Politics: Sheinbaum’s first year in office: a balance sheet of achievements and contradictions
On October 1, Claudia Sheinbaum will have been in office for the first 12 months of her six-year presidency. President Sheinbaum is riding high, with opinion polls putting her approval ratings at between 60% and 80%.
The achievements on some fronts have been real: a reduction in poverty and a strategy of frontal attack on organized crime that has even gained high marks from Donald Trump’s ambassador to Mexico and some hawks in Washington. Sheinbaum’s ability to minimize the damage from Trump’s anti-immigrant and tariff policies has also been widely approved. But the new administration is basically continuing the policies and political orientation established by AMLO, albeit with some nuances, particularly in terms of public security. Sheinbaum has consolidated the political, legal, economic, social, and cultural conditions for the Fourth Transformation and Morena to continue to wield power. She has done so by boosting the minimum wage by a real 12% and increasing the amount of resources earmarked for existing and new government support programs designed to solidify and expand the 4T’s social base.
Politically, we have witnessed an adjustment of the constitutional and legal framework to provide the juridical basis for the new authoritarian political regime that prioritizes the Morena party's indefinitely remaining in office. Chief among the measures designed to facilitate a greater concentration of power in the presidency and eliminate legal obstacles to the 4T’s constitutional modifications was the Judicial Reform. This was coupled with the elimination of autonomous government agencies. These reforms were harshly criticized in business circles for destroying judicial autonomy and thus jeopardizing the rule of law but occurred in the context of a weak, divided, and largely irrelevant opposition.
However, there are major warning signs on the horizon, as the negative cost for all these and other changes—for example, defining economic priorities, such as financially bolstering Pemex, on the basis of political and ideological criteria rather than profitability—can be expected to soon translate into lower economic growth.
On the political front, local Morena alliances with organized crime have intensified, and tackling corruption requires stronger measures. This would likely involve a major reshuffling of forces within Morena and potentially a conflict between AMLO and Sheinbaum, with unpredictable consequences.
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