AMLO lashed out at Ernesto Zedillo: he remembered that he was the creator of Fobaproa and dismantled the railways

This Friday, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) lashed out at former President Ernesto Zedillo after last Thursday, the PRI said that the “populist” governments in Latin America have mismanaged the COVID-19 pandemic.

From the facilities of the 3rd Infantry Battalion in Minatitlán, Veracruz, where he led his morning conference, López Obrador stated that Zedillo's inheritance was to transfer the debts of bankers and businessmen to the people through Fobaproa.

“Well, it is to be expected. Who is Zedillo? A character who imposes him (Carlos) Salinas and then betrays Salinas himself. It would be good if you asked Salinas who Zedillo is. As far as I am concerned, I am very clear that it was the one who turned the private debts of a few into public debt,” he said.

He stressed that the former president emanating from the ranks of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) not only turned the debt of businessmen and bankers into public debt, but also during his administration the massacre of indigenous people in Acteal and the disappearance of the national railways took place.

“(...) The debt of bankers and some businessmen turned it into the debt of all the people of Mexico. Since then, about 40 or 50 billion pesos have to be allocated just to pay interest on that huge debt that is being inherited to the new generations. That's Zedillo, who did something else, I'm not going to talk about Acteal or the repression of indigenous communities, I'm going to talk about privatizing the national railways, the one that ended up with passenger trains,” he said,

“(...) Zedillo, with a stroke, privatized the railways, handed them over to two companies and still had the nerve that when his government ended he went to work at one of those foreign companies to which he handed over the national railway,” he said.

He assured that the former president thinks “as Salinas, as (Mario) Vargas Llosa thinks as (Enrique) Krauze thinks. They are part of the neoliberal conservative thought that prevailed and that was about to destroy Mexico and as people already know the damage they caused, they are upset,” he said.

López Obrador also disqualified what Zedillo Ponce de León said at the digital conference “Economic Outlook and the Future of Technology in Latin America”, organized by NTT Data, where he assured that the Latin American region is suffering from a “wave of populist and inept rulers” who have made a terrible management of the health emergency due to COVID-19.

After requesting that the data of those killed by the pandemic be published, López Obrador said that they are hard and sad data, but that they help us understand “to answer these corrupt neoliberal, dishonest; what he says, mismanagement of the pandemic.”

“To begin with, Mexico is one of the countries with the most vaccines applied in the world, place 10 and that is because unlike the government of Zedillo, characterized by corruption, there has been no corruption in this government and we have saved and we have a budget and we buy vaccines, 45 billion pesos in vaccines and we lift from the ground, as we they had left hospitals and we got doctors and equipment so that no one would be left without care and there it is, Mexico in 10th place in vaccines, because we haven't had many or deaths like in other countries,” said López Obrador.

He said that in the ranking of the 30 countries with the highest number of deaths from the pandemic, Mexico is in 25th place, while Peru tops the list.

“What else do you say, populists? Do you not think that it is populism to rescue those from above at the cost of the suffering of those below? . Technocrats say that what little is spent on the poor is populism paternalism... and what goes to the potentate is promotion or rescue.”

“We have a different idea, which is why I am proud to be different from those people and that is why I say, we are not equal and it is very well defined, they are two camps, they are two opposite projects of the nation and that is why I am not angry that people like Zedillo, Felipe Calderón (...) nor the New York Times, nor the Wall Street Journal. It is a bell of pride, it fills me with satisfaction that they are against us. If they were in favor of us, I'm worried... I'd say what's going on? It was pure syrup of pico that of the transformation, it's more of the same, it's catopardism. No, if Zedillo says that it is because we are doing very well, not a step back even to gain momentum, we are going forward and he has every right to express himself, that is democracy”, he concluded.

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