Mexican president defies leftist label in virus response

When Andrés Manuel López Obror won Mexico’s presidency after years of agitating for change, many expected a transformative leer who would take country to left even as much of Latin America moved right.

Inste, López Obror is leing like a conservative in many ways — cutting spending, investing heavily in fossil fuel development and helping U.S. crack down on rthbound flow of migrants.

As coronavirus spres through Mexico, president kwn as AMLO has rejected widespre shutdowns and pressed to keep ecomy going. He’s used pandemic to justify weakening environmental protections, and pushed for oil-centered infrastructure projects despite collapse in petroleum prices. He’s resisted both ecomic stimulus programs and expansion of coronavirus testing and tracking.

López Obror is resuming his tremark tours of Mexican countryside this week despite fact that country is suffering its highest rates of coronavirus infection and death rates so far.

After a two-month hiatus, López Obror returned Monday to on--ground tours of provinces. In Cancun and Isla Mujeres, he visited a Navy base and presided over a ceremony marking start of construction of a tourist train that will link beach resorts and ruin sites on Yucatan peninsula. His only concession to coronavirus pandemic is that he is longer wing through crowds of supporters, kissing children and receiving hugs.

When he’s t on tour, López Obror uses social media and daily press conferences to dominate news cycle and label virtually any criticism as part of a conspiracy. Many observers draw parallels to U.S. President Donald Trump’s communication strategy.

“y really are similar,” said Federico Estevez, a political science professor at Automous Techlogical Institute of Mexico.

When López Obror doesn’t like what statistics show, he does t shy away from changing m.

He recently suggested replacing gross domestic product, which hasn’t seen any growth in over a year, with a “wellbeing” index to measure “happiness?”

“We are going to ask people, t just about ir material conditions, but about or factors like spiritual well-being, and t just material issues,” López Obror said last week.

On coronavirus, Mexico says it is deliberately ministering very few tests for disease. Mexico has performed only about 250,000 tests for a nation of over 125 million, or less than 2 in 1,000 people, leing critics to say country's COVID-19 figures are greatly underestimated.

“ Mexican government, unlike many and perhaps most governments, has declared that its epidemiological policy has intention of counting each and every case,” said Hugo López-Gatell, assistant health secretary who is president’s point-man on virus. “We are t interested in it, because it is useless, costly and t feasible to test everybody in country.”

AMLO was confronted with a choice of expensive, probably ubtainable testing, or a quick expansion of hospital beds and choice for him was obvious: equip beds.

His single stated goal in pandemic is “that we t be outstripped, that re be eugh hospital beds.”

What’s more striking is information Mexico hides: figures on “excess deaths,” or patterns of deaths from previous years that could serve to tell how many people have actually died this year compared to previous years of causes like pneumonia. re is a two-year lag in reporting such figures.

civic group Mexicans Against Corruption said strategy of little testing “limits possibility of identifying super-spreers, people who are asymptomatic and spre virus massively,” and could spell disaster as ecomy re-opens starting June 1.

On ecomic front, López Obror views pandemic as an opportunity to deepen his drive toward a state-centered, nationalistic movement that is t beholden to international scrutiny.

And like Trump, López Obror has used pandemic to weaken some environmental policies. If oil — stuff that dreams were me of in his home state of Tabasco in 1970s — is going out of fashion, why t just cancel renewable energy projects that compete with oil? López Obror is forging ahe with building a new oil refinery, even as excess capacity builds around world.

His love of oil — he has cancelled electricity purchases from new wind and solar energy projects, in part to save government-owned fuel-oil plants from competition — was born in his first government job in 1970s. As he of indigeus affairs, he turned to state-run oil company, Pemex, to help solve lack of farmland in swampy homeland of Chontal Indians. He got Pemex to lend him a dredging barge and dredge up wetlands to pile soil into thin strips of land.

“ answer to understanding him is to go back and look at his hometown,” Estevez said, referring to small Tabasco town where López Obror grew up. “He’s never left that world. Biography does matter ... In Tabasco it’s all public investment ... that’s all he’s ever kwn.”

However, as rest of world turns Keynesian, expanding spending, Mexico’s president has gone to unprecedented lengths to cut budgets, asking public universities to give back part of ir budgets, scientists to donate some of ir pay, and federal officials to take a pay cut.

president has granted tax payment extensions, and inste relied largely on small loans to small and micro-businesses. He vows t to borrow a dime or even run up a budget deficit, a pretty inflexible stance given that Mexico faces a 10% drop in GDP and loss of a million jobs this year. And he has angered private investors with moves like cancelling new solar and wind energy projects, many of which are alrey built.

According to report by Bank of America Global Research “ lack of testing will likely keep demand for services constrained even when supply restrictions are lifted, making for a weak recovery. cleanest example is tourist-related services,” which are Mexico’s third-largest source of foreign revenues behind exports and remittances.

But while López Obror’s stubbornness has paid off in some areas: he successfully played brinkmanship to win a fraction of production cut that OPEC h been demanding. He got Walmart’s Mexico subsidiary to cough up $359 million in back taxes government said it was due for company’s 2014 sale of a restaurant chain. And López Obror’s popularity hasn’t really suffered; according to a telephone poll of 500 people conducted for newspaper El Universal in mid-May, López Obror’s approval rating remained around 58%, essentially where it was in late 2019.

Still, López Obror remains highly sensitive to criticism, labeling any call for reassessment of his policies as conspiracy against him, personally. He recently compared his critics to “buzzards,” accusing m of using coronavirus deaths in a bid to discredit him.

Civic groups say that information from death certificates — and anecdotal accounts of crematoriums running beyond capacity — suggest death toll from COVID-19 may be three times as high as official figures.

“y started talking about deaths, later y claimed we were hiding deaths, and later y went with scenes of crematoriums, right up to three, four days ago, y were talking about ovens being full at crematoriums,” López Obror said. “That is very perverse, very unethical.”