Politics: Taking score after a full year of AMLO

MEXICO - Report 02 Dec 2019 by Guillermo Valdes, Alejandro Hope Pinsón and Francisco González

As President Andrés Manuel López Obrador celebrates his first year in office, there is an increasingly obvious disconnect between expectations and reality. The administration has scored some significant accomplishments, such as a major increase in the federal minimum wage and a positive overhaul of labor legislation. But the disassociation between official words and deeds is apparent on almost every level.

There can be little doubt that AMLO is serious about his commitment to rooting out corruption, but the governing coalition has frustrated attempts to activate the National Anticorruption System while also issuing hundreds of billions of pesos in no-bid contracts. Its draconian austerity and ban on government officials' assuming private sector jobs for a full decade are gutting public administration. Results are clearly negative in the case of security matters, as a militarized National Guard struggles, while state and municipal police corps are abandoned to their fate, and crime statistics scale historical highs.

On the level of social spending, the government has dismantled proven anti-poverty programs and has been unable to put fully into place direct cash transfer-based ones of dubious effectiveness but that are clearly the priority for the president, both in the public discourse and in terms of the budget allocated. The economy is idling, if not absolutely contracting, while the government has been slashing public investment and pushes ahead with controversial decisions that have eviscerated business confidence and private investment. And the degree to which the presidency is concentrating power in its own hands to the detriment of the other branches and autonomous counterweights is troubling for the future of an effective democracy.

Further aggravating all these problems is the extent to which the president has succeeded in polarizing public opinion and antagonizing everyone expressing any criticism, instead of looking for the broader and more inclusive support that will be needed at a time when the economy is just about to run aground, and insecurity is spiraling out of control.

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