On November 7, four days after Election Day, the major television networks called the US presidential election for Joe Biden. In response, many countries proceeded to congratulate the former vice president; others did not. Among those who have declined to do so is Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), a fact that has incensed the Democratic Party hierarchy and the Washington intelligentsia alike. For Texas representative Joaquin Castro, AMLO’s reticence is a “stunning diplomatic failure”; Representative Sylvia Garcia has insisted that “an extended abrazo from our friends in Mexico is in order”; her colleague Henry Cuellar preferred a more open threat, warning that the “slight” would be “remembered” by Democrats. Writing in Foreign Policy, Amy Mackinnon and Augusta Saraiva lumped AMLO in with the “strongmen, populists, and authoritarians” who still believed in Trump.  

For his part, AMLO was unmoved. “We’re going to wait until all of the legal issues have been resolved,” he said in Villahermosa on November 11, during a trip to inspect damage from recent flooding in the state of Tabasco. “We don’t want to be imprudent, we don’t want to act lightly, and we want to be respectful of the self-determination of peoples and respectful of the rights of others.” The following day, in response to criticisms, the president was more categorical: “We are adhering to our policy of principles, to our legality,” he said at his morning press conference. “And furthermore, we are not a colony. We are a free, independent, and sovereign country.”

From a strictly legal point of view, AMLO is in the right to wait until results have been made official. Although the American media has all but ascribed to itself the power to declare the victor of a presidential election (an assertion the New York Times was forced to retract in an Election Day tweet), that power in truth belongs to the electoral college, which does not vote until December 14. Congress does not count those votes until January 6, and even then, a member of the House and Senate can jointly object to any of the results. In the absence of a concession from one candidate or another, the arcane, undemocratic nature of the US system allows for weeks of indecision and lawyer-enriching limbo.