Mexico campaign closes with leftist ‘AMLO’ looking unstoppable
MEXICO CITY: Mexico’s presidential campaign ended with a fiesta of rallies Wednesday, as establishment candidates made last- ditch pleas for voters to reject the radical break with the past promised by leftist frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
All four candidates held a series of huge rallies around the country — none more festive than Lopez Obrador’s in Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium, where an A-list of Mexican musicians performed before his speech.
With his anti- corruption platform, the fiery former Mexico City mayor, widely known as ‘AMLO,’ looks virtually unstoppable heading into Sunday’s vote.
Opinion polls have given him a double- digit lead for months. Two polls released Wednesday — the final day for campaigning and polls — put his advantage at more than 20 points.
Sick of endemic corruption and horrific violence fueled by the country’s powerful drug cartels, many Mexicans are keen for any alternative to the two parties that have governed for nearly a century: the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party ( PRI) and the conservative National Action Party ( PAN).
“The policies we’ve been applying for the past 30 years haven’t worked. We haven’t even had economic growth,” Lopez Obrador told thousands of cheering supporters as he wrapped up his campaign.
“What’s grown is corruption, poverty, crime and violence. That’s why we’re going to send their policies to the dustbin of history.”
Such attacks have left Lopez Obrador’s rivals scrambling to distance themselves from their parties’ legacies, while also warning that Lopez Obrador’s ideas are dangerous for the country.
Judging by the opinion polls, the PRI and PAN candidates — ex-finance minister Jose Antonio Meade and former speaker of Congress Ricardo Anaya, respectively — are having a hard time selling that message.
Both were holding out hope they would manage to unite the anti-AMLO vote and win.
“Our coalition is the only one that can beat Lopez Obrador,” Anaya, 39, said at his final rally in the central city of Leon.
“I’m calling on all good people, including those in other parties, those with no party ... I am explicitly calling on you to cast a pragmatic vote.”
Meade, 49, meanwhile insisted: “the silent majority will win us this election.” — AFP