By Jose Hernández

In
2018 Mexico elected as president the previously unelectable Andrés
Manuel López Obrador an extreme left-wing politician.

Andrés
Manuel López Obrador, a former Mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to
2006 and two times unsuccessful candidate to the Presidency in 2006
and in 2012. He has been one of the most prominent figures in Mexican
politics in recent years, confronting the PRI structure in Tabasco,
his hometown, at a very young age.

Morena
leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador won the 2006 and 2012 local
elections. However, they committed fraud and hid the results, so his
reputation remained somewhat intact with his supporters. But due to
the ensuing media campaign against him, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
has a terrible reputation in some sectors of Mexican society.

The
President of Mexico (Spanish: Presidente de México), officially
known as the President of the United Mexican States (Spanish:
Presidente de Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos), is the head of state and
government of Mexico. Under the Constitution, the president is also
the Supreme Commander of the Mexican armed forces.

Currently,
the office of the President is considered to be revolutionary, in
that the powers of the office are derived from the Revolutionary
Constitution of 1917. Another legacy of the Revolution is its ban on
re-election. Mexican presidents are limited to a single six-year
term, called a sexenio. No one who has held the post, even on a
caretaker basis, is allowed to run or serve again. The constitution
and the office of the President closely follow the presidential
system of government.

Obrador
ran for presidency under a three-party coalition led by the leftist
National Regeneration Movement party (Morena) he founded in 2014.

Opponents
of Mr. López Obrador said before his election, his leftist
sympathies risk turning Mexico "into Venezuela."

They
warned that he shared the authoritarian approach and drive to
expropriate of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and that he
will wreck Mexico's economy in the same way that of Venezuela has
been.

The
worries by his opponents seem to be working out the way they guessed
and predicted they would. He has taken positive sides with the
sullied president of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, attempting to help
keep Maduro in power. Obrador support of Maduro, like all the
hemispheres 21st Century Socialist leaders is based on Socialist
solidarity, supporting wrong at the expense of the people.

Obrador
needed to test his standing with the Mexican people and to do that
first he needed to know how far they can be led or even pushed into
backing him through a crisis. So a crisis was invented around the
supply of gasoline to gasoline service stations. While doing that he
also wanted to keep public transport and essential delivery and
distribution services running, busses and those transport companies
essentially run on diesel and not petroleum. So diesel was not part
of the crisis, delivery of diesel to the gas stations flowed
unhindered. The created shortage in supply of petroleum was done on
the pretext that it was necessary to stop the theft of petroleum
spirit through the pipeline service to gas stations. Of course, there
are thousands of people in the know, if people are stealing gas via
tapping into the pipeline, people know where and by whom, so do the
authorities. So it would be a relatively simple matter of arresting
suspects and closing down such operations.

The
whole operation showed that the Mexican people are willing to put up
with disruption and hardship if they believe it is in a good cause.
Lining up at gas stations for sometimes 5 or 6 hours, getting up at 4
am to be in a line of vehicles queuing for gas was indeed a difficult
time for many, but no one revolted.

So
it’s now known that if the presentation of what appears a genuine
reason for grabbing industry and services to make them
state-controlled would be acceptable if the people are fed the right
story.

Giving
up salary, giving up the presidential jet, the president taking
public transport are all part of the plan of deception. As are the
promises of doing great things for the underprivileged, making free
education and extra university places a priority. According to Lopez
Obrador, he will fight for the interests of the poor, the working
class, the farmers, women, the indigenous people, and gay and lesbian
people, increasing scholarships for young Mexicans and expanding
social welfare programmes for the elderly. Perhaps most important
eradicating or curtailing the cartel which currently controls the
country’s finances even more than the government. He also promised
to resist measures that Peña Nieto set in motion in privatizing the
state oil company PEMEX as well as the electrical industry and to
increase sales taxes on food and medicine. It’s the same type of
rhetoric used by Chavez, promise them everything, give them very
little [sometimes nothing], until the country ends in the Venezuelan
style failure.

All
those kind of expensive promised goodies is indeed the road to a
Venezuelan situation. Many of his opponents were correct in their
beliefs, although the majority of Mexican people including the poor
and disenfranchised, even middle class, want to believe because it’s
human nature to believe, even an obvious untruth if it sounds good.

But
the real worry about such a man is what will he do after his six-year
term; will he try and get a change in the constitution to allow him
more than one term? That’s what Chavez did in Venezuela, through
what he called 21st Century Socialism. Despite Obrador’s promise,
saying he will not carry out expropriations or seek re-election after
this term in office.

The
people are actually being primed right now for the constitutional
change required to allow several terms of presidency. The
introduction by Obrador of giving the people a say through
referendums is in fact the introduction of a double-edged sword. Such
polls are in fact a significant facet of democracy if appropriately
used with a sincerity that most politicians lack.

Take
for instance the first trial of this ballot procedure, used in
stopping the development of the new airport at Guadalajara. The
people were allowed to make a choice through a referendum.

Obrador
said his administration, would heed the results of the informal
referendum that called for abandoning the current project. But how
informal was a ballot when the star political player had already
convinced the public to reject the new airport, despite it being
partially if not almost finished. The people did just that, they
rejected the airport, why? Because they wanted to believe the
judgment of Obrador, their chosen one.

Now
that is over, Obrador knows that he can convince the majority of
people to vote in a referendum to extend the time limit on his
presidency through a referendum, but of course a formal one next
time. A binding change on the constitution, it’s all been done
before in Venezuela. Remember this will not be Obrador seeking an
extension of his presidency; it will be by the people through a
referendum.

As
Obrador has privately voiced, “if the US president can have two 5
year terms, that should be the least I can expect.” “You cannot
expect me to complete my extensive programs in six years”
.

Like-minded
21st
Century Socialist politicians support each other, the Castro’s,
Chavez, Maduro, Obrador, they even believe their “great minds think
alike”.

Perhaps
more appropriate “if you lay down with dogs you will get up with
fleas”.

Good
luck Mexicans for the future, you will surely need it.

Jose Hernández

END

DISCLAMER: The opinion, belief and viewpoint expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinion, belief and viewpoint of iNews Cayman/ieyenews.com or official policies of iNews Cayman/ieyenews.com