Mexico’s president vows to halt exodus to US
New leader unveils swift plan to end corruption and lure back migrants with improved living conditions
MEXICO’S new president has unveiled a plan to address Us-bound migration, signing an agreement with Central American leaders within hours of donning the presidential sash.
With his friend Jeremy Corbyn among the 400 foreign dignitaries watching on, Andrés Manuel López Obrador was sworn in on Saturday.
“Present today is my friend Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party of Great Britain,” Mr López Obrador told the packed Chamber of Deputies, as Mr Corbyn stood up from his seat behind Ivanka Trump to accept the applause.
Mr López Obrador thanked Donald Trump for sending his daughter to represent him, and also thanked Mike Pence, the vice president, for attending. He then moved on to thank King Felipe of Spain and the assembled presidents for their presence – before giving a special mention to Mr Corbyn, his friend and ally of many years.
Mr López Obrador – who has vowed to work 16-hour days to resolve the country’s many problems – was always expected to hit the ground running, but the speed of the migration announcement surprised many.
In a deal that will please President Trump, he agreed with the presidents of Honduras and Guatemala, and the vice-president of El Salvador, to create a fund to stem the Us-bound flows of migrants.
The leaders agreed to ask their finance ministries, in the first quarter of 2019, to come up with a plan of programmes, projects, and specific actions aimed at jobs generation and fighting poverty in the region.
The programmes, supported by the respected UN commission for economic development in the region, CEPAL, will seek to make the Central American nations a better place to live, and thus reduce the number of those leaving.
Yesterday, Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, met Mike Pompeo, his US counterpart, and today a Mexican delegation will meet a team led by Kirstjen Nielsen, the US homeland security secretary, to discuss the migrant caravans, and plans to make asylum seekers wait in Mexico for their applications to be heard.
Also today, Mr López Obrador is putting the presidential jet up for sale having already thrown open the doors of Los Pinos presidential palace on Saturday, for the first time in 80 years, and turned it into a cultural centre.
The new president proudly mentioned the development in a Saturday afternoon speech in Mexico City’s main plaza, the Zocalo.
He promised to hold public servants to account, with his entire, extensive, social welfare plan based on the simple idea of ending corruption.
“A lot of people are asking where we are going to get the money from,” he said. “We are going to free up so much money, because corruption is over.”
‘A lot of people are asking where we are going to get the money from. We are going to free up so much money, because corruption is over’