MEXICO CITY — He’s been the face of Mexico internationally for practically 5 years and infrequently the nation’s main voice in negotiations with prime world leaders – together with risky ones, like former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Now Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard is testing whether or not his work on the world stage will translate into votes in Mexico as he competes for the leftist ruling social gathering nomination for subsequent 12 months’s presidential elections.
The 63-year-old is within the thick of a three-way race with different members of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s interior circle, together with Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and Interior Minister Adán Augusto López.
López Obrador’s Morena social gathering, which he created as a car to safe the presidency, stays an extension of the extremely standard chief, so his phrases, actions and even physique language are being carefully watched for indicators of a favourite.
Among the hurdles Ebrard should overcome are a notion he doesn’t join with the social gathering’s base just like the folksy López Obrador, and criticism that the U.S. authorities imposed its immigration coverage on Mexico, making it do its soiled work on Ebrard’s watch.
Ebrard has responded with humorous TikTok movies geared toward connecting with voters, together with considered one of himself in a designer go well with consuming tacos at a avenue stand together with his spouse or turning a stumble right into a repeatedly performed dance transfer to a Bad Bunny tune. He just lately printed an autobiography that frames his immigration negotiations with the Trump administration as a diplomatic victory as a result of Mexico prevented threatened tariffs – and it may have been worse.
PHOTOS: He’s been Mexico’s voice overseas. Now he desires the presidency
In an interview with the AP, Ebrard described himself as a nationalist and a progressive who guarantees to keep up López Obrador’s signature social applications “to create a society where inequality is shrinking.”
In an administration that insists serving to the poor is the precedence – about 40% of Mexicans stay in poverty – Ebrard says his goal as president can be to develop the comparatively small center class, if he wins the ruling social gathering nomination later this 12 months.
He has extra middle-class help than different main contenders, specialists say, however swaying the social gathering’s low-income base – the voters most enamored of López Obrador – could possibly be the deciding issue. Ebrard insists he has that help.
Ebrard narrowly misplaced his first try to be the left’s presidential candidate to López Obrador in 2012. Before that he had varied roles in López Obrador’s Mexico City mayoral administration and later turned mayor himself in 2006.
While some peg Ebrard as a centrist, he factors to passage of legalized abortion and same-sex marriage whereas he was Mexico City mayor a decade in the past as proof of his help for progressive insurance policies.
Still, there are doubts concerning the extent to which his achievements as the highest diplomat for a president who prioritized all issues home can be current in voters’ minds.
Ebrard led Mexico’s effort to acquire COVID-19 vaccines, working with vaccine producers and pushing multilateral initiatives, however Mexican governors and mayors like Sheinbaum have been those current when the vaccines got out.
“Mexicans aren’t interested in foreign policy beyond when it has to do with the United States and is going to impact the price of the dollar,” mentioned Ana Vanessa Cárdenas, a Mexican worldwide analyst now with Finis Terrae University in Chile.
On the nation’s pervasive violence – Mexicans’ prime precedence in accordance with polls – Ebrard has led to this point unsuccessful efforts to sue U.S. gun producers and gun retailers for supplying weapons smuggled into Mexico. But as president, like López Obrador, Ebrard says he would depend on the military-controlled National Guard to safe communities slightly than rebuilding civilian police capability.
During Ebrard’s tenure, Mexico efficiently negotiated a brand new commerce framework with the United States and Canada to exchange the outdated North American Free Trade Agreement. The new accord is essential to his pledge to double Mexico’s annual financial progress if he’s elected president in June subsequent 12 months.
Mexico’s proximity to the United States is its best benefit because the world emerges from the provision chain interruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Ebrard informed the AP. Factories and meeting crops are already starting to maneuver from China to Mexico to be nearer to the U.S. market, he mentioned.
But that lengthy shared border with the United States has additionally created a few of Ebrard’s best challenges.
Shortly after López Obrador took workplace in December 2018, the Trump administration carried out the so-called “Remain in Mexico” program that compelled asylum seekers to attend out their U.S. asylum requests in Mexico. Asylum seekers have been concentrated in northern border cities largely managed by organized crime, exposing the migrants to countless kidnappings.
In May 2019, Trump threatened crippling tariffs on all Mexican imports if Mexico’s authorities didn’t gradual the circulate of migrants to the U.S. border.
Ebrard instantly flew to Washington, heading off the tariffs and what he mentioned was the Trump administration’s actual aim: a secure third-country settlement. Under such a deal, any asylum seekers crossing Mexico would first need to request asylum there slightly than within the U.S.
Instead, Mexico supplied to deploy its newly created National Guard in a technique to comprise migrants in southern Mexico, removed from the U.S. border.
The variety of migrants intercepted on the U.S. border dropped within the brief time period, however Mexico confronted criticism from inside and overseas that it had allowed the U.S. authorities to export its immigration coverage south.
“The United States won the battle” over immigration coverage, mentioned Silvia Núñez García, a researcher specializing within the bilateral relationship at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. The tariff risk “was when Mexico decided to accept and manage these irregular migrant flows inside our territory.”
Ebrard mentioned the U.S. returning asylum seekers to Mexico underneath a COVID-19 well being rule generally known as Title 42, set to run out May 11, was a unilateral transfer that Mexico has by no means accepted.
It leaves Mexico two choices: deport the returnees to their nations or allow them to enter Mexico, he informed the AP. “We usually do the second and the U.S. knows it.”
The Biden administration scrapped Remain in Mexico, however in February introduced that it could usually deny asylum to migrants who present up on the U.S. border with out first looking for safety in a rustic they handed by means of – a coverage critics say is completely different in-name-only from the secure third nation settlement.
If Ebrard “hasn’t been able to stand out in foreign policy, which has been his portfolio, then I don’t think his prospects are very favorable,” mentioned Núñez, noting that López Obrador’s disinterest in overseas affairs restricted Ebrard’s room to maneuver.
Martha Bárcena, a profession diplomat who served as Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. through the first two years of López Obrador’s presidency, overlapping with Trump, believes Ebrard’s precedence was not overseas coverage both.
“He’s a politician and the only thing he has really dreamed of all his life is to become president,” she mentioned. “There were many areas in which he could have been much more creative and advanced an agenda that was even more linked to the priorities of the Mexican government, which was to fight poverty, to fight inequality.”
Ebrard has accused Bárcena of “obsessive rancor” since she left the submit. He says that he’ll struggle poverty and inequality if he’s elected president.
“For any leftist government, your objective has to be that the middle class is the majority of the population,” Ebrard mentioned. “In 10 years we need poverty to be much less than it is today. … If not, what would be the point of everything we’re doing?”
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