Mexico’s new leader brings hopes, risks

The election of a staunch freetrader as Mexico’s new president is, from a Canadian perspective, welcome news indeed.

That’s because Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vows to sign a renewed North American Free Trade Agreement and, if that’s impossible, to cut a special deal with Canada. On this issue, at least, he will not upset Canada by delivering gutwrenching, unwanted change — the kind his presidential neighbour to the north, Donald Trump, is so fond of.

Yet if they feel like cheering, Canadians should recognize that radical, ground-shifting change that will upset at least somebody is exactly what the people of Mexico have voted for in electing a left-wing firebrand who offers his own brand of nationalist populism.

Like the voters in the United Kingdom who chose Brexit and those in the U.S. who picked Trump, the people of Mexico have rebelled against the status quo and taken a leap of faith that could end in a hard landing.

It’s anyone’s guess how this will work out. But whatever risks attend the landslide win Lopez Obrador achieved on Sunday, it is understandable why Mexicans gave it to him.

They will hope — and the world will hope with them — that this new president will finally help Mexico overcome its entrenched poverty, its glaring inequality, its cancerous corruption and its murderous drug lords.

According to the country’s own statistics, roughly 44 per cent of Mexico’s 130 million people live in poverty.

The economy has grown slowly but steadily in recent decades, thanks in large part to the NAFTA deal Mexico implemented with Canada and the U.S. in 1994. But while per-capita income has increased by 40 per cent in the past 30 years, the rising economic tide has not lifted all boats. Most Mexican workers are still poorly paid, especially by Canadian or American standards.

The toxic power wielded by drug dealers and criminal gangs only exacerbates the country’s pain. Mexican authorities have been waging a war on the illegal drug trade since 2006 yet remain as far as ever from declaring victory.

In the last 12 years, the drug cartels have been responsible for killing more than 100,000 people, including politicians, students and journalists. The country is bracing for 32,000 murders in 2018, which would be a record high.

Then there is government corruption — blatant, defiant and endemic, despite increasing efforts by state officials, the media and citizens to end it.

It is only since 2000 that Mexico has been considered a functional democracy. Only two parties have governed the country since then.

Enter Lopez Obrador. The new president belongs to neither of those parties and as such was able to convince voters he might succeed where the others had failed.

In his favour, he believes the state can work with the free market to expand Mexico’s economy and lift millions of Mexicans out of poverty. It is also reassuring that he is not anti-American. Indeed, since winning the election he has taken pains to emphasize his willingness to forge a new NAFTA deal with Trump.

Even so, Lopez Obrador has promised a “radical revolution” for Mexico. He vows to settle major policy issues through referendums, which could take power away from democratically elected politicians. Nor is he sympathetic to abortion rights or gay rights.

The people of Mexico have taken a gamble. It is a calculated but hazardous one, and for the sake not just of NAFTA but the North American continent, Canadians will hope Lopez Obrador proves worthy of the trust Mexicans have given him.

An editorial from the Hamilton Spectator (distributed by The Canadian Press)