Mexico's demolition derby
The midterm elections of June 6 in Mexico were in appearance favorable to Morena, the party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), with victories in 11 of 15 governorships, even though three are being contested in the courts for alleged irregularities, and a majority in the House of Deputies, although smaller than the one it enjoys in the current legislature and far from the supermajority that he needs to change the constitution at his will.
However, the elections were marred by being the most violent in history in terms of the number of politicians assassinated, and the massive coercion and kidnappings of operatives and candidates of opposition parties, particularly where narco-criminal gangs dominate.
Thus Morena won all but one of the states up for grabs abutting the Pacific Ocean, with the ostensible support of organized crime, which has enormous power in that region, in what the sitting governor of the state of Michoacán called a "blatant narco election."
Despite the relatively good news, AMLO has been angry and frustrated since the elections because he and his party lost big in Mexico City, their main stronghold and source of money since their movement won the mayor's office for the first time in 1997.
The opposition won the eight wealthiest and bettereducated town halls plus all the councils in the adjoining State of Mexico intertwined with the city, versus seven for Morena. Mexico City's map today looks very much like occupied postwar Berlin, with roughly the western half in the hands of the opposition and the eastern half managed by AMLO's allies.
Who was responsible for this failure? AMLO's political operatives in Mexico City, which he has implicitly acknowledged by firing the most powerful of them, who controlled US$15 billion to give away to their clients to retain their political support. Apparently, this shady character played his own game and not his boss's, which became clear after the election.
Another guilty party is Claudia Sheinbaum, the mayor of Mexico City and AMLO's favorite to succeed him in the presidency in 2024, in case he is unable to extend his own term.
But Sheinbaum has other serious troubles as well, which we described in our previous installment of "Mexico's Demolition Derby" for Asia Times. The collapse of an overpass in the city's metro system a few days before the election certainly had a devastating effect on the reputation of the mayor, who was further humiliated by AMLO when he assumed complete responsibility of the repairs of the fallen segment.
After meeting alone and behind doors with billionaire Carlos Slim, whose construction company built the overpass, AMLO announced that all the repairs would be paid for by Slim, who in turn declared that the collapse had not been caused by a construction flaw, as the preliminary expert report indicated, which would mean that the reason for the disaster would have been faulty maintenance, Sheinbaum's responsibility.
But if the construction was faultless, why would Slim offer to pay the many millions of dollars required for its repair? We can only guess, but the reason might be that he has always been close to the government, regardless of the party, because much of his business depends on being in good terms with the authorities.
Now AMLO has started a new war of words against the middle classes, which seems bizarre, since around 70% of the population consider themselves part of that segment. He blames them for not being grateful enough for all the money he gives them to vote loyally for his candidates.
In a discourse that gets weirder as time goes by, he accuses his new foe, the middle class, of "aspiring" to too much instead of being satisfied with the very basics necessary to conduct a modest existence, something uncanny for someone who decided to trade a comfortable but unpretentious presidential house for a luxurious 16th-century vice-regal palace built by the Spanish conquerors he repeatedly denounces.
AMLO's corruption fight is fake
One of the subjects that he reiterates ad nauseam is that he, his team, and his party are lilly-white honest and that his main goal in government is to fight corruption. This is just propaganda, because AMLO has not acted in a single case of the proven corruption of many of his associates, and increasingly his own family.