Hates Free Trade: Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
Source: EFE, via Yahoo! Mexico

If polls are right, Mexican leftist presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has probably taken the lead in Mexico’s upcoming presidential election July 2. If he comes to power, we will have a leftist on our border who’s going to be causing us a whole lot of trouble. He hasn’t said anything openly anti-U.S. that I know about, but that is likely to be tactical. He hates free trade and foreign investment but he says he wants to build a bullet train all the way from Mexico City to the Texas border.

What do you think he has in mind with this bullet train if he doesn’t like free trade and foreign investment?

He’s also an autocrat who’s believed to have met with Venezuelan dictator to Hugo Chavez in Maracaibo and, given his meetings with businessmen in the U.S., he is lying when he claims he’s never been abroad. He most certainly has been to California. But then again, maybe that doesn’t count as ‘abroad’ to him.

Still, I can see why he is popular. The Vicente Fox administration has failed to get rid of Mexico’s oligarchs. Carlos Slim, who’s one of them, and one of the worst, is now the third-richest man on earth. He’s got his hands all over Mexico’s once-public phone company, but he’s done nothing to improve service. He’s preventing new businesses from forming. AMLO says he’s targeting those people, like Slim, who are the number one problem Mexico faces on a daily level. You can see why his message resonates.

But he’s got autocratic tendencies, one of which is his stubborn insistence on not having to obey any law he doesn’t like. He’s repeatedly defied Mexico’s laws and dared officials to come after him. No one has. He has affinity with Hugo Chavez, no matter how much he denies it. He’s going to take Mexico backwards and when he does, that bullet train will be there to whisk away anyone in Mexico who doesn’t like it.

Boz at Bloggings by Boz just got back from Mexico City, and wrote about the voter sentiment. It’s an extremely valuable post and it can be read here.