In the midst of a pandemic that has already killed 69,374 people in the world and continues to advance, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador remembers, precisely, a dying leader.
“I am reminded of the image of when Simon Bolivar, sick, lying in a hammock, almost defeated and in the midst of desolation, someone asked him, ‘What now are you going to do, General?’, and the deliverer replied, with mad passion: ‘To succeed, to succeed!'”
So too, in the desolation of the Patio de Honor of Palacio Nacional, López Obrador shouts passionately “Viva México!, Live Mexico!”, so three times, but no one supported the triumphal harangue.
Read: Social programs and lower salaries to senior officials, AMLO’s crisis plan; there will be no tax support for companies
Accustomed to giving government reports sheltered by politicians and businessmen who applaud him and repeat his harangues and fill him with hugs; also accustomed to giving, as he said, bailongos to the people in the capital Zocalo, for the first time the representative speaks in solitude and does not hear applause.
There were no guests of honor, following the recommendation that no more than 50 people be gathered. And those who are never invited arrived as usual: hundreds of waiters who were left unemployed, workers from an economic sector who succumbed to the pandemic, gathered outside Palacio Nacional, with clogged not to get infected but all piled up in the protest.
“Do you know how much I bring to come? Five pesos. With that I’m going to come back, I don’t have anything anymore, my whole pantry is over in a month. In a month we lost everything,” says Jesús Germiniano Pérez, from Nezahualcóyotl, a waiter for 35 years, out of work for 20 days.
In there, lopez Obrador says four times that this is a “passing crisis,” but also, “with absolute attachment to the truth,” he asks the nation to prepare for the worst.
Read: Health reports 15 more deaths from COVID-19 and confirmed cases increased 13%
“Unfortunately, there is still time to go and, according to the specialists, the hardest part of the epidemic is yet to come,” he warns.
This report, the fifth report in a year and a half of its administration, would come with a “plan to revive the economy” in the face of the scouring of the epidemic of the new coronavirus. The plan was to continue with the same thing: more scholarships to students, more batches, more concrete paths, more Internet for All, more raffles of alienated goods, more Sementing Vida, more refinery of Dos Bocas, more Santa Lucia Airport, more Corridor of the Isthmus, more Tren Maya (on April 30 will be signed the first contract to start its construction, in the middle of health emergency).
“Despite the adversity, Mexico’s transformation will not stop,” the representative argues.
With his data, the president commits that 2 million new jobs will be created in the remaining of the year. It offers to return VAT to companies, although it does not specify when; announces 2.1 million formal and informal small business loans, and loans to 670,000 state workers. Out there, the jobless waiters who come from the State of Mexico and the CDMX wondered if any of this would help them.
“We want the president to give us an 8,000-peso loan to get out of the month,” says Zenaida Hernandez, 53, 10 as a waitress, with a daughter in college she keeps on her own.
“I can say that we have the support and collaboration of the national private sector,” says López Obrador, but Coparmex marked its distance.
Read: Dozens of unemployed waiters protest at National Palace during AMLO report
“No relevant action was announced to address the COVID-19 economic crisis. In the midst of an emergency, he read a piece of ideological outreach, ramming ghosts from the past,” said patronial leader Gustavo de Hoyos. These ghosts were named by López Obrador: “conservatives”, “neoliberal economic model”, “neoporfirismo”.
The president says those who do not support his anti-crisis plan are entrepreneurs accustomed to Fobaproa-style bailouts: “the policy of privatizing profits and socializing losses,” he says.
“Nothing will bring us back to the past,” he says. But the representative does socialize the ransom among his collaborators: by his mandate, the salaries of civil servants, from the middle commanders up, will be reduced, and their right to aguinaldo will be withdrawn. The president says this measure was endorsed in a consultation, but those affected learned of the decision at the time López Obrador spoke to the nation.
“I heard watching the report. It was a bucket of cold water,” says an official with a director’s rank in the health sector. “As long as they don’t take my job off, everything’s fine,” he says.
“We’re doing fine,” the President says in his report, but there’s no one in that courtyard of the National Palace to back it up.
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