Mexico’s President Wants to Guarantee People Pensions Equal to Their Full Salaries When They Retire Mark Stevenson - The Associated Press
go to original February 8, 2024

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks at the National Palace in Mexico City. (Fernando Llano/AP)



Update: AMLO: Amendments to the Constitution Do Not Compromise the Country’s Finances (Meridiano.mx)

Mexico’s president said this week that he will propose guaranteeing people pensions equal to their full salaries at the time they retire, something done by no other country, not even those much richer than Mexico.

It was among a raft of 20 constitutional reforms that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has almost no hope of getting passed in the eight months he has left in office, but which could be part of a bid to attract voters in the June 2 presidential elections.

It may be just electioneering: López Obrador leaves office in September, and he really wants his party’s candidate, former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, to win the presidential elections. He apparently hopes the promise of full-wage pensions could also help win his Morena party the two-thirds majority in Congress it needs to amend the Constitution.

But analysts say it may also be an attempt to set the agenda for the next administration by saddling any future president from Morena with high — and expensive — expectations. “It’s an election year, so all these reform initiatives can be seen as something to get people to vote for Morena,” said Gabriela Siller, the director of analysis at Nuevo Leon-based Banco Base. But she notes it is also “a way of setting the political agenda for the next administration, a way of placing his imprint on the next administration.”

For the moment, López Obrador doesn’t have the votes in Congress to get the reforms passed, given that they require a two-thirds vote to amend the Constitution, and opposition parties are not likely to go along with it in the few months he has left in office.

In announcing the measures Monday, the president claimed it was an attempt “to recover holy rights, guaranteed to Mexicans by God.” It was among a package of reforms that included guaranteed annual increases in payments to the elderly and increases in the minimum wage and above the rate of inflation.

The reform proposals also included guaranteed access to the internet, a total ban on fracking, open-pit mining, GM corn, cruelty to animals and vaping pens.

Read the rest at Associated Press

Related: IMSS and ISSSTE Workers Will Receive 100% of Their Salary Upon Retirement (Meridiano.mx)

Related: President López Obrador Presents 20 Constitutional Reform Proposals (Mexico News Daily)

Related: Government Guarantees Decent Wages and Increased Purchasing Power (Meridiano.mx)

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