Politics: AMLO’s fourth annual report to Congress anticipates a complex political endgame
President López Obrador used this year’s annual report to Congress to tout his signature social programs and public works. His fourth and penultimate annual narrative of his own administration once again focused on drawing distinctions between his government and those of his predecessors of recent decades, which, in his opinion, bailed out bankers, sold off the country’s railroads and avoided building new ones and neglected Pemex, while his government supports the elderly, the humble dispossessed and will put an end to the country’s dependence on imported gasoline, etc.
But it is clear that the president and his political project are facing more of an uphill climb in his final two years in office. Just this past week it appears an even deeper rift opened between him and the man who has long held sway over the Senate as Morena caucus leader Ricardo Monreal frustrated AMLO’s efforts to impose someone more to his liking as Senate president. The Morena senate caucus approved a Monreal loyalist instead, but the incident underscored the deepening distrust between the president and Monreal, whom AMLO has blocked from competing for the Morena presidential nomination. The former Zacatecas governor might begin to act with increasing independence from the National Palace, starting with the upcoming vote on the National Guard.
It is hard to predict whether AMLO will try to radicalize economic policy and announce some other "nationalist" or statist initiative apart from those already taken in the energy sector. However, this seems unlikely given the current trade dispute with the United States and the extent to which he might risk major economic disruptions in the final two years of his administration.
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