Mexican finance minister launches presidential run

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Mexican finance minister Jose Antonio Meade resigned Monday to run for president, with what many pundits see as the best chance to beat the current front-runner, the leftist firebrand Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Meade announced he would seek the nomination of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which is desperately looking to hold onto power as President Enrique Pena Nieto winds down his six-year term amid dismal approval ratings.

Meade, an independent until now, is not a member of the PRI and still needs its nomination.

But that outsider status may be just what he and the ruling party need at a time when Mexicans are fed up with politics as usual.

Mexico's Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade gives a speech during a meeting with members of the diplomatic corps in Mexico City, Mexico, Nov. 22, 2017. /Reuters Photo

With violent crime soaring, corruption festering and Latin America's second-biggest economy teetering on the brink of recession, many voters are looking for alternatives to the only two parties that have ruled modern Mexico: the PRI and its conservative rival, the National Action Party (PAN).

Meade, 48, touted his track record as a minister for both the PRI and PAN, promising a Mexico where "families will always have food on the table, security on the streets, quality housing, health care and education, a just country where the law is obeyed."

A lawyer and economist, he earlier served as foreign minister and social development minister under Pena Nieto, and was energy minister and finance minister under Felipe Calderon of the PAN, who was president from 2006 to 2012.

In announcing Meade's resignation, Pena Nieto praised him for "repositioning Mexico's standing in the world" as foreign minister and "strengthening our public finances... in a complex international environment."

"He's a good man, with a vocation for public service and a deep love of Mexico," said the president, who is barred by term limits from standing again.

Back-room politics

All eyes will now be on Pena Nieto and the leadership of the PRI, which would have to name a non-party member as its candidate for the first time.

The party changed its rules in August to allow a non-member to stand as its presidential nominee.

The PRI, which ruled Mexico as a one-party state from 1929 to 2000, has traditionally chosen its candidate in an opaque back-room process that ends with the president picking his own successor.

But this time Pena Nieto has limited room to maneuver: The percentage of Mexicans who approve of his government is currently in the 20s to low 30s, according to recent polls.

Many Mexicans both in and outside the PRI see Meade as the best hope to defeat Lopez Obrador, a populist whose enemies revile him as fervently as his supporters back him.

Two-time presidential runner-up Lopez Obrador, widely known by his initials, AMLO, has emerged as the candidate to beat next year.

His populist message has generated a swell of support in a country sick of all-too familiar problems under both the PRI and PAN: flagrant corruption, a disappointing economy and horrific violence unleashed by an all-out war on the country's multi-billion-dollar drug cartels.

But critics call Lopez Obrador a radical leftist who will steer Mexico down the same path as crisis-torn Venezuela.

The rest of the opposition is deeply divided, though.

Many political analysts have suggested Meade could bring the right mix of outsider status and cross-party appeal.

Meade was replaced as finance minister by Jose Gonzalez Anaya, who previously headed state oil company Pemex.

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Source(s): AFP