Politics
10:02, 02-Apr-2018
Mexican presidential front-runners respond to Trump tweets
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Mexico’s top presidential candidates launched their campaign close to the US border on Sunday, demanding respect after President Donald Trump again threatened to scrap a trade pact and erect a wall between countries.
Just as candidates were putting the finishing touches on their opening speeches for the upcoming presidential election, US President Donald Trump crashed the party via Twitter.
“Mexico is doing very little, if NOTHING, at stopping people from flowing into Mexico through their Southern Border, and then into the US,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. He also reiterated his threats to cancel the American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
The veteran leftist leading in the polls, Andres Manual Lopez Obrador, and his conservative rival, Ricardo Anaya, both hit hard at the Republican president, whose old pledges have made him unpopular here.
“Neither Mexico nor its people will be pinata of any foreign government,” Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico city mayor told a cheering crowd in Ciudada Juarez, vowing to take a harder line against Donald Trump.
“Let this be heard near and far, neither security issues nor social problems can be resolved with walls,” said Lopez Obrador, repeated his long-standing criticism of Trump’s planned border wall.
Anaya, who is locked in a brutal battle for second place with the ruling party candidate, vowed to answer Trump with a strong and dignified stance, and defied the US president's call to take actions on security issues on his own borders.
“Just as the United States is worried about undocumented migrants, Mexico is worried about gun trafficking,” he said. “Eighty percent of the guns used to kill people in our country come from the United States,” he added, in reference to a wave of drug cartel-fueled violence that has left more than 200,000 people dead in Mexico since 2006.
Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray also fought back strongly, saying Trump’s tweets were based on an “inaccurate news report.”
Source(s): AFP