López Obrador proposes package of constitutional reforms that are both a personal legacy and a campaign program

The path is clear. Four months before the election that will allow him to retire to his ranch, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday unveiled at the National Palace a package of constitutional reforms that represent both a legacy and an electoral program. The package includes policies that he believes in and those that he never got around to — or did not want to — enshrine in the Mexican Constitution when he had a majority to do so. The move comes during the final stretch of his term of office, with the electorate waiting for a message to go out and vote, because no matter how much it would like to push through the changes, the president’s party, Morena, will have to negotiate with the opposition unless it wins two-thirds of the seats in Congress on June 2.

The Morenistas will be satisfied when they hear the president’s arguments in favor of the poor and the Indigenous population, of raising the salaries of teachers, doctors and police officers, of ensuring a daily wage for the peasants and guaranteeing an annual minimum wage for the training of young people who are not studying and cannot find work; to return to the Federal Electricity Commission its role as a strategic public company, and to grant the people the possibility of voting for judges, as well as enshrining social and educational aid in the Constitution. That is, to “redirect public life along the path of freedom, justice and democracy.” They are grandiose words for voters who were expecting them. López Obrador also gave a nod to environmentalists with a proposal to restrict the use of water to domestic use only in areas with shortages. He also addressed commuter concerns, talking about the need for 18,000 kilometers of railways to make travel easier. Other items in the reform package seemed more populist, such as reducing the number of politicians in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate or not allowing any government official to earn more than the president.

And so on up to 20 measures with which the outgoing president is approaching the end of his journey and laying the groundwork for his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum. The campaign will be defined by an intense parliamentary debate that will play to the benefit of the governing party, leaving the opposition with the dilemma of whether to bow to negotiations in search of a position that will not affect their interests on the way to the polls. A few minutes after the president’s speech, the leader of the National Action Party (PAN), Marko Cortés, announced that they will analyze the proposals “responsibly” but also criticized the president for avoiding the most serious issue facing the country: security. Indeed, López Obrador barely made a passing mention when he talked about “severely penalizing the crime of extortion carried out by organized crime.”

Violence is the great failed subject of this six-year term that the opposition clings to again and again, as they did this Monday. That and the elimination of autonomous agencies like the INAI, which oversaw administrative transparency, or the Cofece, in charge of economic competition, among others. These will be the shields protecting the right in its fight against a government that seems intent on seeing out the term with the same vigor as it started it. The negotiations in Congress will capture the public’s imagination before they make a decision on who to vote for.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said it was “nonsense” that certain reforms — which they defined as attacks against the institutions — were announced precisely on the day of the Mexican Constitution. The veteran party also saw electoral intent behind the president’s announcement: “Morena seeks to engage the opposition in a sterile and aimless discussion. They know that they do not have the votes to carry out this assault on democracy.” The PRI announced their red lines: they will not vote against the elimination of independent agencies or “the weakening” of the judiciary. “Do not count on the PRI to destroy the country.”

Immersed in the celebration of the 1917 Constitution, López Obrador resorted to a patriotic speech, very much to the liking of Mexicans, in which all the heroes of the past were mentioned, including the martyrs of Independence and the Revolution, the makers of a great Mexico that, the president said, did away with more than 40 years of neoliberalism. And it was within that historical framework that he placed his own legacy. López Obrador hoisted himself onto that podium of illustrious Mexicans as the architect of a change in the mentality of the people, what he himself terms “the revolution of consciences.” “But it would be a mistake to get overly confident and miss this historic opportunity to reinforce our values and give the Constitution its democratic and social character,” he said. The opportunity has already passed, in fact, and now he can only rely on a strong result at the ballot boxes or else on reaching agreements with the opposition.

The message, therefore, was electoral in nature. What is not achieved in Congress may only be achieved by citizens by voting for López Obrador’s successor, Sheinbaum, who has guaranteed ideological and political continuity to everyone who cared to listen to her. And everyone shall be listened to, López Obrador told potential voters: “The students, the young people, the women, the elderly, the Indigenous people, the peasants, the workers, the artists, the teachers, the merchants, the small and medium-sized businesses,” he said, sounding as though he was at a campaign event.

There was, however, no trace in his speech of politically sensitive issues that might have caused him problems, such as the economy. The president mentioned the “important task” of combating inequality “with a better distribution of wealth, income and the budget,” but among the reforms he sent to Congress there was no mention of a tax reform, even though this remains a major unaddressed issue of his term in office.

The president’s proclamations were the same ones that he has been introducing into the public debate for weeks from his morning conferences, attracting criticism from the opposition, because they consider that López Obrador is overstepping his executive role and getting dangerously close to the electoral arena. Adding his policies to the Constitution — from a ban on consuming fentanyl to the use of vaping devices — is not just a way to enshrine himself as a historical leader, but can also be viewed as campaign gestures and even simple decoys to bring the negotiations to good port.

“You cannot govern based on the impulses of a capricious will,” he said, quoting Benito Juárez. It certainly does not seem like it’s a whim that is driving the president to propose these large-scale reforms, but rather a very calculated shot.

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