Mexican President Elect Makes Bold (Bad) Decision
The far left leaning President Elect of Mexico is putting his money where his life is. He is declining certain Presidential Protections and Privileges. According to The Guardian, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants closer contact to the voting populace. In order to accomplish this goal and to show his desire to remove the elitism from high level elected political offices, Mr. Obrador says he will not accept these privileges. I respect the intent of these decision and I love the message he is trying to send. But on a practical level all I can ask is STAY SAFE MAN. Those protections are there for a reason. They are needed in America and while I admit that I am not completely familiar with Mexican culture…use the protections just in case. I love the gesture but I want you to live long enough to serve the will of your people. It’s better to have the Secret Service and not need it than to need it and not have it.
He has just been elected commander-in-chief of a nation mired in an intractable drug conflict that has claimed more than 200,000 lives in little more than a decade.
But on Tuesday, Mexico’s incoming president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, claimed he would waive the right to close protection in a bid to stay close to the people.
“I don’t want bodyguards, which means the citizens will take care of me and protect me,” López Obrador, or Amlo, as he is best known, told reporters as he called on Mexico’s incumbent president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to discuss the transition.
Amlo, a 64-year-old leftist who trounced opponents in Sunday’s vote, was repeating an undertaking made on several occasions during his historic campaign – one of several promises designed to bolster his image as a man of the people who will rule for Mexico’s 53 million poor.
“I don’t want to go around surrounded by bodyguards. I want you to take care of me, I want the people to look after me,” Amlo told a rally in Hidalgo state in May.
José Antonio Crespo, a political analyst at Mexico’s Center for Economic Research and Teaching, called Amlo’s decision “an act of absolute irresponsibility”.
“It is a little demagogic to say: ‘I am just like anybody else, I have no privileges,’ when he isn’t just an average citizen, he is a head of state,” Crespo told the Associated Press. “A good part of the country’s stability and rule of law depend on his security and health.”
Amlo’s other populist pledges include:
