On 10 August Mexico’s former president, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012), accused President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of seeking to distract public attention from his government’s failings in the face of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic by accusing him of having led a narco-state.
Analysis:
Calderón’s accusations point to a growing political confrontation that looks set to dominate next year’s mid-term federal legislative elections. The growing public perception that the López Obrador administration has mishandled the pandemic has increased the chances that the ruling Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) party could lose its comfortable congressional majority in the polls. It provides ample ammunition for the political opposition to attack the government and Morena. López Obrador seems to be to pre-empting this by accusing Calderón and his previous Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) administration of colluding with organised crime. But in Calderón, Lopez Obrador appears to have found a formidable political foe.
- López Obrador commented on the suspected corruption that took place under Calderón in his morning press briefing yesterday. Recalling that Calderón’s former public security minister, Genaro García Luna (2006-2012), is currently facing trial in the US over his suspected links to Mexican drug trafficking organisations (DTOs), López Obrador said that it is now clear that Mexico became “a narco-state” under Calderón. The president went on to call for the links between the Calderón administration and organised crime to also be investigated by Mexican prosecutors.
- Calderón immediately to took to the airwaves to reject López Obrador’s accusations. In a radio interview he accused the López Obrador government of politically persecuting him by trying to link him to corruption even though he has not been implicated in any existing cases. Going on the attack, Calderón recalled that he decided to fight DTOs head on by launching the so-called ‘war on drugs’. He said that the “absurd” accusations are part of a strategy to distract attention from Mexico’s high Covid-19 death toll and to “hurt those that they know can defeat Morena in the 2021 elections”.
Looking Ahead: While Calderón is in the process of registering his new México Libre party in order to take part in next year’s polls, the movement is already seen as the main electoral threat to Morena and López Obrador.