Many wonder why López Obrador began the most profound transformations of his Government in its final months, instead of at the beginning of the six-year term. All kinds of nonsense are speculated from the fact that he lost his mind to the fact that, motivated by sexism, he seeks to overshadow the beginning of Sheinbaum’s presidency.
What really happened is that the López Obrador who governs us today bears little resemblance to the one who began governing in 2018. Throughout his six-year term, the president collected successes and failures that turned him into three different characters.
Obrador I: the naive
The first López Obrador was the one of triumph. An optimistic character, politically astute, but still naive in the art of governing at the federal level. In the beginning, the president thought that governing was a piece of cake. The difficult thing was to reach the presidential seat, Obrador thought, but once there the government apparatus would begin to move in virtuous directions thanks to his will and work.
The recipe, according to him, was simple: reduce superfluous government expenses, eliminate corruption and increase the minimum wage. With this, it would be possible to obtain resources to distribute social programs that would enhance the domestic market.
The president talked about the economy growing at 6% and predicted all kinds of wonders. At the end of his six-year term, he said, the emigration of Mexicans to the United States would have ceased and organized crime would be in clear retreat.
He soon encountered reality. His first law, a salary cap for high bureaucracy, was rejected by ministers, magistrates, counselors and many other members of the judiciary and autonomous organizations who took refuge because they were not willing to reduce their salaries for any aspiration to make the poor first. It was then that López Obrador saw with amazement that the main opposition to his recipe would not come from the partisan opposition, which was defeated, but from the ranks of the government itself, through autonomous organizations and independent powers.
During the six-year term, the judiciary became the main tool for anyone who wanted to oppose the government and had the money to do so. Through amparo trials and other legal tricks, they tried to prevent all kinds of public actions: the construction of the Mayan train, the cancellation of the airport, the payment of taxes, the dismissal of corrupt judges, in short.
Obrador was partially or totally rejected for changes he proposed in terms of electricity, salaries, austerity, the national public security system, asset forfeiture, informal preventive detention, vapers, mandate extensions to the governor of Baja California and the minister president, and the violation of Cabeza de Vaca, among others. Seeing a Judiciary so abnormally active, those close to the president began to become convinced that it was a matter of time before he orchestrated a legal coup like the one committed against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.
Not only that, Obrador also began to realize something that some autonomous organizations had overly favorable pacts with private parties. For example, the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) allowed the charging of millions of dollars for gas pipelines that were not used and argued strongly that it was impossible to change them without Mexico facing protections and arbitrations. There was also the case of the Federal Competition Commission (COFECE) which, due to the ideological composition of its members, had reached the unusual conclusion that a public monopoly (which grants subsidized prices to the public) is as perverse as a private monopoly ( who charges premiums to enrich a tycoon).
To make matters worse, the plenary session of the National Electoral Institute (INE), led by Lorenzo Córdova, a fierce opponent of the president, changed the coalition rules in ways that affected Morena’s ability to build a majority in congress in 2021.
Obrador II: the stubborn one
It was then that the second López Obrador was born: a combative character convinced that it was necessary to reform the constitution to advance his agenda. Obrador raised the urgency of reforming the constitution in electoral and energy matters, but he did not have the votes to do so.
The president, stubborn, tried all kinds of tricks. In the second half of 2021, Morena attempted to negotiate the approval of constitutional reforms with the support of the PRI. In 2022, upon seeing that the PRI was not giving in, the governor of Campeche began to broadcast audios that incriminated the party’s leader, Alito Moreno, in alleged acts of corruption and influence. It didn’t work either.
At the end of 2022, the president announced a ‘Plan B’ that consisted of Morena stopping seeking to reform the Constitution, which required a qualified majority, and beginning to use its simple majority to approve simple legal reforms. Plan B also failed. The court invalidated one of the most important legal reforms, the electoral reform, considering that Morena had violated the legislative process.
Thus, in 2023 the president for the first time called Plan C. The objective was for Morena to win the qualified majority in the 2024 election. By February 2024, Plan C was no longer only an electoral strategy but a series of 18 reforms diverse ones backed by the president himself that were constantly talked about at Morena rallies.
Obrador III: the powerful
López Obrador never believed that Plan C would be viable. Based on the videos that were leaked with astonished faces, I estimate that, until the very day of the election, neither Sheinbaum, nor Mario Delgado, nor anyone within Morena expected that Plan C would be viable either. The overwhelming victory of 2024 took everyone by surprise.
It was the night of June 2 that the third López Obrador was born. Stunned, the president and those close to him had to return to the desk to chart the path forward. López Obrador and the president-elect negotiated that, of all the reforms proposed as part of Plan C, only two nuclear bombs would pass: the judicial reform and that of the national guard.
This is how in his last month, the president moved forward like a tractor in his most productive legislative period. His intention in approving both reforms, but especially the judicial one, is not to weaken Sheinbaum, but to open the way for her so that she does not suffer the same thing that Obrador I suffered. Of course, the implementation of the reform will be a cost for Sheinbaum in his first months of government. Obrador considers that this cost is lower compared to that of dealing with a belligerent judicial opposition.
For now, López Obrador ends his six-year term with infallible numbers in terms of poverty reduction, reduction in income inequality and salary improvements. It culminates with a territorially organized party and with social programs that reach 40% of families. And he leaves the presidency having destroyed not only his formal partisan opposition, but everyone who informally opposed him with legal tools.
For his opponents, Obrador has destroyed Mexican democracy. But for 68% of Mexicans, López Obrador is the best president the country has had in the history of its democracy. 73% of Mexicans feel that the next six-year term will be better or as good as the one that ends. Expectations for Sheinbaum are very high.
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