As Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador nears the ultimate hours of his presidency, a debate is already raging over the legacy that the Mexican chief, broadly referred to as AMLO, is abandoning.
Restricted to a single six-year time period by Mexico’s Structure, AMLO will go away workplace on Monday with an approval score that by no means dropped under 60 %.
Political events that after dominated Mexico have been swept apart by the rise of his Morena Celebration, and his successor, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, gained a landslide victory within the nation’s June elections.
“Lopez Obrador is leaving energy with a really excessive stage of recognition, which may be very totally different from what occurred in earlier governments,” Pablo Piccato, a professor of Mexican historical past at Columbia College in america, advised Al Jazeera.
However Lopez Obrador’s time in workplace has been extra controversial than his widespread recognition implies, and his closing weeks in energy have seen protests in opposition to quite a lot of reforms that his authorities has pushed ahead.
Whereas supporters credit score AMLO with dramatic reductions in poverty by insurance policies reminiscent of rising the minimal wage, labour reforms, and welfare funds, critics accuse him of eroding democratic oversight and failing to handle rights abuses and insecurity.
“AMLO has been saying all alongside that his authorities represents a break with the previous, that it’s a brand new regime,” stated Piccato, noting that Lopez Obrador additionally noticed his administration as a break with the pro-market political philosophy of neoliberalism.
“However after all, issues aren’t so easy.”
Reductions in poverty
Lopez Obrador usually says that his authorities has ushered in a “fourth transformation”.
That successfully compares his tenure as president to earlier intervals within the nation’s historical past – independence from Spain, an period of liberal reform, and the Mexican Revolution – that basically reworked Mexico.
Supporters level to financial modifications which have taken place throughout AMLO’s time period as proof that his administration ushered in one other historic break with the previous.
“Essentially the most optimistic space of AMLO’s administration has been labour reforms and poverty and inequality discount,” Viri Rios, a Mexican tutorial and analyst, advised Al Jazeera. “About 5.1 million individuals left poverty behind between 2018 and 2022, a very powerful discount in poverty in additional than 20 years.”
She additionally famous that the president ushered in a sequence of financial insurance policies, reminiscent of doubling the nation’s minimal wage and tripling it in areas close to the border with the US the place many corporations arrange manufacturing services. His authorities additionally instituted labour reforms that facilitated unionisation efforts.
However whereas AMLO has positioned himself as a champion of the poor who has challenged the nation’s institution and enterprise pursuits, others in Mexico debate simply how transformative his modifications have been.
Whereas Lopez Obrador has expanded programmes reminiscent of pension funds and money transfers, Mexico’s social spending stays the bottom of all OECD international locations. Fiscal coverage within the nation additionally stays comparatively restrained.
“Should you take a look at the quantity of taxes Mexico collects as factors of GDP, it’s about 16 %. That’s a decrease charge than the Bahamas,” stated Rios. “There’s not sufficient tax assortment, and AMLO didn’t tackle that.”
Ongoing safety points
On problems with crime and safety, Lopez Obrador has outlined his success by way of continuity somewhat than change. Whereas family members of the nation’s disappeared proceed to seek for justice and Mexicans undergo from beautiful charges of violence, AMLO argues that traits have remained largely secure beneath his watch.
Information from the World Financial institution reveals that the nation’s homicide charge fell from 30 per 100,000 individuals in 2018 when AMLO entered workplace, to twenty-eight per 100,000 individuals in 2021. In 2022, Mexico recorded 32,223 murders, an almost 10 % drop from the earlier 12 months.
These figures, nevertheless, nonetheless underscore an oppressive actuality confronted by many Mexicans.
A 2024 ballot by the Nationwide Institute of Statistics and Geography discovered that greater than 73 % of individuals reported feeling insecure, with almost 22 % saying there have been homicides within the space the place they lived.
Accountability for the perpetrators of violence – by prison teams and the state itself – can be uncommon, with almost 95 % of homicides going unsolved.
AMLO had initially campaigned on a promise to maneuver away from the militarised strategy to combating crime that brought about violence to skyrocket beneath earlier governments.
However removed from rolling again militarisation, Lopez Obrador has expanded the navy’s energy over public safety and recruited the military to assist with infrastructure initiatives and administrative duties, even granting it management over ports and airways.
Final Wednesday, Mexico’s Senate handed a controversial invoice inserting the Nationwide Guard, beforehand beneath nominal civilian management, within the arms of the navy.
“Anybody within the Nationwide Guard will probably be topic solely to navy justice, with their very own tribunals, the navy justice system’s prosecutors, and choices and sentences that won’t be made public,” Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America research on the Council on International Relations, a US-based think-tank, advised Al Jazeera.
“The navy, by its operational management of the Nationwide Guard, will probably have a sure diploma of veto energy over safety choices by civilian leaders,” he added.
A divisive type
The president’s rising ties with the navy have additionally put him at odds with advocates for the nation’s disappeared.
By the federal government’s conservative estimate, 113,000 individuals stay lacking in Mexico, a lot of them victims of prison teams, state safety forces, or each.
As a candidate, Lopez Obrador had promised accountability for abuses, such because the disappearance of 43 college students from a trainer’s faculty in Ayotzinapa in 2014. Worldwide investigators accused the navy of obstructing investigations and enjoying a attainable position in what occurred.
However as soon as in workplace, AMLO has disillusioned activists and family members of the lacking by backing the navy’s model of occasions – a place that has sparked widespread anger and protests.
He additionally introduced that his authorities would reassess the official variety of lacking individuals in Mexico, calling the present figures implausibly excessive. Human rights teams and advocates say they’re a possible undercount.
“The dispute over Ayotzinapa broke relationships between victims and the president. That was when this attainable alliance was damaged,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor of coverage and authorities at George Mason College, advised Al Jazeera.
Volunteers who organise efforts to go looking for the our bodies of lacking family members even got here beneath assault by AMLO, who accused the searchers of being motivated by “a delirium of necrophilia”.
That comment is typical of Lopez Obrador’s combative type of speech, which critics say has contributed to a rising sense of polarisation in Mexican politics.
“AMLO continually talks negatively about his opposition, the press, civil society, even human rights establishments,” stated Rios, the educational. “He has a really vocal approach of confronting whoever opposes his agenda.”
Contentious reforms
That polarisation has been on show throughout Lopez Obrador’s closing weeks in workplace, because the legislature pushed by a sequence of reforms lengthy sought by the president.
Essentially the most contentious by far was a constitutional change that can make judges stand for election.
Critics stated the transfer will politicise the judiciary and erode democratic checks and balances, whereas supporters argued it would make judges extra accountable to the individuals.
The ultimate vote happened earlier this month after protesters broke into the Senate chamber, disrupting proceedings and chanting “the judiciary isn’t going to fall!”
The invoice handed within the Senate on September 11 by a margin of 86 to 41, clearing what was seen because the reform’s most vital hurdle.
That was not the primary time AMLO’s critics have accused him of consolidating management over unbiased establishments. Final 12 months, protesters additionally took to the streets in opposition to modifications to the Nationwide Electoral Institute (INE), which oversees Mexican elections.
However whereas critics see a pattern of democratic backsliding and the destruction of institutional independence, AMLO and his supporters have pitched the reforms as a part of a wrestle in opposition to entrenched, highly effective pursuits.
“The regime of corruption and privileges every day is being left farther prior to now and a real democracy and true rule of regulation are being constructed,” Sheinbaum, Lopez Obrador’s successor, stated in a social media submit celebrating the passage of the judicial reforms.
Now, as AMLO prepares to go away workplace, each his followers and detractors consider Lopez Obrador’s imaginative and prescient of politics will proceed to form the route of the nation.
Together with his Morena Celebration securing supermajorities in Congress and Sheinbaum getting ready to take his place, the outgoing president’s most enduring legacy may very well be the realignment of Mexican politics that has taken place beneath his watch.
“Beforehand, a number of events had been in energy and no social gathering had full management of Congress. Now Lopez Obrador’s social gathering has been capable of set up a supermajority, ” stated Piccato. “That’s one thing new, and lots of people are very involved about that.”
