The new year is looking bright for Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his party, MORENA. Despite a two-year pandemic that has taken its toll on other world leaders, his popularity rating remains high. After months of scuffles with the opposition, the recall election he promised to hold at the halfway point of his presidency is finally set for April 10; save some form of epic, unforeseen calamity, he will win in a rout. The year began with significant increases to the universal senior pension and the minimum wage. And as for MORENA, it is poised to win as many as five of the six governorships up for grabs in 2022.

Meanwhile, the opposition continues to flounder, with the Va por México electoral coalition fracturing in a number of states and little sign of a viable presidential candidate on the horizon. And all of this is before several of the president’s signal infrastructure projects are unveiled this year, beginning in March with the Felipe Ángeles Airport in Mexico City. In July, ribbons will be cut at the Dos Bocas refinery in Tabasco, which, together with the recently purchased Deer Park refinery in Texas, will bring Mexico two steps closer to energy independence. Pending the results of a February referendum, the Lake Texcoco area will be declared a natural protected area in advance of its transformation into an ecological park. And then there are the projects AMLO inherited from previous administrations that he is bringing to a close, such as the interurban Mexico City–Toluca train and the decades-delayed Barranca Larga-Ventanilla highway to the coast at Puerto Escondido.

But, however favorable the panorama at the moment, the dangers of a second-half slump are not to be underestimated. Fatigue sets in, ambitions become blunted, and the accumulation of errors and attacks weighs ever further on the scale. This is all the more true in Mexico, where the heavy weight of presidentialism is combined, awkwardly, with the president’s inability to run for reelection. Add in the recurring economic crises that have often accompanied the transition from one administration to the next and you have all the ingredients for a slippery slide into an early-onset lame duck period.