AMLO, Mexico’s president-elect, is sending worrying signals

SINCE WINNING Mexico’s presidential election in July, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist, has been in power but not in office. In October AMLO, as he is known, summoned Mexicans to vote on whether to cancel a huge airport under construction for Mexico City. A small sample voted to scrap it; he promised to do so, thus preventing the expansion of links between Mexico and the outside world. His Morena party and its allies, in control of congress since September, passed a law barring any civil servant from earning more than the president, who plans to take a 60% pay cut. AMLO will be inaugurated on December 1st (see article); the omens for his six-year term already look worrying.

Voters chose AMLO out of desperation, having rejected him as president twice before. Graft is rife, the murder rate is the highest on record, more than 40% of Mexicans are poor by the government’s definition and economic growth has recently been disappointing. In AMLO, a former mayor of Mexico City, many Mexicans saw a possible saviour. He fulminates against the technocratic governing class. He thriftily flies economy class, and has put the presidential jet up for sale. He vows to uplift the needy, curb crime and crush corruption. But he is going about it the wrong way.

The airport fiasco illustrates both his mindset and his methods. He has long opposed the new airport, preferring an alternative that is technically unfeasible. His consulta, administered by his party rather than the electoral commission, was a farce. Just 1% of the electorate took part. After AMLO said he would honour the vote by cancelling a project that is already 30% built and into which $5bn has already been ploughed, Mexico’s bonds and currency plunged. That prompted the central bank to raise interest rates on November 15th. Even before donning the presidential sash, AMLO has damaged the economy.

Some of his plans for fighting corruption and crime are counterproductive; others are alarming. His cap on public salaries will drive talented people out of government and heighten the temptation to take bribes among those who stay. Worse, he wants to create a National Guard, overseen by the defence ministry, to thwart criminals. Soldiers are terrible at police work. In Mexico making them do it is also unconstitutional, as the supreme court recently reaffirmed. Undaunted, AMLO proposes to change the constitution to allow it.

Good, bad or indifferent, his ideas will not get the scrutiny they deserve. By putting many of them directly to the people, he reduces the chance that congress or any other body will check his power. AMLO arranged a second low-turnout vote on November 24th-25th, which rubber-stamped ten of his pet projects, including a costly refinery in his home state of Tabasco. He plans to put the National Guard to another vote, this one supervised by the electoral commission, alongside two other questions: whether to create a council of businesspeople to advise him, and whether to launch prosecutions against recent presidents for corruption. The former is too trivial to vote on; the latter is the act of a demagogue. Societies that respect the rule of law do not decide by plebiscite whether to prosecute.

Not all AMLO’s ideas are bad. He would legalise recreational cannabis and give apprenticeships to young people, which might reduce crime. Centralised public procurement could discourage corruption. His chief of staff and the incoming ministers of finance and foreign affairs are competent. However, a president serious about fighting villainy would give more priority to strengthening institutions, not least by securing prosecutors’ independence from political influence and improving state and local police forces. Alas, AMLO seems uninterested in institution-building. Mexico has always had too few checks on the president, never mind a president with messianic tendencies. Mexicans may come to regret this.