{"id":129400,"date":"2018-07-02T06:29:32","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T10:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.countingpips.com\/?p=129400"},"modified":"2018-07-02T06:29:32","modified_gmt":"2018-07-02T10:29:32","slug":"mexicos-historical-election-and-obradors-triumph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2018\/07\/mexicos-historical-election-and-obradors-triumph\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico\u2019s Historical Election and Obrador\u2019s Triumph"},"content":{"rendered":"
July 2, 2018<\/div>
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By Dan Steinbock<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

For decades, the specter of Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador has haunted Mexico\u2019s ruling elites. After July 1, his coalition triumph – after years of contested elections – could change the country\u2019s domestic, regional, even international policies.<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

For a year or two, international media touted the neoliberal reforms of President Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto. However, as the \u201creform\u201d narrative has proved hollow, Nieto\u2019s approval rating has plunged from almost 50 percent to barely 10 percent. So the media narrative has been revised it by downplaying Nieto but focusing on the flawed portrayal of Obrador as Mexico\u2019s Ch\u00e1vez who will undermine Mexico\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s why the Economist<\/i><\/em>\u00a0portrayed Obrador as \u201cMexico\u2019s answer to Donald Trump\u201d whose \u201cnationalist populism\u201d offers \u201cmany reasons to worry about Mexico\u2019s most likely next president.\u201d Similarly, U.S.-based economic hit men and political risk groups, including Ian Bremmer\u2019s Eurasia Group, have framed Obrador\u2019s popular front as a \u201csignificant market risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

With few variations, the same narrative has been replicated in leading US dailies (Washington Post, New York Times), weeklies (Time and Newsweek), and the UK-based Financial Times<\/i><\/em>. Theirs is a story about the \u201cfirebrand leftist\u201d whose biography is \u201creplete with danger signals.\u201d<\/p>\n

What these ideological briefings will not report is that Obrador is neither an overnight phenomenon nor Trump-induced collateral damage. In reality, Obrador\u2019s movement is a belated triumph for Mexico\u2019s popular will, after decades of electoral fraud.<\/p>

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Change is coming<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

In the past six years, Nieto\u2019s administration has sold Mexico\u2019s public assets to foreign bidders and opened financial markets to speculation, while accommodating loyally Washington\u2019s policies. At the same time, corruption, crime, narco-violence and rising murder rates have soared. While neoliberal elites portray the past decade as that of rising competitiveness, market realities prove otherwise. Mexico\u2019s real GDP growth has fallen significantly behind its BRIC potential during the years of Calderon (2006-12) and Nieto (2012-18) (see Figure<\/b><\/strong>).<\/p>\n

But change may be at the door, finally. Obrador\u2019s coalition \u201cJuntos Haremos Historia\u201d (Together We\u2019ll Make History) rests on popular will, not on the needs of the oligarchic economic and political elite, or what Obrador calls the \u201cpower mafia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sectorally, he is pushing for the rejuvenation of the agricultural sector. In particular, he would like to develop the agricultural economy of Southern Mexico, which has been hurt by cheap (and tacitly subsidized) U.S. food imports. In contrast to Nieto\u2019s \u201cenergy reform\u201d – which ended Pemex\u2019s monopoly in the oil industry and brought foreign investors to Mexican energy markets – Obrador wants a popular referendum over the energy sector, knowing well that many Mexicans oppose are highly skeptical about the sale of national assets to foreign speculators.<\/p>\n

Figure<\/b><\/strong> Real GDP Growth vs BRIC Potential, 2005-E2020*<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

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* Mexico\u2019s GDP level as % of US GDP.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

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After Trump\u2019s inauguration, Obrador published a best-selling book called Oye, Trump<\/i><\/em>, in which he takes a critical look at the American \u201cCaligura on Twitter.\u201d While he is politically too shrewd to challenge Trump head on, he is not an appeaser like Nieto. And unlike Nieto, Obrador also had no hurry to conclude the Trump talks about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Through the election campaigns, he supported the delay of the renegotiations of NAFTA until the elections, to have a say in the final outcome.<\/p>\n

Obrador seeks increased spending for welfare, which should be a central political objective in a large emerging economy. He is also a strong proponent of cutting the salaries of the political elite to avoid penalizing ordinary Mexicans. He is willing to walk the talk: he has cut his own public-service salary, several times.<\/p>\n

Instead of pushing elite educational objectives, Obrador seeks educational reforms through universal access to public colleges and proposes increases in financial aid to students and the elderly.<\/p>\n

Like President Duterte in the Philippines, Obrador, having served in both Tabasco and as mayor of Mexico City, knows only too well how the ruling elite operates in the imperial metropolis. As a result, he is strongly for the decentralization of the executive cabinet by moving secretaries from the capital to the states \u2013 closer to the people that they should serve, further from the lobbies they tend to collude with.<\/p>\n

In contrast to \u2018law and order\u2019 candidates that in the past have colluded with the drug kingpins, he wants to restore law and order and thus peace and stability, in order to focus on economic development. He might even seek to negotiate an amnesty for the key narco criminals.<\/p>\n

Obrador\u2019s platform reflects popular will. That\u2019s why it has been marginalized by the oligarchic elites for decades \u2013 even with electoral fraud.<\/p>\n

Decades of electoral fraud<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

Born in 1953, Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, often abbreviated as AMLO, is everything but a new force or overnight phenomenon in Mexican politics. Starting his career in 1976 in the then-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Tabasco, on the Gulf of Mexico, he soon became the party\u2019s state leader. In this capacity, Obrador saw intimately how PRI\u2019s longstanding political monopoly began to crumble as domestic elites and foreign interests paved the way to Carlos Salinas\u2019s presidency (1988-94).<\/p>\n

Following a highly controversial electoral process and reported electoral fraud, Salinas who had been groomed at elite US universities, subjected Mexico to neoliberal reforms, which led to years of economic rollercoaster climaxing with the NAFTA. As a series of other presidents ensued – from Zedillo and Fox to Felipe Calder\u00f3n and Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto – they all promised economic reforms, war against drugs and a better future. Yet, each, despite different parties, shared a common denominator: neoliberal economic policies \u2013 which were predicated on the continued embrace of NAFTA, the expansion of cartels, and bandwagoning of US policies.<\/p>\n

Those were never Obrador\u2019s political objectives. He resigned from PRI years before NAFTA and joined the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), a social-democratic coalition that was formed after the contested election of 1988. Although early results suggested a clear win to Cuauhtemoc C\u00e1rdenas, the corrupt Salinas was declared the new president.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s, Obrador succeeded C\u00e1rdenas. In 1994, he run for Tabasco\u2019s governor but lost to the PRI\u2019s candidate. After the election, a supporter informed Obrador the PRI had spent $95 million dollars on an election in which half a million people voted. In 2000, Obrador became Mexico City\u2019s mayor. After more national exposure, he entered the 2006 presidential election, representing a PRD-led coalition of center-left parties. Obrador\u2019s \u2018Coalition for the Good of All\u2019 appeared to be winning until he was declared to have lost by 0.58 percent. That led to a massive, takeover of Paseo de la Reforma and the Zocalo in Mexico City, where protests endured for months.<\/p>\n

In the 2012 election, Obrador again represented a coalition of PRD and various labor and citizen movements. However, Pe\u00f1a Nieto\u2019s domestic and foreign supporters took a more proactive stance against Obrador\u2019s popular movement. Despite mass popular opposition to Nieto\u2019s perceived \u201ccorruption, tyranny and authoritarianism,\u201d printed and televised media, particularly the pro-Nieto Televisa, downplayed or left unreported much of the criticism. A few years later, Bloomberg discovered that hired Colombian hackers had been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Nieto\u2019s PRI to undermine his adversaries and manipulate social media. The election was contested, but despite post-electoral protests, claims of fraud, and Obrador\u2019s formal request to invalidate the election, popular will was discounted \u2013 once again.<\/p>\n

So Obrador left the PRD and founded the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) creating his current coalition \u201cJuntos Haremos Historia.\u201d He concluded that to win in Mexico, an alternative candidate needs a broader popular front. So he tailored his platform accordingly. As a result, this time around, his pre-election ratings were almost twice as high as his closest rivals.<\/p>\n

While Obrador\u2019s success has been augmented by Trump\u2019s protectionism and immigration phobias, his electoral success in 2018 is the direct result of personal integrity and political resilience.<\/p>\n

Toward sovereign Mexico<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

As Mexicans elected new president until 2024, they also elected 128 members of the Senate for six years and 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies for three years.<\/p>\n

If Mexico opts for a new direction, the consequences will be historical in domestically, regionally, even internationally. Not only the White House, but Mexicans may well review the role of NAFTA. Moreover, the drug trade that is maintained by mainly U.S. demand will be under new scrutiny as well. It is time; the cartel violence has taken the lives of more than 200,000 Mexicans.<\/p>\n

With more than 122 million people, Mexico is the world\u2019s 15th<\/sup>\u00a0largest economy and its 11th<\/sup>\u00a0most populous democracy; a large, emerging economy that could morph into one of the leading global economies by 2050. To win the future, one has to know where one comes from. Having written half a dozen books about Mexico\u2019s history, Obrador is acutely aware of his country\u2019s past, and the territories that were lost following U.S. interventions in the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century.<\/p>\n

Unlike his modern-day elite peers, Obrador\u2019s political idols reflect Mexico\u2019s decades of industrialization and modernization. He has written particularly warmly about Benito Ju\u00e1rez who had poor, rural origins but rose to national power and presidency (1858-72). Ju\u00e1rez won the War of the Reform and beat the French invasion. He was not an ideologue, but smart, pragmatic and \u2013 when necessary \u2013 ruthless. Despite his charm with the masses, Obrador\u2019s nickname is El Peje<\/i><\/em>, which refers to abasco\u2019s freshwater gar – an ancient fish\u00a0with an alligator\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Obrador seeks economic development. In his world, \u201cMexico First\u201d would be a poor match with a global economy. Yet, unlike Nieto and the neoliberals, he does believe that a sovereign Mexico belongs to the Mexican people.<\/p>\n

About the Author:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized strategist of the multipolar world<\/i><\/em>\u00a0and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see <\/i><\/em>https:\/\/www.differencegroup.net\/<\/i><\/u><\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

The original commentary was released by Difference Group on July 1, 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dan Steinbock For decades, the specter of Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador has haunted Mexico\u2019s ruling elites. After July 1, his coalition triumph – after years of contested elections – could change the country\u2019s domestic, regional, even international policies. For a year or two, international media touted the neoliberal reforms of President Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129402,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129400\/revisions\/129402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}