I'll take Louis seriously when, using his unique personal approach, he
wins an election (and effects some serious, radical social change) at
a school board in the Upper West Side or in some small town in the
Catskills. And I swear I'll repent and accept Trotsky as my personal
savior as soon as I see Louis become the indisputable leader of the
imminent communist revolution in the U.S.
Julio
Despite what you read below, I would still favor Obrador's election.
----
Mexico's poor believe in Mr Lopez Obrador. He drives a battered Nissan,
once offered to give his earnings to Tabasco's poor indigenous population
and started his term as mayor by imposing a 10 per cent pay cut on himself.
In office he gave every resident aged over 75 a cheque for 633 pesos
(Dollars 58) every month.
Yet the mayor also needs to win over international investors if he is to
avoid the market panic that Mexico has frequently experienced with the
election of a new president. Mr Lopez Obrador is proud to be described as a
leftist - but needs to be seen as one along the lines of Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva, Brazil's pragmatic president, rather than a demagogic populist
such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (see below left).
During a recent interview with the Financial Times Mr Lopez Obrador was at
pains to present himself as an economic moderate. He emphatically denied
speculation that he would seek to renegotiate the North American Free Trade
Agreement with the US and Canada, whose final stages will come into force
under the next president. He pledges to create jobs and economic growth
through large-scale construction and other public works projects. But he
says he would maintain the anti-inflationary policies that Mexico has
followed, successfully, since the peso crisis of 1994-95.
"Inflation and instability affect the poor the most, since they have no way
to defend themselves," Mr Lopez Obrador says. "In the case of Mexico, those
who have benefited most from the crises are those with the most resources.
The better off have more ways to defend themselves." A government led by
him would run the economy in "a technical rather than an ideological way",
he says (see box).
He does not believe that tax rises will be necessary. "Macroeconomic
stability is simply common sense," he says. The problem, he adds, is that
Mexico for the past 20 years has put "all the emphasis on macroeconomic
stability. What we are suggesting is a formula that can be summarised in
four concepts - macroeconomic stability, growth, employment and welfare."
Financial Times, May 26, 2005
