“STUBBORN” is among the many insults that have been hurled at Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the veteran leftist who swept to victory in Mexico’s presidential election. He considers it a compliment. The man, known by his initials “AMLO,” kicked off his third presidential bid vowing to use his headstrong personality to fight for the change that so many Mexicans are demanding this election year. “I’m stubborn. It’s a well-known fact,” he said. “With that same conviction, I will act as president ... stubbornly, obstinately, persistently, bordering on craziness, to wipe out corruption.” Lopez Obrador is one of the most divisive figures in Mexican politics: his critics hate him as fervently as his fans love him. But his vows to fight for a “radical turn” in Mexico worked in a nation fed up with seemingly endless corruption scandals and a horrifically violent drug war. Lopez Obrador claimed victory in a speech late Sunday, telling supporters gathered in Mexico City that the primary mission of his government will be to eradicate corruption from the country. “Corruption is not a cultural phenomenon but it is the result of a political regime in decay. We are absolutely certain that this evil is the principal cause of social inequality and of economic inequality,” he said. “Because of corruption, violence has erupted in our country.” Lopez Obrador, a sharp-tongued, silver-haired former Mexico City mayor, won with more than 53 percent of the vote, with majority of ballots counted, according to official results. It is the first time in Mexico’s modern democracy that a candidate has won more than half the vote, and a resounding rejection of the two parties that have governed the country for nearly a century. The 64-year-old Lopez Obrador will be the country’s first leftist president in recent history when he takes office Dec. 1. Mexico suffered its most murderous year in memory in 2017 with 29,168 homicides as the longtime drug war shows few signs of abating. Perceptions of corruption have soared as massive acts of graft go unpunished. Economic performance has underwhelmed, prices have climbed, purchasing power continues to erode and salaries stay stagnant. “It’s a referendum on the last 12 years … on corruption, the drug war and inequality,” said Esteban Illades, editor of the magazine Nexos. “Lopez Obrador is the only one promising something different.” Lopez Obrador ran on a populist platform to break what he described as the grip that elites — or the “power mafia” — have on Mexican society. He said he would lower the salaries of top officials and give those at the bottom a pay raise. He promised to sell the presidential planes, turn the presidential palace into a public park and cut his own salary in half. A native of southeastern state of Tabasco – where he led protests against petroleum contamination and marches to Mexico City to denounce electoral fraud – Lopez Obrador is no stranger to voters. A father of four, Lopez Obrador has married twice. He moved to Mexico City and became mayor in 2000 – attracting attention for his austere ways and being chauffeured around the national capital in a small Nissan sedan. As mayor, he started programs such as providing seniors and single mothers with monthly stipends. He also appealed to the middle class by building elevated freeways. Lopez Obrador left the mayor’s office early to run for president in 2006. His agenda was putting “the poor first,” but he lost a tight election after attack ads branded him a danger to Mexico and compared him with former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. After he lost his first presidential election in 2006, he not only called the results a fraud, but also christened himself “the legitimate president of Mexico.” His supporters protested nationwide, and in Mexico City, they staged sit-ins and blockades. Some spent weeks camping out in protest with thousands of supporters in Mexico City. He alienated many Mexicans and lost again by a wider margin in 2012. After his second loss, Lopez Obrador also claimed fraud kept him from winning the presidency and filed a legal challenge to invalidate the vote. However, the nation’s electoral tribunal ruled that the demand to invalidate the election was “unfounded” and that Lopez Obrador’s coalition didn’t prove any constitutional violations or that the process hadn’t been free and fair. “In 2006, Lopez Obrador was identified as much more on the left than now,” said Emiliano Ruiz Parra, a journalist who covered AMLO’s 2006 campaign. “He’s been moving to the center and he’s clearly now in the center.” Details of some of Lopez Obrador’s proposals are still lacking. He expresses full support for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and promises cooperation and cordial relations with the United States – while also aggressively defending undocumented Mexicans living north of the border. “We won’t do the dirty work of any foreign government,” he said on the topic of stopping Central America migrants trying to reach the U.S. border. “Lopez Obrador wants to collaborate, but also wants our relationship to be more equal,” Olga Sanchez Cordero, a former supreme court justice tapped to be interior minister in an AMLO administration, said in an interview. “He wants it to be different, wants it so the Americans and us have a relationship of dignity on both sides.” Critics contend Lopez Obrador hasn’t changed much. He tours the country and mocks his opponents as “the mafia in power,” promises to strip former presidents of their pensions. “He has a polarizing discourse. ... He incarnates a social justice avenger, a redeemer of the poor,” said Fernando Dworak, a political consultant. “AMLO has had consistent strategies over the past 30 years that no one has known how to stop.” Scare tactics stopped Lopez Obrador at times over the past 12 years, but appear to be dissuading fewer Mexicans this year. Silvia Mancera has never voted in a Mexican presidential election, figuring the candidates were “all the same.” But as campaigns concluded for Sunday’s vote, the 33-year-old schoolteacher filed into the Estadio Azteca to support a politician she’s convinced will change Mexico: Lopez Obrador. “The country is on its head in every way imaginable: socially, politically, economically,” she said. “Obviously, he’s not going to achieve total change. But at least I feel like he cares.” Despite his long political resume, many observers considered Lopez Obrador an outsider and his anti-establishment stance has garnered comparisons to U.S. President Donald Trump. However, Duncan Wood, the director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, told CNN’s Rafael Romo that while Trump is an anti-politician, Lopez Obrador is a lifelong, professional politician. “I think that’s the single most important thing to say about AMLO versus Trump. But they do share certain characteristics. In terms of economic policy, both Donald Trump and Lopez Obrador are economic nationalists.” Wood said that Lopez Obrador had run a “nearly flawless campaign.” “He’s hit all the right notes with the Mexican people,” Wood told Romo. “He doesn’t want to be the president who kowtows to President Trump. He doesn’t want to be the president who sells out national pride. He wants to be a president who stands up to the United States. He wants to be a president who says, ‘We deserve and we demand respect,’” he said. The new president will have to contend with Trump’s threats to pull out of the NAFTA and his calls for the construction of a border wall between the two countries, among other divisive talking points. Lopez Obrador pushed back against plans for a wall in a book he wrote titled “Oye Trump,” or “Listen Trump.” However, his critics say he has an authoritarian streak and could be Mexico’s Chavez, referring to the Venezuelan president who led his country to economic ruin. When Lopez Obrador takes office later this year, he faces homicide rates that have soared to an all-time high. Critics have accused current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto of failing to adequately deal with crime, corruption and economic inequality. Pena Nieto could not seek re-election under Mexico’s single six-year term for its presidents. Lopez Obrador told his supporters he would convene representatives from the United Nations and human rights and religious organizations to create a peace plan for his country. “As of tomorrow, I will call upon representatives of human rights, religious leaders, the United Nations and other national and international organizations so that we can meet as many times as necessary to develop a plan of reconciliation and peace for Mexico that we will apply from the beginning of our new government,” he said.(SD-Agencies) | 