Mexico’s next president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO for short) is still three months away from taking office, but some of his campaign trail promises already seem distant, writes Ryan Mallett-Outtrim from Puebla.
Back in July, AMLO became the first left-wing candidate in Mexico’s modern history to win a presidential election, though he has to wait until December 1 to take office.
The leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (widely known as AMLO) won the presidency of Mexico on July 1 with more than 53% of the vote, according to a preliminary count released by Mexico's electoral authority INE.
With participation at 62.9% participation, Ricardo Anaya from the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) came second with just over 22% of the vote.
The centre-left candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (or AMLO, as he is commonly known) has widened his lead and is now 26 points ahead of his nearest rival, the right-wing Ricardo Anaya, for the upcoming July 1 presidential elections in Mexico.
In an opinion poll carried out by the popular newspaper Reforma, the candidate and head of the National Renewal Movement (Morena) got 52% of the vote intention.
The same poll showed that Morena will probably be the biggest minority in the House of Representatives, polling at 42%.
Much has been made of US President Donald Trump’s potential impact on Mexico, but one critical story has been largely ignored in the Western media.
Coverage of Mexico in the Trump era has been dominated by speculation over the fate of the stumbling Mexican peso, the possibility of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) collapsing and, of course, the wall.
Meanwhile, a seismic shift is quietly taking place in Mexican politics: the right wing is the weakest it has been in generations, while the left is seeing a historic resurgence.
The leftist political party led by two-time former presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will govern in areas representing more than 8 million people after Mexico's June 7 elections.
Lopez Obrador's National Regeneration Movement (Morena) took part for the first time in the mid-term elections. It won in six of the 16 districts of Mexico City, breaking the long-time hegemonic rule of the once popular Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) in the country's capital, which won five.
