‘Common man’ leader pledges end to secrecy
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s newly inaugurated president kicked off his first Monday in office with something not seen in recent history — a news conference and a pledge to hold one every working day of his six-year term to keep the people informed.
Two days after taking the oath as the first leftist president in decades of technocrats, Andrés Manuel López Obrador made good on his promise to govern as a common man and end decades of secrecy, heavy security and luxury enjoyed by past presidents.
“He didn’t hit the ground running, he hit the ground flying,” said Federico Estevez, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. Estevez compared López Obrador’s start to the early days of President Franklin Roosevelt, minus the fireside chats.
On Monday, López Obrador tackled a case that cast a long shadow over the previous government, signing a presidential decree creating a truth commission to investigate the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in an apparent massacre.
He then posed with parents of the missing young people, who displayed photos of their loved ones.
Prosecutors have said the students from a teachers college in southern Guerrero state were killed by a drug gang and their bodies incinerated in a massive fire. But conclusive evidence has never been found or presented, leading the students’ parents on a frustrating, painful four-year quest for the truth.