First came the May 27th cover story of the City of London’s flagship weekly, The Economist , ordering that the Morena party of “Mexico’s False Messiah … power-hungry President” Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) must not be allowed to win a landslide in this Sunday’s midterm elections. Other international media sewers followed suit. “AMLO Wants to Transform Mexico. An Election May Stop Him” the Los Angeles Times headlined its rewrite of The Economist arguments, on May 31. France’s Le Monde followed on June 3, attacking Mexico’s “hyper-presidency.” Two days before the election, June 4th, the sluice gates really opened: Germany’s Die Welt attacked AMLO for “governing ever-more like an autocrat"; the Wall Street Journal published its lengthy version, headlined, “Is Mexico’s President a Threat to Its Democracy?;” and, not to be left out, the self-proclaimed voice for U.S. “progressives,” The Nation, ran an equally long story: “AMLO Has Been a Disappointment to the World—for Mexico, He’s Been Far Worse.”
All of them regurgitated The Economist’s concern, that López Obrador could win a two-thirds majority in the Chamber of Deputies and enough of the 15 state governors to be able to change the Constitution, and that he would proceed to restore Mexican sovereignty over its natural resources and the primacy of the Public Good over private speculators, name a head of the Central Bank who believes that “morality” should play a role in its decisions, and continue to refuse to force his nation to give up fossil fuels, while building such infrastructure as railroads.
