Mexico's president is getting a little sloppy in the rush to finish projects before his term ends
Mexico’s president is in a rush to finish the big legislative and building projects he promised before his term ends in September, and experts say officials are getting a bit sloppy amid all the haste.
This week, legislators from the governing Morena party mistakenly submitted the wrong bill on pension reform for a vote in Congress, before sheepishly admitting the error and rescheduling the vote. They claimed Thursday that aides had mistaken one set of papers for another, but the bill almost got approved before the opposition noticed the error.
“In the legislative process, as in life and all activities, human mistakes are made that aren’t premeditated, that aren’t ill-intentioned,” said Sen. Ignacio Mier, the point man for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party in the Senate.
The rushed atmosphere extends to infrastructure, with the president’s beloved train projects suffering glaring construction errors in recent months. Cranes have crashed off bridges and pilings have been sunk into supposedly protected cave systems. With the June 2 presidential election approaching, the president wants to finish his administration’s projects, fast.