by Miguel Toro The President Elect's transition period has been like no other before in recent history. Since the days of President Carlos Salinas and then President Elect Ernesto Zedillo in the mid 90s, no winning government had had as much support in the polls -for the Executive and Legislative branches -than this one. The very strong position that President Elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador obtained in Congress (where he has majority on both chambers) gave him great leverage to further his agenda since day 1 of the transition period. Instead of waiting for the newly government to be installed in December 1st, he started operating as if he already was in office. Since the first week, AMLO started nominating the different people that would become Mexico's new Undersecretaries and high-level officials. It must be noted, that the great majority of his Cabinet members had been announced since the beginning of his precampaign in December of last year, except for a newly appointed Foreign Relations Secretary, where former Mayor of Mexico City and AMLO’s successor, Marcelo Ebrard got appointed. For a full list of AMLO’s cabinet (updated weekly with the new appointees) you can click here. To inform of his designations for these positions, AMLO would hold a press conference on the street, at the steps of what was his campaign headquarters, instructing these new officials about policy issues he wanted addressed right away. In some occasions this involved taking matters to Congress, lobbying for things that would be actually discussed in the chambers until the new Congressmen and Congresswomen took office on Spetember 1st, while at other times, it involved setting up events that looked like official government events. One of these was the debate tables set up with local officials regarding the security situation throughout the country. The combination of these things completely took away the media and the people's attention to still President Enrique Peña. Outside of the continuing NAFTA negotiations, the current government became utterly irrelevant. Since his days as Mayor of Mexico City - where he would hold a press conference at 6 am explaining things he would do or wanted addressed -AMLO has been a master at controlling the media's coverage and the political agenda. Now as President Elect, he has repeated this process (albeit with 2 pm press conferences) and with it pushed policy decisions for which he is legally not able to do. For example, after a very dubious study on the ability of the Santa Lucia military airbase to become Mexico City's second airport, he decided he would honor one of his campaign promises and hold out a national referendum asking whether the construction of the new Mexico City airport should continue[1] or be changed to keeping the old one and creating a second one in Santa Lucia (with around a 100 billion peso loss for the government due to already having around 30% of the new airport being built in Texcoco). Not only he has no authority to hold this referendum[2], he said it will be held on October 28th, 35 days before he actually takes office. This casts many doubts in the validity of this referendum and also questions what kind of bias can be introduced in the process when he will decide the people organizing the entire survey. In a similar matter, since mid July, the President Elect ordered his future Cabinet members to organize concurrently with local-level officials a series of public debate tables regarding the insecurity of the country. The objective is to explore ideas of specific policies to be implemented in each place to try and improve the security situation of those people. The first of these of events garnered important media attention –mainly because he attended the first one in the border city of Ciudad Juárez –but then got shadowed by all of the other activities the President Elect is doing. An area where Mr. López Obrador’s transition team has paid great attention in these months has been foreign relations. Not only did AMLO’s designated Chief Negotiatior, Jesús Seade, participate in the NAFTA renegotiation talks with the Mexican team, but also Mexico’s next Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard has been very active linking the next President with other governments. For example, they received a big delegation from the United States that came to visit them that included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Then, AMLO exchanged letters with President Trump indicating his stance on different policy issues and how they could work together in the future. Furthermore, he also received Canada’s Foreign Minister and NAFTA Chief Negotiator Chrystina Freeland as well as Guatemala President Jimmy Morales in meetings in the following weeks. In October, Marcelo Ebrard will visit Japan to meet up with the CEOs of various Japanese firms and explain them some incentives AMLO’s government will offer to counteract some of the worse economic conditions for investment in Mexico created by the new NAFTA deal negotiated with Trump’s administration. In the NAFTA front, as was mentioned above, Jesús Seade was inside the negotiation rooms with the Mexican team transmitting the future government’s position on the multiple issues, in particular in the energy sector where AMLO has been traditionally opposed to market liberalization and investment from private firms. According to the Wall Street Journal, AMLO was not very happy with the inclusion of the energy chapter in the NAFTA renegotiation, but the U.S. was very firm in its interest in that chapter, and from what has been revealed of the U.S. – Mexico deal agreed last August 27th, the energy chapter stayed as it had been negotiated by the current Mexico government. Additionally, Marcelo Ebrard announced they saw they agreement as a positive step to reducing economic uncertainty in Mexico due to the renegotiation process as well as a good sign regarding Mexican worker salaries and trilateral dispute settlements. After the deal had been announced, Ebrard also met with the ambassadors of around 20 countries who are Mexican trade partners (mainly from the Asia-Pacific region) telling them that Mexico wants to deepen trade relations with them as a way of diversifying investment risk due to the U.S. government. Finally, with the beginning of the new Congress this September the 1st, it is expected that the budget negotiations clearly indicate AMLO’s policy preferences and agenda as he has sufficient votes to approve the budget without any negotiation with opposition parties. It is still unclear how many of the different changes he wants to implement will be pushed through Congress this quarter, but it may show how they will interact with the opposition parties regarding funding for States with non-Morena party governors. [1] Since 2014 there is a huge new airport being constructed outside of the city in the municipality of Texcoco that has been criticized by AMLO and his supporters for being full of fraudulent and corrupt contracts with government-preferred construction firms
[2] Binding national referendums have to be ordered by Congress but more importantly they must be organized by the National Electoral Institute concurrent with Federal-level elections.
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Manuel Franco
4/26/2023 02:01:27 am
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