There are elections in Mexico, competitive political parties, access to the vote and civil rights. In theory, the main indicators of a pulsating democracy. But academics have warned of an authoritarian turn by leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The scenario is especially worrisome in a country with a young democracy, which just over two decades ago lived under the shadow of a single-party regime, with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) dominating politics for 70 years. The rise of AMLO — the acronym by which the president is known — to the presidency seemed to introduce a catalyst for national democracy into the political game.
“Obrador’s supporters and team go back to an idea of revolutionary nationalism that we know very well in Latin America and that has among its characteristics the confrontation with elements of liberal democracy, such as freedom of the press and expression and political pluralism”, says Francisco Valdés, political scientist and researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
For him, the main example of Obrador’s populist bias and authoritarian turn was demonstrated with the recent holding of a referendum for the population to decide whether or not the president should remain in office until the end of the term.
The mechanism is constitutional and was, in fact, introduced at the beginning of AMLO’s administration, who defended it as a way of promoting direct democracy in Mexico.
The problem, analysts explain, lies in the fact that the plebiscite was not called because the population doubted the leader’s ability to govern – as the Magna Carta presupposes. According to the most recent polls, Obrador enjoys a 60% approval rating. The mechanism was activated mainly by its support base, driven by the leader himself, to give public support to his government.
Investigations by the Mexican press show that the organization “Que Siga la Democracia”, whose main leaders describe themselves as “workerists” on social networks, was the main driving force behind the collection of the necessary votes. In addition, many politicians from Morena — AMLO’s party — used public funds to campaign for the referendum.
The plebiscite, in the end, had no practical results. Only 18% of the electorate participated, when at least 40% were needed to validate the vote. Of the voters, 90% signaled the desire for Obrador to remain in office, but the very holding of the referendum fueled local criticism of the Mexican president’s government.
The leftist, by the way, criticized the National Electoral Institute (INE), the body responsible for organizing votes in the country and ensuring its honesty, which had expressed opposition to the plebiscite.
“It is part of an authoritarian project to increase its political presence and advance towards a hegemonic system in which its party no longer loses the elections”, analyzes Valdés. The political scientist’s interpretation is that Obrador erodes democracy not only by favoring the polarization of society, but also by attacking classic pillars of this political regime, such as freedom of the press.
Obrador chose professional journalism as one of his main targets in public speeches, especially during the “mañaneras” — the president’s long morning speeches. In them, criticisms of communication vehicles and journalists, recurrently called conservatives in a pejorative way, accumulate. The disdain for the press only exacerbates the reality of a sector that was already a concern in Mexico.
A recent report by the NGO Artigo 19 shows that, in the first three years of the Obrador government, records of attacks on the press grew 85% compared to the same period of the previous administration, under Enrique Peña Nieto. Last year alone, 664 attacks were recorded.
And the murders of press professionals are advancing at a gallop: since the beginning of this year, eight have been murdered for reasons related to the profession. Thus, the leftist government accumulates 31 deaths of journalists, the most violent period since recorded.
“López Obrador should have, as the country’s highest authority, the responsibility to stop stigmatizing the press and generate this climate of hostility against media vehicles that carry out investigations and are part of public scrutiny”, says Vladimir Cortés, director of the rights program. Article 19 fingerprints in Mexico. “The effect of this is carte blanche for further aggression.”
Cortés also highlights Obrador’s omission regarding government transparency. Also according to the NGO’s report, 40% of the statements given by the Mexican president in the last year were partially or completely false – a factor that the organization has dubbed “official disinformation”.
The director also points out what he describes as successive attempts to control the digital space, with bills —many headed by Morena— that affect privacy and freedom of expression.
Violence against the press, it is true, is part of a larger list of endemic violence in Mexico. When elected, Obrador promised to resolve this issue and the internal war with drug trafficking, factors in which he does not seem to have made significant progress.
Edgar Baltazar, director of investigations at the NGO United Mexico Against Delinquency (MUCD), says the current president’s administration has done little. He explains that homicide rates have not jumped, remaining stable, but at figures considered high.
Last year alone, the country of about 130 million people recorded 44,000 homicides, according to official figures. And the problems of impunity and forced disappearances persist — an estimated 95,000 are missing from Mexico, especially for reasons linked to the war on drugs.
Baltazar says that the inefficiency of combating local violence has a great origin in the militarization of public security, formed by few technical staff really specialized in large-scale investigations. “The National Guard, currently around 100,000 strong, has about 70% of the military in its ranks,” he reports.
He also draws attention to the uneven development of local police within the country, which leads to disparate levels of violence. “We do not see the existence of a regionalized strategy, which understands that Mexico is made up of ‘several Mexicos’ and that violence and criminal offenses have different dynamics in the country.”
Obrador, however, still sustains high levels of popular support. Valdés, from Unam, attributes the president’s popularity to the approximately 22 million people who benefit from the government’s social programs. Mechanisms of public control and inspection of these programs, however, were reduced, says the professor.
Shortly after Obrador was elected, the Swedish institute V-Dem, which develops criteria and analyzes the current state of democracies, projected that the entry of the leftist into power could culminate in two possibilities. One would be the strengthening of democracy, with more policies of social inclusion and political diversity. The other, at worst, would be the shift to authoritarianism, in a hybrid regime increasingly distant from democracy.
Obrador remains in power until 2024, a crucial period of time to understand the contribution that the political scientist from the state of Tabasco will consolidate for the young Mexican democracy.
