In a fierce debate, which reflected the polarization that Andrés Manuel López Obrador sowed in Mexico during more than 20 years of hatred and degradation of political coexistence, a central point of the two projects was reached: private company leading development, yes or No.
Xóchitl Gálvez proposed giving legal certainty to companies so that they can invest, create wealth and be the driving force of the economy.
He pointed out extortion as the main obstacle for businessmen, a product of crime tolerated by a complicit government.
Claudia could not shake off the repeated accusation of being the candidate of a “narco party.”
Important fact: Sheinbaum defended what she considers to have been the work of López Obrador, but she refrained from defending those close to the President in cases of corruption in Dos Bocas and the Mayan Train, as Gálvez pointed out.
Economics was the center of the debate, beneath the insults.
For Xóchitl Gálvez, the oil rounds and private participation in clean energy generation must be rescued, and for Claudia Sheinbaum that was like mentioning a capital sin.
Claudia reiterated her support for the destruction of the NAIM.
He had no answers to the fall of the Metro, with a death toll of 27, due to lack of maintenance, according to the expert report. Not even the contaminated water in Mexico City. Nor to the growth of air pollution in the country’s capital, due to the burning of fuel oil in the Tula refinery.
Sheinbaum showed herself as the candidate to continue López Obrador’s energy policy, both in oil, refining and electricity.
Xóchitl warned that the historic opportunity of the nearshoring due to the lack of clean and cheap energy to supply industries, and to remedy this, he proposed reintegrating private initiative into electricity generation.
Claudia gave the example of the 4T’s commitment to the generation of solar energy with the panels that she installed in the Central de Abasto of Mexico City, and with the photovoltaic plant installed by the federal government, this six-year term, in Puerto Peñasco.
The Puerto Peñasco plant is a terrible example – as we will see this week – where a 1.6 billion dollar plant was built (which should have cost half as much), and will only efficiently serve the owner of the Vidanta group and its tourist complexes. in the area, already 62 thousand inhabitants. A robbery against the people of Sonora.
It has the capacity to illuminate 560 thousand homes. Why didn’t they put it next to Hermosillo, or Ciudad Obregón, or in Mexicali? Or instead of one thousand megawatt plant, ten 100 megawatt plants next to important urban centers.
Influencerism to benefit an economic ally of the ruling group is the response to this robbery.
The two made proposals, although Sheinbaum was not clear about where the money would come from. Gálvez yes: the participation of private initiative and stopping throwing money at Pemex, where 2 billion pesos have been allocated to produce less and pollute more.
Both insulted each other, although Claudia Sheinbaum fully justified one, which although it was an insult, was not slander: “The candidate of lies.”
To save time (closing time), I highlight three:
In this six-year term the economy has grown more than in previous governments – he said 3.2 percent. Lie: the current one has been the one with the worst economic performance since Miguel de la Madrid received an economy undone by populism.
Mexico will grow, in this six-year term, at most at an average of one percent (1%) annually. Against four percent of Carlos Salinas, 3.6 with Ernesto Zedillo, 1.8 with Vicente Fox, 1.5 with Felipe Calderón and 2 percent with Peña Nieto.
Salinas and Zedillo had the price of oil close to ten dollars per barrel. Calderón faced the global crisis of the financial system and an H1N1 epidemic.
In the tough year of the pandemic, 2020, the global economy fell -3.1 percent. But Mexico’s economy fell, with AMLO, -8.7 percent.
More than a million SMEs went bankrupt due to lack of government support during the pandemic.
Sheinbaum said that with López Obrador more jobs had been created than in the previous six-year term. Lie. The monthly average of jobs created in this administration is 28,616. In the last six-year term it was double: 57,819 monthly jobs.
This government has not gone into debt like previous ones. Lie. With Peña the public debt was 10.7 billion pesos, and with AMLO 15.4 billion pesos. For next year we will have the largest budget deficit in the last 35 years.
It was a fierce debate. Xóchitl gave his all and Sheinbaum defended himself as best he could, mostly with lies.
