As Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador nears the final hours of his presidency, a debate is already raging over the legacy that the Mexican leader, widely known as AMLO, is leaving behind.Limited to a single six-year term by Mexico’s Constitution, AMLO will leave office on Monday with an approval rating that never dropped below 60 percent.
Political parties that once dominated Mexico have been swept aside by the rise of his Morena Party, and his successor, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, won a landslide victory in the country’s June elections.
“Lopez Obrador is leaving power with a very high level of popularity, which is very different from what happened in previous governments,” Pablo Piccato, a professor of Mexican history at Columbia University in the United States, told Al Jazeera.
But Lopez Obrador’s time in office has been more controversial than his widespread popularity implies, and his final weeks in power have seen protests against a number of reforms that his government has pushed forward.
While supporters credit AMLO with dramatic reductions in poverty through policies such as increasing the minimum wage, labour reforms, and welfare payments, critics accuse him of eroding democratic oversight and failing to address rights abuses and insecurity.
“AMLO has been saying all along that his government represents a break with the past, that it’s a new regime,” said Piccato, noting that Lopez Obrador also saw his administration as a break with the pro-market political philosophy of neoliberalism.
“But of c …
