Politics: The rising toll of presidential mismanagement
Political and economic analysts are beginning to ask the basic question of how much worse the economic, health, and security crises can get and, above all, when and how the growing social discontent with the president's problems and mistakes will be expressed. Two developments in the past two weeks have fueled the discussion around these questions without providing convincing and definitive answers.
Mexico reported its one millionth case of Covid-19, surpassing the 100,000 fatality count without there ever having been a moment since the first patient was reported at the end of February that the authorities were getting a handle on the pandemic. On the contrary, we have seen a clear uptick in both infections and deaths in the past few weeks. Contradictory statements from top officials as to whether the spread is being contained or is raging out of control have laid bare major differences of opinion within the administration, with the government seeming to have settled on maintaining the illusion it has the pandemic under control by manipulating the data until vaccines arrive next year, when the government will face an entirely new challenge.
The root cause of many of the AMLO administration’s mistakes can be traced to his insistence on concentrating power directly in his own hands while displaying a striking lack of familiarity with many of the issues on which he calls the shots, often without so much as notifying, much less consulting with, the corresponding officials in his own cabinet. That dysfunctional combination is further magnified by the highly ideological lens through which he addresses key matters, most notably energy policy, and his tendency to lash out rather than give consideration to any criticism.
And it was on display in the second major problem of the past weeks: massive flooding in AMLO’s home state of Tabasco as a result of a “miscalculation” that, by the president’s own admission, consciously sacrificed the wellbeing of the “poorest of the poor” to spare the state capital and, above all, the president’s beloved Dos Bocas refinery complex. The mutual recriminations among prominent 4T state and federal officials only aggravated the media and policy disasters.
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