By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

London’s esteemed Financial Times (FT) newspaper on Sunday, March 6, called on Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) to “learn from his mistakes” and “to rethink his policies” that are dragging the country back to the 1960s.

“López Obrador was famous for defying political gravity,” the world’s leading  business publication said in an opinion piece signed by the FT’s editorial board.

“Mediocre economic growth failed to dent his popularity. One of the world’s worst excess death tolls from coronavirus did not damage the rude health of his poll ratings. Voters seemed not to blame him for shocking levels of drug-related murders, or for funneling scarce public investment into vanity projects such as a $12.5 billion oil refinery that lacks any economic logic.”

The explanation for AMLO’s scandal-proof resilience, the Financial Times said, lies in the strength of his political brand.

“His beliefs may be rooted in the nationalist, big-state Mexico of the 1960s, but the president’s folksy, down-to-earth charm and frugal lifestyle convinced ordinary Mexicans he was one of them,” the article said.

“Astute control of the political agenda via a marathon daily news conference broadcast live also helped.”

And, above all, it said, “López Obrador promised a clean break with the corruption that he said flourished under his predecessors.”

But when news broke earlier this year that AMLO’s eldest son, José Ramón López Beltrán, had been living in a luxury, million-dollar mansion in Houston, the FT said that the president’s “austere public image” was jarred.

The fact that the mansion’s owner was a former executive from Baker Hughes, an oil services group that is one of the biggest contractors to Mexico’s state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), didn’t help, the article said.

“The president at first tried to brush off the affair. Then he lashed out at Carlos Loret de Mola, one of the journalists who broke the story, (calling him) a ‘mercenary coup-monger’,” the article noted, going so far as to detail with slides what he claimed was Loret de Mola’s annual income during one of his daily pressers.

“The disclosure of a private individual’s financial information would be reprehensible anywhere. In one of the world’s most deadly countries for journalists, with five reporters murdered this year, it was indefensible.”

…Financial Ties

“The disclosure of a private individual’s financial information would be reprehensible anywhere. In one of the world’s most deadly countries for journalists, with five reporters murdered this year, it was indefensible.”

The Financial Times pointed out that “weeks after the initial disclosures, the president has failed to quash the Gray House affair and his ratings have slipped to their lowest level since he was elected.”

“The promise of an official investigation does not reassure: The prosecutor-general helped advise the president’s election campaign,” it said.

And while López Obrador came to office on a platform that promised to eradicate corruption and raise the standard of living of the nation’s poorest people, the FT article unscored the fact that “in the first half of his term, these problems only worsened.”

Since AMLO took office in December 2018, it reported, poverty has increased and drug violence is out of control.

“Mexico is the only major Latin American economy yet to recover pre-pandemic levels of output, thanks to a misguided government refusal to support the economy during coronavirus,” the Financial Times warned.

“Mexico is the only major Latin American economy yet to recover pre-pandemic levels of output, thanks to a misguided government refusal to support the economy during coronavirus.”

…Financial Times

“Foreign investors have been scared off and the country’s institutions are under attack from an increasingly intolerant and quixotic leader.”

And while “nearshoring should represent a golden opportunity for a large manufacturing economy located on the U.S. border,” the Financial Times said that “López Obrador’s government has signally failed to capitalize on it.”

“The same is true of renewable energy,” it said, referring to a political initiative by the president to prioritize state-sourced carbon-based fuels over clean, renewable energy.

The Financial Times said that the Gray House scandal should have been “an opportunity” for AMLO to rethink his policies and to finally start to deliver on his election promises.

Unfortunately, the FT said, that is an opportunity that AMLO has let slide.

As a result, it concluded, unless the Mexican president learns from his past mistakes, his so-called Fourth Transformation government “risks being remembered as one that dragged Mexico back to the 1960s, rather than propelling it forward into the 21st century.”