As Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador nears the ultimate hours of his presidency, a debate is already raging over the legacy that the Mexican chief, extensively referred to as AMLO, is forsaking.
Restricted to a single six-year time period by Mexico’s Structure, AMLO will depart workplace on Monday with an approval score that by no means dropped beneath 60 p.c.
Political events that when dominated Mexico have been swept apart by the rise of his Morena Celebration, and his successor, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, won a landslide victory within the nation’s June elections.
“Lopez Obrador is leaving energy with a really excessive stage of recognition, which may be very totally different from what occurred in earlier governments,” Pablo Piccato, a professor of Mexican historical past at Columbia College in the US, informed Al Jazeera.
However Lopez Obrador’s time in office has been extra controversial than his widespread recognition implies, and his ultimate weeks in energy have seen protests towards plenty of reforms that his authorities has pushed ahead.
Whereas supporters credit score AMLO with dramatic reductions in poverty by way of insurance policies equivalent to growing the minimal wage, labour reforms, and welfare funds, critics accuse him of eroding democratic oversight and failing to deal with rights abuses and insecurity.
“AMLO has been saying all alongside that his authorities represents a break with the previous, that it’s a brand new regime,” mentioned Piccato, noting that Lopez Obrador additionally noticed his administration as a break with the pro-market political philosophy of neoliberalism.
“However in fact, issues should not so easy.”
Reductions in poverty
Lopez Obrador usually says that his authorities has ushered in a “fourth transformation”.
That successfully compares his tenure as president to earlier durations within the nation’s historical past – independence from Spain, an period of liberal reform, and the Mexican Revolution – that basically remodeled Mexico.
Supporters level to financial adjustments which have taken place throughout AMLO’s time period as proof that his administration ushered in one other historic break with the past.
“Probably the most constructive space of AMLO’s administration has been labour reforms and poverty and inequality discount,” Viri Rios, a Mexican educational and analyst, informed Al Jazeera. “About 5.1 million individuals left poverty behind between 2018 and 2022, a very powerful discount in poverty in additional than 20 years.”
She additionally famous that the president ushered in a collection of financial insurance policies, equivalent to doubling the nation’s minimal wage and tripling it in areas close to the border with the US the place many corporations arrange manufacturing services. His authorities additionally instituted labour reforms that facilitated unionisation efforts.
However whereas AMLO has positioned himself as a champion of the poor who has challenged the nation’s institution and enterprise pursuits, others in Mexico debate simply how transformative his adjustments have been.
Whereas Lopez Obrador has expanded programmes equivalent to pension funds and money transfers, Mexico’s social spending stays the bottom of all OECD international locations. Fiscal coverage within the nation additionally stays comparatively restrained.
“If you happen to take a look at the quantity of taxes Mexico collects as factors of GDP, it’s about 16 p.c. That’s a decrease price than the Bahamas,” mentioned Rios. “There may be not sufficient tax assortment, and AMLO didn’t deal with that.”
Ongoing safety points
On problems with crime and safety, Lopez Obrador has outlined his success when it comes to continuity reasonably than change. Whereas family members of the nation’s disappeared proceed to seek for justice and Mexicans endure from gorgeous charges of violence, AMLO argues that developments have remained largely steady beneath his watch.
Information from the World Financial institution reveals that the nation’s homicide price fell from 30 per 100,000 individuals in 2018 when AMLO entered workplace, to twenty-eight per 100,000 individuals in 2021. In 2022, Mexico recorded 32,223 murders, a virtually 10 p.c drop from the earlier 12 months.
These figures, nonetheless, nonetheless underscore an oppressive actuality confronted by many Mexicans.
A 2024 ballot by the Nationwide Institute of Statistics and Geography discovered that greater than 73 p.c of individuals reported feeling insecure, with almost 22 p.c saying there have been homicides within the space the place they lived.
Accountability for the perpetrators of violence – by legal teams and the state itself – can also be uncommon, with almost 95 p.c of homicides going unsolved.
AMLO had initially campaigned on a promise to maneuver away from the militarised strategy to preventing crime that prompted violence to skyrocket beneath earlier governments.
However removed from rolling again militarisation, Lopez Obrador has expanded the army’s energy over public safety and recruited the military to assist with infrastructure tasks and administrative duties, even granting it management over ports and airways.
Final Wednesday, Mexico’s Senate handed a controversial invoice putting the Nationwide Guard, beforehand beneath nominal civilian management, within the palms of the army.
“Anybody within the Nationwide Guard might be topic solely to army justice, with their very own tribunals, the army justice system’s prosecutors, and selections and sentences that won’t be made public,” Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America research on the Council on International Relations, a US-based think-tank, informed Al Jazeera.
“The army, by way of its operational management of the Nationwide Guard, will probably have a sure diploma of veto energy over safety selections by civilian leaders,” he added.
A divisive fashion
The president’s rising ties with the army have additionally put him at odds with advocates for the country’s disappeared.
By the federal government’s conservative estimate, 113,000 individuals stay lacking in Mexico, lots of them victims of legal teams, state safety forces, or each.
As a candidate, Lopez Obrador had promised accountability for abuses, such because the disappearance of 43 students from a instructor’s school in Ayotzinapa in 2014. Worldwide investigators accused the army of obstructing investigations and enjoying a attainable function in what occurred.
However as soon as in workplace, AMLO has upset activists and kin of the lacking by backing the army’s model of occasions – a place that has sparked widespread anger and protests.
He additionally introduced that his authorities would reassess the official variety of lacking individuals in Mexico, calling the present figures implausibly excessive. Human rights teams and advocates say they’re a possible undercount.
“The dispute over Ayotzinapa broke relationships between victims and the president. That was when this attainable alliance was damaged,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor of coverage and authorities at George Mason College, informed Al Jazeera.
Volunteers who organise efforts to search for the our bodies of lacking family members even got here beneath assault by AMLO, who accused the searchers of being motivated by “a delirium of necrophilia”.
That comment is typical of Lopez Obrador’s combative fashion of speech, which critics say has contributed to a rising sense of polarisation in Mexican politics.
“AMLO always talks negatively about his opposition, the press, civil society, even human rights establishments,” mentioned Rios, the tutorial. “He has a really vocal approach of confronting whoever opposes his agenda.”
Contentious reforms
That polarisation has been on show throughout Lopez Obrador’s ultimate weeks in workplace, because the legislature pushed by way of a series of reforms lengthy sought by the president.
Probably the most contentious by far was a constitutional change that can make judges stand for election.
Critics mentioned the transfer will politicise the judiciary and erode democratic checks and balances, whereas supporters argued it can make judges extra accountable to the individuals.
The ultimate vote passed off earlier this month after protesters broke into the Senate chamber, disrupting proceedings and chanting “the judiciary isn’t going to fall!”
The invoice handed within the Senate on September 11 by a margin of 86 to 41, clearing what was seen because the reform’s most vital hurdle.
That was not the primary time AMLO’s critics have accused him of consolidating management over unbiased establishments. Final 12 months, protesters additionally took to the streets in opposition to adjustments to the Nationwide Electoral Institute (INE), which oversees Mexican elections.
However whereas critics see a development of democratic backsliding and the destruction of institutional independence, AMLO and his supporters have pitched the reforms as a part of a battle towards entrenched, highly effective pursuits.
“The regime of corruption and privileges every day is being left farther previously and a real democracy and true rule of regulation are being constructed,” Sheinbaum, Lopez Obrador’s successor, mentioned in a social media publish celebrating the passage of the judicial reforms.
Now, as AMLO prepares to depart workplace, each his followers and detractors imagine Lopez Obrador’s imaginative and prescient of politics will proceed to form the course of the nation.
Along with his Morena Celebration securing supermajorities in Congress and Sheinbaum making ready to take his place, the outgoing president’s most enduring legacy might be the realignment of Mexican politics that has taken place beneath his watch.
“Beforehand, a number of events have been in energy and no occasion had full management of Congress. Now Lopez Obrador’s occasion has been capable of set up a supermajority, ” mentioned Piccato. “That’s one thing new, and lots of people are very involved about that.”