Refer Report
Approval rating maintained in the 70% range until the end of term
Her successor, Sheinbaum, is Mexico’s first female president.
On the 30th (local time), Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said goodbye at a press conference held at the National Palace in Mexico City. EPAYonhap News
On the 1st (local time), Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO, 71) completed his six-year term and transferred power to Claudia Sheinbaum (62).
President López Obrador founded the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), which advocates reform and progress, in 2012 and was elected president in 2018. It is evaluated as destroying the era when only two parties were in power, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, in power for 80 years), which was left-wing but then turned to the right, and the center-right National Action Party (PAN, in power for 12 years). He gained great popularity, maintaining an approval rating in the 70% range until the end of his term.
With the motto, ‘There can be no rich government with poor people,’ he implemented policies such as raising the minimum wage and expanding jobs to reduce poverty in Mexico. During the six years he served as president, the daily minimum wage more than doubled from 88.36 pesos (about 5,927 won) to 248.93 pesos (about 16,698 won).
According to a survey by the National Social Development Policy Evaluation Committee, a public institution in Mexico, the proportion of poor people decreased from 41.9% (51.9 million people) in 2018 to 36.3% (46.8 million people) in 2022.
During his term, President López Obrador implemented progressive policies such as labor sector reforms that promoted union formation and expansion of welfare benefits. Public projects such as airports, railways, and solar power plants were also promoted.
While President López Obrador reformed the economic and social sectors, the Mexican economy showed signs of growth. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mexico’s nominal gross domestic product (GDP) ranking in 2023 is 12th in the world, up three places from 2018 (15th) when President Obrador took office.
The problem of unstable security remains an unresolved problem. Although Mexico’s murder rate has decreased from 30 per 100,000 in 2018 to 28 per 100,000 in 2021, a bloodbath between drug cartels is still taking place in northern Mexico. In 2020, Mexican women held large-scale protests against the government as a survey showed that femicide (incidents of women being murdered for being women) increased by 137% over the past five years.
At the beginning of his term, the López Obrador administration declared that it would not suppress crime through violence, calling for “hugs instead of bullets,” but from the middle of its term, it strengthened military authority to catch crime.
President López Obrador is also criticized for arbitrarily pursuing judicial reform with the ruling party, focusing on direct election of judges. Judges have been on strike for over a month, fearing that judicial reform would lead to ‘politicization of the judiciary’.
Previously, he clashed with the judiciary several times in the process of issuing executive orders after taking office. The court ruled that both the executive order allowing the government to handle projects for public interest and national security without reporting to the National Assembly and the executive order reorganizing the security forces under the Ministry of Defense are invalid.
President López Obrador, who left the presidential palace in Mexico City the day before, plans to spend his retirement at his ranch in the southern state of Chiapas.
On this day, Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president, began her term. Since President Sheinbaum also belongs to Morena, it is expected that he will run state affairs in a similar direction to the Obrador administration in areas such as economy, society, and welfare.
Source: Korean