Mexicans went to the polls this weekend and overwhelmingly selected Andres Manuel López Obrador as the country’s next president. The former mayor of Mexico City will be the country’s first left-leaning president in decades.
AMLO, as he’s known, comes to power amid record levels of violence in the country. In the last nine months, 132 politicians and party workers have been killed according to a new study by Etellekt, a risk analysis and crisis management firm.
As The New York Times reports, López Obrador has several challenges ahead of him.
The chronic ills that Mr. López Obrador railed against, propelling him to victory, now become his problems to solve.
Among them is corruption. On the campaign trail, he was short on details about how he intended to confront the problem, but said he would lead by example: His professed honesty and ethical cleanliness, he said, would flow downward through the ranks of his government and help change the nation’s culture.
He also inherits a nation reeling from rampant violence left unfettered by an anemic and corrupt public security system. More homicides were reported in May than in any other month since the government launched its current record-keeping system two decades ago, and 2017 was the deadliest year on record during the same time period.
Mr. López Obrador will also have to deliver on his promises to address widespread poverty and yawning inequality. He has laid out a development agenda that would drastically increase spending on social programs, including increasing pensions for older citizens, expanding educational opportunities for students and bolstering subsidies for farmers.
What are AMLO’s proposals to address these issues? And what will his relationship be like with President Trump?
GUESTS
Paulina Villegas, Reporter, Mexico City bureau, The New York Times
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