In Mexico, AMLO Has a Renewed Mandate for Radical Change
Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s governing MORENA Party won the midterm elections last month. Now in its second term, it must deliver on the transformative agenda its voters expect.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador gives a thumbs-up after voting in Mexico’s midterm elections on June 6, 2021. (Manuel Velasquez / Getty Images)
On June 6, the MORENA coalition won the midterm elections in Mexico, holding its majority in Congress and seizing eleven statehouses, nineteen legislatures, and over three hundred municipalities. The victory ensured that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) will have a legislative majority for the rest of his six-year presidency, as well as see the party he founded govern a much larger swath of the country at the state and local level.
The task now facing MORENA is how to convert the momentum of the recent victories into a transformative agenda that, rejecting the temptation to leave its best game in the first half, moves forward in those areas where it has so far fallen short. Following is a (non-exhaustive) list of areas where action is urgently needed.
Tax Reform
The government’s own figures tell the story of a rigged tax system, where the rich pay pocket change and leave everyone else to cough up. While large earners paid an effective income tax rate of 1.3 percent in 2020 — even less than the year before — everyone else wound up on the hook for an average rate of 25.4 percent. And while the AMLO administration has made progress in getting corporations to pay back taxes and thus succeed in increasing revenues, the president himself has continued to double down on his refusal to raise taxes, despite longstanding rumors of a fiscal reform to come in the second half of his presidency.
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