López Obrador promises the continuity of his policy whoever his successor in Morena is

López Obrador during his speech for the 85th anniversary of the oil expropriation, this Saturday in Mexico City. Sáshenka Gutiérrez (EFE)

The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has assured the thousands of supporters who have come to listen to him this Saturday in the capital's Zócalo that his policies will remain in force regardless of who his party's candidate replaces him in government if they win the elections. of 2024. Thus, the idea of ​​a Mexico without the presence of López Obrador, the greatest asset that the morenistas have today, frightened his followers.

“Any candidate chosen in the [internal party] survey to follow our movement will apply the same policy in favor of the people and the nation.

Continuity is assured, with changes, ”he said on a stage in which the main candidates for Morena were: the head of government, Claudia Sheinbaum;

the chancellor, Marcelo Ebrard, and the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López.

On the day that the 85th anniversary of the oil nationalization of Lázaro Cárdenas is commemorated, López Obrador has warned them that unity is needed for this, a message that has been repeated on other occasions at rallies of the ruling party, fearful that a succession process could break the support that the president obtained for his election in 2018 and that he still maintains in good shape.

"We have to stay together, always looking for the future and the happiness of our fellow men."

Previously, the president outlined the social welfare policies that he has implemented, such as pensions for the elderly, the increase in the minimum wage, the economic strengths and the national currency, scholarships for students, welfare banks, works public, support for the disabled and single mothers, financial aid to the countryside, the nationalization of lithium and the austerity of his government against corruption.

"Of 35 million households, at least 71% receive some of the social welfare programs," he said.

Thousands of people from all corners of the country have followed his speech with applause.

On the platform from which the president addressed those summoned for the oil celebration, a date of patriotic exaltation in Mexico, he was accompanied by the majority of his Cabinet, in addition to the president of the state oil company (Pemex), Octavio Romero Oropesa , who has addressed a few words to those summoned, as well as the Secretary of Energy, Rocío Nahle García.

The recent nationalization of lithium, although exploitation is open to private companies, has been the measure of comparison with the oil expropriation carried out in 1938 by General Cárdenas.

López Obrador has mentioned the modification of the articles of the Free Trade Agreement that he carried out when undertaking his mandate, which has allowed Mexico, he has said, to maintain the "inalienable ownership of all hydrocarbons in the national subsoil."

The president did not want to ignore the current relations with the United States, with praise for the current president, Joe Biden, but he has stopped at the latest threats from the ultra-conservative sectors of the Republican Party, who these days valued a possible declaration of organized crime as a terrorist movement, which would allow the entry of the US Army into Mexican territory.

These statements have convulsed the López Obrador government this week, to the point that all the consuls of the neighboring country have been mobilized to counter this idea.

"Mexico is an independent and free country, not a colony or a protectorate of the United States, we will never allow them to violate our sovereignty or trample on the dignity of our homeland," he said in front of the National Palace.

On this occasion, the president's followers have not been summoned to a march, like the previous one, in which the president went out to walk the streets with them, but to a concentration in the great Mexican square, where he received them leaving the Palace National direct to the presidium.

Nor has there been much criticism of political opponents.

López Obrador's speech was intended to review what he considers his political achievements to continue asking for the trust of his voters.

“The idea and practice of exalting the humanism of Mexico is electric and is reaching the consciences of millions of people.

I base my optimism on that.

I maintain that whatever they do, the oligarchs will not return to power."

And he has vowed that he will continue to fight "the dirty war,

The first part of his two-hour speech, which began around five in the afternoon under the threat of rain, was a Mexican history class, where the president recounted the political measures undertaken by Lázaro Cárdenas in the 1930s, the that general's vocation of love for the people and how he overcame the political obstacles that loomed against him.

From all this, the president draws a lesson: "Only with the people, with their majority support, can a popular transformation be carried out to assert history and confront the reactionaries who are opposed to losing privileges."

Again in a current political key, López Obrador has promised his own that there will be no lurching in his politics or in the one that follows him: “No zigzagging.

We will remain anchored in our principles.

We reaffirm the decision and the course we have taken from the beginning.

No to half measures.

We will never accept that a minority prevails in Mexico at the cost of the humiliation and impoverishment of the majorities”.

The duality between the poor and the rich that the president always raises to defend the former fell on fertile ground, because there were not a few people who had arrived since early morning, with more than 10 hours by bus, from remote parts of the States poorer, like Chiapas.

His presence, with the traditional clothing of the native peoples, through the streets on the way to the Zócalo, dyed colors this morning in the capital.

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