Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was opposed by Mexico’s business community in 2006 when he lost the presidential election by less than a percentage point. He’s trying to claw his way back into contention in this year’s race by wooing his old critics.
Out are campaign slogans such as “for the good of Mexico, the poor come first,” and in are pledges to balance the budget and protect the central bank’s independence.
The candidate who blockaded Mexico City’s largest business boulevard for weeks to protest his defeat six years ago, now says he wants to emulate Brazil’s investor-friendly former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The strategy is having some success, especially among business leaders in the northern industrial belt hardest hit by drug violence that has cost 47,000 lives since current President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug gangs.
“He’s realized that you can’t fix the world with socialism,” said Alejandro Gurza, a Ford Motor Co. (F) dealer in the border state of Coahuila and a former vice president of Mexico’s car dealership association.
“Businessmen were afraid he would expropriate their property. We realize he’s changed.”
The campaign is taking place as Latin America’s biggest economy after Brazil is showing resilience amid a global slowdown.
Mexico’s gross domestic product expanded about 4 percent last year and the government expects growth this year to reach 3.3 percent.
The yield on the peso-denominated bond due 2024 has fallen 56 basis points, or 0.56 percentage point, over the past six months, while the IPC stock index rose 2 percent, more than every major gauge in the region except Peru’s.
Opinion Poll
Lopez Obrador charged fraud in 2006 when he lost to Calderon after leading in most polls earlier that year.
Now, less than six months before the July 1 vote, he trails Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, by 29 percentage points in the latest Consulta Mitofsky poll.
The former mayor of Mexico City, who heads a coalition including the Party of the Democratic Revolution, was backed by 16 percent of those surveyed Nov. 21-27 by the Mexico City-based pollster. Pena Nieto was backed by 45 percent, while Josefina Vazquez Mota of the ruling National Action Party had 20 percent.
The poll surveyed 1,000 people and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
“There will be security for all who invest,” the 58-year- old Lopez Obrador said in a brief interview at a Dec. 22 rally in Mexico City. He has declined repeated requests for a more extensive interview.
Tainted Party
While Pena Nieto is the candidate to beat, his lead isn’t insurmountable, said Enrique Krauze, a Mexican historian and publisher, in an interview from Mexico City.
Pena Nieto, 45, the former governor of Mexico state, must convince voters that he represents a break from the populism and corruption that tainted his party during seven decades of uninterrupted rule until 2000, said Gabriel Casillas, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) in Mexico City.
In early campaigning, Pena Nieto has provided ammunition to critics such as novelist Carlos Fuentes, who said his “ignorance” made him unfit to run the country.
On Dec. 3, he struggled when asked by journalists at a literary fair to name three books that influenced him, finally identifying the Bible and attributing to Krauze another title written by Fuentes.
A week later, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, he didn’t know the price of tortillas, and justified his lack of knowledge by saying he isn’t “the woman of the household.”
He later said that he was referring to his “family context” and that the remarks shouldn’t be taken as an attack on women.
Vazquez Mota
Vazquez Mota, 50, may also climb to challenge Pena Nieto’s lead if Mexico’s economy continues to weather the European debt crisis and uncertainty over the strength of growth in the U.S., which buys 80 percent of Mexico’s exports.
“Doubling the rate of growth, which we are proposing now, would permit us, if not to totally satisfy the demand for jobs in the formal employment market, then to get much closer to it,” Mota said in a Dec. 29 interview in Mexico City.
Since October, Lopez Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, has met with hundreds of businessmen, swearing not to “take from the rich” and vowing to convert Mexico into a “loving republic.”
Among his supporters is Alfonso Romo Garza, the controlling shareholder of Monterrey-based brokerage Vector Casa de Bolsa SA and a board member of Gruma SAB (GRUMAB), the world’s largest producer of corn and wheat tortillas.
No Ogre
“AMLO for me was an ogre” in 2006, Romo Garza said at a gathering of business leaders in Monterrey on Oct. 5. “I was intolerant.”
Lopez Obrador’s pledge to crack down on telecom and other monopolies won over Fernando Turner Davila, chief executive officer of Monterrey-based Katcon Global SA, a catalytic converter producer with facilities in seven countries.
In 2006, the candidate “failed to approach the middle class and businessmen,” Turner said by phone on Dec. 21. “He’s corrected that now.”
A spokesman for billionaire Carlos Slim, who controls America Movil (AMXL) SAB, the Mexico City-based wireless carrier that has about 70 percent of the market, declined to comment for this article.
On Nov. 16, Lopez Obrador told the local radio station Noticias MVS that he’d like to be the Mexican Lula, while saying each leader has their own characteristics.
In two terms as president, the former union leader helped lift 21 million people out of poverty, while winning Brazil its first-ever investment grade credit rating thanks to policies that reduced inflation by half.
‘Strong Candidate’
“Lopez Obrador’s more moderate discourse definitely makes him a strong candidate,” Casillas said in a telephone interview. Still, the election outcome will depend a great deal on who Calderon’s National Action Party nominates in a Feb. 5 primary, he said.
Many of Lopez Obrador’s newfound business supporters are from the northern states, where the majority of deaths blamed on drug violence over the past six years have taken place.
Like his rivals, he’s criticized Calderon’s deployment of the army to tackle the drug cartels, saying he’d pull troops off the streets and address the underlying causes of the violence like Mexico’s poor education system.
Critics such as Krauze say Lopez Obrador’s makeover is a ploy and that he’s still a danger. They point to his campaign website, www.gobiernolegitimo.org.mx, which references the parallel government he created after refusing to recognize Calderon’s presidency.
Critics
The critics also say his policies are out of step with Mexico’s economic needs. Lopez Obrador was a leading opponent of Calderon’s proposal to open up state-run Petroleos Mexicanos to more private investment, a move that economists say is needed to revive the country’s oil industry.
Output at Pemex slid 21 percent from 2006 to 2010 as crude production slowed at maturing oil fields, while losses at the company widened to 81 billion pesos in the third quarter from 2.8 billion the year earlier.
If elected, Lopez Obrador says he’d reduce government purchases from foreign electricity companies because they charge high prices, according to a campaign video.
He also called in a video posted to YouTube Oct. 17, 2010, for the “rescue” of Mexico’s mineral wealth that he says had been illegally given to mining companies between 1988 and 2006.
Foreign miners with operations in Mexico include Vancouver- based Capstone Mining Corp. (CS) and Toronto-based Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd. (AEM), while Arlington, Virginia-based AES Corp. (AES) and Bilbao, Spain-based Iberdrola SA (IBE) own utilities in the country.
His coalition wants the government to take control of half of the country’s 1.54 trillion-peso ($112 billion) pension funds, which are managed by companies such as Citigroup Inc.’s Banamex unit and BBVA Bancomer SA.
Lopez Obrador distanced himself from the proposal in a Dec. 5 video posted on YouTube.
“There will be many people who will believe in Lopez Obrador,” said the historian Krauze, who coined the term “Tropical Messiah” to describe the candidate in a 2006 essay.
“He is no longer on the attack, he’s meeting with businessmen. But I think his concrete ideas haven’t changed.”
bloomberg.com
Out are campaign slogans such as “for the good of Mexico, the poor come first,” and in are pledges to balance the budget and protect the central bank’s independence.
The candidate who blockaded Mexico City’s largest business boulevard for weeks to protest his defeat six years ago, now says he wants to emulate Brazil’s investor-friendly former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The strategy is having some success, especially among business leaders in the northern industrial belt hardest hit by drug violence that has cost 47,000 lives since current President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug gangs.
“He’s realized that you can’t fix the world with socialism,” said Alejandro Gurza, a Ford Motor Co. (F) dealer in the border state of Coahuila and a former vice president of Mexico’s car dealership association.
“Businessmen were afraid he would expropriate their property. We realize he’s changed.”
The campaign is taking place as Latin America’s biggest economy after Brazil is showing resilience amid a global slowdown.
Mexico’s gross domestic product expanded about 4 percent last year and the government expects growth this year to reach 3.3 percent.
The yield on the peso-denominated bond due 2024 has fallen 56 basis points, or 0.56 percentage point, over the past six months, while the IPC stock index rose 2 percent, more than every major gauge in the region except Peru’s.
Opinion Poll
Lopez Obrador charged fraud in 2006 when he lost to Calderon after leading in most polls earlier that year.
Now, less than six months before the July 1 vote, he trails Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, by 29 percentage points in the latest Consulta Mitofsky poll.
The former mayor of Mexico City, who heads a coalition including the Party of the Democratic Revolution, was backed by 16 percent of those surveyed Nov. 21-27 by the Mexico City-based pollster. Pena Nieto was backed by 45 percent, while Josefina Vazquez Mota of the ruling National Action Party had 20 percent.
The poll surveyed 1,000 people and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
“There will be security for all who invest,” the 58-year- old Lopez Obrador said in a brief interview at a Dec. 22 rally in Mexico City. He has declined repeated requests for a more extensive interview.
Tainted Party
While Pena Nieto is the candidate to beat, his lead isn’t insurmountable, said Enrique Krauze, a Mexican historian and publisher, in an interview from Mexico City.
Pena Nieto, 45, the former governor of Mexico state, must convince voters that he represents a break from the populism and corruption that tainted his party during seven decades of uninterrupted rule until 2000, said Gabriel Casillas, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) in Mexico City.
In early campaigning, Pena Nieto has provided ammunition to critics such as novelist Carlos Fuentes, who said his “ignorance” made him unfit to run the country.
On Dec. 3, he struggled when asked by journalists at a literary fair to name three books that influenced him, finally identifying the Bible and attributing to Krauze another title written by Fuentes.
A week later, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, he didn’t know the price of tortillas, and justified his lack of knowledge by saying he isn’t “the woman of the household.”
He later said that he was referring to his “family context” and that the remarks shouldn’t be taken as an attack on women.
Vazquez Mota
Vazquez Mota, 50, may also climb to challenge Pena Nieto’s lead if Mexico’s economy continues to weather the European debt crisis and uncertainty over the strength of growth in the U.S., which buys 80 percent of Mexico’s exports.
“Doubling the rate of growth, which we are proposing now, would permit us, if not to totally satisfy the demand for jobs in the formal employment market, then to get much closer to it,” Mota said in a Dec. 29 interview in Mexico City.
Since October, Lopez Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, has met with hundreds of businessmen, swearing not to “take from the rich” and vowing to convert Mexico into a “loving republic.”
Among his supporters is Alfonso Romo Garza, the controlling shareholder of Monterrey-based brokerage Vector Casa de Bolsa SA and a board member of Gruma SAB (GRUMAB), the world’s largest producer of corn and wheat tortillas.
No Ogre
“AMLO for me was an ogre” in 2006, Romo Garza said at a gathering of business leaders in Monterrey on Oct. 5. “I was intolerant.”
Lopez Obrador’s pledge to crack down on telecom and other monopolies won over Fernando Turner Davila, chief executive officer of Monterrey-based Katcon Global SA, a catalytic converter producer with facilities in seven countries.
In 2006, the candidate “failed to approach the middle class and businessmen,” Turner said by phone on Dec. 21. “He’s corrected that now.”
A spokesman for billionaire Carlos Slim, who controls America Movil (AMXL) SAB, the Mexico City-based wireless carrier that has about 70 percent of the market, declined to comment for this article.
On Nov. 16, Lopez Obrador told the local radio station Noticias MVS that he’d like to be the Mexican Lula, while saying each leader has their own characteristics.
In two terms as president, the former union leader helped lift 21 million people out of poverty, while winning Brazil its first-ever investment grade credit rating thanks to policies that reduced inflation by half.
‘Strong Candidate’
“Lopez Obrador’s more moderate discourse definitely makes him a strong candidate,” Casillas said in a telephone interview. Still, the election outcome will depend a great deal on who Calderon’s National Action Party nominates in a Feb. 5 primary, he said.
Many of Lopez Obrador’s newfound business supporters are from the northern states, where the majority of deaths blamed on drug violence over the past six years have taken place.
Like his rivals, he’s criticized Calderon’s deployment of the army to tackle the drug cartels, saying he’d pull troops off the streets and address the underlying causes of the violence like Mexico’s poor education system.
Critics such as Krauze say Lopez Obrador’s makeover is a ploy and that he’s still a danger. They point to his campaign website, www.gobiernolegitimo.org.mx, which references the parallel government he created after refusing to recognize Calderon’s presidency.
Critics
The critics also say his policies are out of step with Mexico’s economic needs. Lopez Obrador was a leading opponent of Calderon’s proposal to open up state-run Petroleos Mexicanos to more private investment, a move that economists say is needed to revive the country’s oil industry.
Output at Pemex slid 21 percent from 2006 to 2010 as crude production slowed at maturing oil fields, while losses at the company widened to 81 billion pesos in the third quarter from 2.8 billion the year earlier.
If elected, Lopez Obrador says he’d reduce government purchases from foreign electricity companies because they charge high prices, according to a campaign video.
He also called in a video posted to YouTube Oct. 17, 2010, for the “rescue” of Mexico’s mineral wealth that he says had been illegally given to mining companies between 1988 and 2006.
Foreign miners with operations in Mexico include Vancouver- based Capstone Mining Corp. (CS) and Toronto-based Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd. (AEM), while Arlington, Virginia-based AES Corp. (AES) and Bilbao, Spain-based Iberdrola SA (IBE) own utilities in the country.
His coalition wants the government to take control of half of the country’s 1.54 trillion-peso ($112 billion) pension funds, which are managed by companies such as Citigroup Inc.’s Banamex unit and BBVA Bancomer SA.
Lopez Obrador distanced himself from the proposal in a Dec. 5 video posted on YouTube.
“There will be many people who will believe in Lopez Obrador,” said the historian Krauze, who coined the term “Tropical Messiah” to describe the candidate in a 2006 essay.
“He is no longer on the attack, he’s meeting with businessmen. But I think his concrete ideas haven’t changed.”
bloomberg.com
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