Politics: Inaugural festivities and the 4T
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s inaugural speeches and festivities shed new light on the thinking behind his project for the Fourth Transformation (4T) of Mexico. It has long been clear the project is to involve a change of “political regime” that would bring an end to a corrupt symbiotic relationship between the neoliberal political class and the business oligarchy, which is to be replaced with one in which the government will hold sway over the private sector. However, this thesis will be combined with a degree of pragmatism in an effort to avert greater market blowback. We can expect the tensions between AMLO’s dogged statist and nationalist vocation and his pragmatism to be a constant in the next six years. He will tip the scales in one direction or the other depending on the extent of his social support, the specific situation, the economic costs involved, the extent to which the private sector unites against the government, etc.
His new approach consists of re-concentrating power in the hands of the president rather than in the country’s democratic institutions for a very simple reason: the dimension of the proposed change involves a sustained struggle against powerful interests.
López Obrador distrusts the country’s institutional machinery. He sees the current bureaucracy as dominated by privileged and well-entrenched neoliberal technocrats who must be replaced with people who may lack professional experience and technical capacity, but are loyal to AMLO and his project. In general, the 4T’s realization requires a new control over all institutions, especially the autonomous ones, and any laws or aspects of the Constitution that restrict or contradict presidential decisions must be eliminated.
The government’s populist concept entails two additional political implications. The first is that society is divided between the good people (AMLO’s followers) and the rest of society ‒ conservative social actors and government opponents who see the 4T as a threat to their privileges. This view of society implies a governing style based on conflict; in order to serve the “good people” its is necessary to confront, control and defeat the rest of society.
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