His plans to expand some of the social policies he implemented while mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005, such as a universal pension for the elderly, would benefit millions of poor people. Why Mexico's historic elections may bring about big changeīut will AMLO be able to deliver on the expectations he has created among the 30 million-plus Mexicans who voted for him?
Mexico’s new political landscape means the incoming president can bring about his ambitious social and political project dubbed Mexico’s “Fourth Transformation” - after independence from Spain in 1810, the reforms that institutionalized secularism in 1857 and the Mexican revolution in 1910.Īs AMLO repeatedly pledged during the campaign, his government will confront the entrenched interests of the “mafia of the powerful” in order to end the “long dark night of neoliberalism.” This is a powerful message for millions of Mexicans who resent economic and political elites and a former government they believed served the interests of the rich.
This shift of power is an unprecedented achievement for a new party and disrupts a long-standing political establishment. The PAN lost about a fourth of its deputies and senators, and the PRD became a minor player in Mexican politics, with only 21 deputies in a 500-member chamber and eight out of 128 senators. The PRI, meantime, suffered the worst defeat of its 89-year history. The President-elect not only got more than double the votes of his nearest challenger, his party also won five out of nine governorships and secured control over both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. “Morenistas,” as AMLO’s party members are known, won most of the positions open for election in July. AMLO represented the PRD the first two times he ran for president, before he created his own political party, Morena, in 2014. Just four years ago, Mexican politics were still dominated by three traditional political parties: the PRI, a mostly centrist party the conservative PAN and the leftist PRD. That’s why the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, referred to as AMLO, makes Mexico an outlier in the region and brings expectations as well as uncertainty. Where leftist governments are still holding on to power, they’re on shaky ground.
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