Mexican front runner presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador has surrounded himself with economists with mainstream credentials such as Gerardo Esquivel, a Harvard PhD who has consulted for the United Nations and the World Bank. Esquivel is one of those tasked with easing fears among the entrepreneurial class.
“What is being proposed is to seek a better-adjusted balance between the activities of the state and the market,” Esquivel said. “What we learned in these years is that the retreat of the state from economic activity and leaving everything to the market caused mediocre economic growth and poverty.”
Lopez Obrador promises there will be no expropriations or nationalizations, and says reviews of contracts under the energy reform would seek only to guarantee they were not won through corruption.
Prominent historian Enrique Krauze, who in 2006 wrote a scathing essay that labeled Lopez Obrador a “tropical messiah,” appears resigned to a Lopez Obrador presidency and of late seems more concerned with ensuring other institutions can rein in his more radical instincts.
“Let us vote for the presidential candidate who convinces us, but let us take care that the next president does not have a majority in Congress,” Krauze said in a video released last week. “Congress is the principal dam of containment to limit the absolute power of a president.”
So far Lopez Obrador’s lead over his rivals, positions the man as the front runner in the polls…