Mexico set for a Left turn
OBRADOR MAY BECOME PRESIDENT OF A COUNTRY ENTRENCHED IN CORRUPTION
Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador arrives at a polling station during the presidential election in Mexico City yesterday. Mexicans are set to hand power to the left-wing leader for the first time in decades in a revolt against entrenched corruption, crime and poverty.
Mexicans headed to ballot stations yesterday to elect a president and they’re set to hand power to a left-wing leader for the first time in decades, in a revolt against entrenched corruption, crime and poverty.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador appears headed for a landslide win that could also give him majorities in both houses of Congress — a prospect that’s adding to anxiety in Mexico’s business world and financial markets. Nine governors and almost 3,000 mayors and local legislators will also be chosen.
Mexicans have many reasons to kick out their governing class. The country of 125 million has suffered a wave of violence, with homicides at record levels (politicians haven’t been spared: 120 of them were killed during the campaign).
Then there’s the $1.2 trillion (Dh4.40 trillion) economy, which has posted dismal growth rates by developingnation standards. Almost half the population lives in poverty, a rate that’s changed little in a quarter-century. And the outgoing government has been caught up in a series of graft scandals. The 64-year-old Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, promises to ramp up social programmes and run a clean administration.
His strong showing fits with a global trend of anti-establishment politics, from Donald Trump’s presidency in the US to gains by parties of the left and right in Europe.
Obrador was a popular mayor of Mexico City last decade and has unsuccessfully run for the presidency twice since then. Obrador says he’ll govern as a pragmatist, but investors are worried that he’ll cancel private oil contracts, scrap a $13 billion Mexico City airport project that’s already under way, and rack up debts.
The peso has slid about 10 per cent since mid-April. Obrador’s two main rivals for the presidency are both more business friendly and represent the only two parties to have ruled Mexico in almost a century.
Ricardo Anaya, a brash 39-year-old, cobbled together a coalition of the right and centre-left. His pledge of a drastic crackdown on corruption has been undermined by his ties with past governments seen as corrupt themselves.
Jose Antonio Meade was finance minister under the outgoing and deeply unpopular administration of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Mexicans have many reasons to kick out their governing class. The country of 125 million has suffered a wave of violence, with homicides at record levels (politicians haven’t been spared: 120 of them were killed during the campaign). Then there’s the $1.2 trillion economy, which has posted dismal growth rates
Obrador was a popular mayor of Mexico City last decade and has unsuccessfully run for the presidency twice since then. Obrador says he’ll govern as a pragmatist, but investors are worried that he’ll cancel private oil contracts, , scrap a $13 billion Mexico City airport project, and rack up debts