mexican politics is widely understood as a path to wealth and López Obrador knows how to play the game. During his years as Mayor of Mexico City, AMLO surrounded himself with some questionable characters. Perhaps best known was Rene Bejarano, AMLO’s principal political operator in the Mexico City Legislative Assembly and the husband of Dolores Padierna. In 2004, Bejarano was videotaped accepting wads of cash from businessman Carlos Ahumada, most likely for AMLO’s presidential campaign. He spent eight months in jail before being exonerated (well-connected political operatives seldom spend much time in prison, whatever their crimes), then spent the next 13 years keeping a low profile as a PRD agent, and, at least publicly, at a healthy distance from AMLO. López Obrador claimed Bejarano was working “on his own” when he accepted the money, a claim that is difficult to reconcile with the facts. In any case, now he’s back, supporting his old boss and with a likely future in an AMLO administration.

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Dangerous “Leftist”

For the moment, let’s assume AMLO can tame rampant government corruption. That still leaves the much more important “legal” robbery known as capitalism that allows a small class of owners to steal from workers. This kind of corruption is called exploitation, but AMLO never addresses it. López Obrador may be the most dangerous of “leftists,” the kind that is convinced heart and soul that capitalism is not only inevitable, but can be just and productive for the majority of humanity under the right political conditions – and it just so happens that he has the secret recipe. Hence, his political program is populist (bread and circus for the masses), nationalist (though a particularly narrow form of nationalism in which he occupies the center of attention), and adamantly pro-capitalist (favoring those members of the capitalist class who are willing to support his brand of populism).

Mexico’s López Obrador vows to end neo-liberalism in inauguration

Andrés Manuel López Obrador was sworn in as Mexico’s president with a vow to abolish free-market policies that he said had been a “calamity” for the country. The 65-year-old leftwing nationalist attacked neo-liberalism as he pledged to initiate a “fourth transformation of Mexico” in a combative speech on Saturday that at times made his business-friendly predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto squirm. “It may sound pretentious or exaggerated but today is not only the start of a new government but a change of political regime,” said Mr López Obrador, whose election win overturned a political establishment that had been entrenched for more than a century.

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The new president launched a fierce attack on the economic status quo and the energy reforms completed in 2013 that were the centrepiece of Mr Peña Nieto’s policy achievements. Mr López Obrador harked back to Mexico’s golden growth period, from 1930 to 1960, and vowed not to repeat the way the country had racked up debt from 1970 to 1982. He condemned “the manifest failure and corruption” of neo-liberal policies that he said had delivered a fraction of the growth of earlier decades but rampant graft.

“We will do all we can to abolish this neo-liberal regime,” said the blunt-talking nationalist in a speech in Congress before scores of foreign dignitaries. He also repeated his vow to respect the independence of the Bank of Mexico and to serve just one six-year term. Critics have feared that he could cling to power like other Latin American leftists including Bolivia’s Evo Morales, who was hailed by the new president at the swearing-in as an “amigo”.

He praised Donald Trump’s friendship — the US president sent his daughter Ivanka and vice-president Mike Pence to the ceremony.

With López Obrador In, Workers Have the Confidence to Walk Out

The election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) as president of Mexico has raised the hopes and expectations of millions of Mexican workers. There could be no better evidence of this than the strike of tens of thousands of workers in Matamoros, a city at the eastern end of the U.S.-Mexico border, across the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Mexico) from Brownsville, Texas.

During the past month, between 30,000 and 40,000 of the 70,000 maquiladora workers in Matamoros plants have walked off their jobs. The maquiladoras are factories, mostly foreign-owned, that manufacture goods destined for sale in the United States. They are the product of a development policy begun by the Mexican government in 1964, allowing the construction of foreign-owned plants, so long as their products were sold outside Mexico. The attraction for foreign companies has been a wage level far below that of workers just a few miles north, and the lax enforcement of environmental and worker protection laws. As a result, along the border today, more than two million workers labour in these factories.

“Workers and employers from Tijuana to Juarez are looking at the courageous actions of the Matamoros workers,” says Julia Quiñones, director of the Border Committee of Women Workers in Ciudad Acuña, and a veteran of three decades of labour conflicts. “Workers are thinking about following the Matamoros example, and of course, employers are worried they’ll do exactly that.”

The strikes have their immediate origin in a promise made by López Obrador in his speech to the Mexican Congress, and repeated in Mexico City’s main plaza, the Zócalo, as he was sworn into office on December 1. “From January 1,” he promised, “the minimum wage [on the border] will be doubled.” Keeping his word, on January 1 he raised that wage from 88.36 pesos ($4.63) per day to 176.72 pesos ($9.25) [all dollar amounts in U.S. currency]....

Mexico pushing labour reform, won't ratify new NAFTA with U.S. tariffs in place

Mexico's Congress will be asked to approve a major labour-reform bill this spring as a necessary step to ratifying the new North American free-trade pact later this autumn, say Mexican officials.

But unless the Trump administration lifts the punishing tariffs it has imposed on Mexican steel and aluminum imports — duties it also imposed on Canada — Mexico is prepared to keep the status quo with the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement.

The push to improve workers' rights in Mexico was a key priority for Canada and the United States during the rocky NAFTA renegotiation because they wanted to level the playing field between their workers and lower-paid Mexican workers, especially in the auto sector.

When Mexico and the U.S. reached their surprise bilateral agreement last August, forcing the Trudeau government to quickly forge a deal with the Trump administration, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland lauded Mexico for making labour concessions.

But a senior trade official in the new government of socialist reformer Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador suggested in an interview it wasn't a huge sacrifice because elevating the status of country's workers was a key plank in the platform that brought their Morena party to power.....