Ernesto Zedillo responds to López Obrador's criticism: “Every time a politician wants to insult someone, he calls them neoliberal”

In his public reappearance in Mexico after several years, former President Ernesto Zedillo (1995-2001) responded this Wednesday in a veiled manner to the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had recently criticized, above all, the economic policy of that last PRI government. before opening.

As a keynote speaker at a business forum, along with the former president of Spain José María Aznar, he avoided at all costs referring directly to the Mexican president.

However, the central axis of his presentation has been the risk of populist governments.

“Every time a politician who doesn't understand some things and wants to insult someone calls them neoliberal,” he launched at the beginning of his presentation and maintained that line for almost an hour of the talk.

To finish off his keynote speech, the former president called on citizens to defend democracy and stop “the advance of populist regimes.”

“To have democracy, we need to have citizens who believe in democracy, we cannot have cult followers, retrograde fanatics” was the last arrow fired by the former president.

Zedillo was received with applause that became a constant in his participation in the Actinver forum, held in a former hacienda to the west of Mexico City.

The former president clarified that “he doesn't have the neoliberal bag because since he was a child he declared himself liberal, nineteenth-century, classic and traditional,” he told the attendees.

The allusions to López Obrador were constant without being direct.

“What has happened in our time is that they have learned how the system works.

They like democracy until it gives them the opportunity to access power and once they access power they set themselves the goal of eroding it.

It is a very serious problem, because the way to access it through democracy is through deception, demagoguery, populism,” said the president, who on more than one occasion stressed that he was talking about Venezuela.

Social support also came up in the former president's message.

“People are susceptible to being promised paradise without effort, to being offered that manna will fall from heaven and not having to undertake great sacrifices or great efforts to achieve what they collectively aspire to.”

Furthermore, without making direct mention of the ongoing electoral process, he said that “this fight is about ideas” and we must try to win with the best public policies to satisfy the demands of the people and “prevent them from betting on lies and demagoguery.” ”.

Zedillo (center) and Aznar (right) during the talk.Elia Castillo Jiménez

In the midst of the reform package that López Obrador is preparing, among other aspects to reform the Judiciary, Zedillo made reference to the attack on the Powers of the Union, to the counterweights.

"Every day he says that the country lives in democracy - and I'm thinking of Venezuela - but every day he tries to erode the foundations of democracy."

He pointed out that populist governments look for submissive congresses, in which they have the possible majority and when any of the other powers fulfill their constitutional obligation, they seek to integrate them with people who do not adhere to the Constitution but "to what the sovereign wants and desires." ”.

Aznar was in the same sense as the penultimate of the presidents emanating from the PRI in Mexico.

Zedillo was the one who handed the presidential sash to the PAN member Vicente Fox in 2000, thereby breaking the 70 years of PRI governments.

“The dangerous thesis of populism today is that they are looking for easy solutions for a very complex world, which are false, they are lies,” said the former Spanish conservative president.

The strengthening of institutions and respect for them, the two agreed, is essential.

“You cannot violate the law, the law is the guarantee of freedom and democracy.

Where there is no law, there is tyranny, the rule of law cannot be violated,” launched the former Spanish president from the Popular Party.

The former PRI president, who had a strong security operation, closed his conference with an emphatic corollary to his entire previous speech.

“My main concern regarding Mexico, Latin America and the world is the threat to democracy.

The greatest challenge is to protect democracy, if we protect democracy, if we avoid that democratic regression that we are seeing in some countries and heal the wounds that have been caused, then I am optimistic."

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