No president in modern Mexican history has enjoyed as much of a mandate as Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It is a shame he is so determined to invest it in a quest to dismantle the much-admired democratic institution that made his election possible in the first place.
Since the landslide election in 2018 that swept the populist former mayor of Mexico City and his Morena opposition movement into power, “AMLO” has sought to take his country back into the 20th century, back to the heyday of a highly centralized system with an omnipotent presidency at its pinnacle. Back, in other words, to a Mexico that looks very much like the authoritarian country the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, ruled for seven decades, with López Obrador and his “Fourth Transformation” disciples adopting the role of the old PRI establishment.
López Obrador spent his formative political years in the bosom of the PRI, from which he broke away to become a leading opposition figure on the left. After the PRI lost its monopolistic hold on the presidency in 2000, he lost a close presidential election in 2006 and a not-so-close race in 2012, before finally prevailing in 2018.
