Coronavirus Mexico: President López Obrador Focuses On Personal Promotions Amidst Pandemic

President Donald Trump had been serving as the ideal example of how not to deal with a pandemic but Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been giving a tough competition to him by using the coronavirus briefings for his personal promotion and for attacking his enemies.

Mexico like the United States was slow in administering strict lockdown measures and is, thus, still observing a continuous rise in the number of coronavirus cases. Just like Trump, the Mexican president insists that the nation has the pandemic under control, targets tabloids and news reports that go against him, and makes shallow attempts at regaining control of the shaky economy.

Sharing accurate information is the need of the hour, but the presence of the same is rare in his coronavirus briefings, a quality that unfortunately matches Trump’s appearances to the public.

But even as Trump has lessened the frequency of these briefing, probably at last understanding the criticisms he was attracting because of them, López has, in fact, announced plans for an additional session every evening of two hours after the daily briefing by the country’s coronavirus czar Hugo López-Gatell.

His briefings encompass him taking questions from reporters and giving vague answers, addressing the issues faced by Mexico’s public, and then trailing off to chide his opponents, listing out the shortcomings of previous governments, etc without sharing any real solution. He is also often seen talking about moral values and once said, pulling out prayer cards from his wallet, that they have protected him against the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was a useful and novel method of presidential communication,” said Javier Garza, a journalist in the northern city of Torreón. “But it’s turned into a predictable spectacle without any value.”

As for picking pointless fights with the press, that is the norm.

“This is the charm for his followers,” said Ilán Semo, a historian at the Iberoamerican University. “They believe in him like they would a preacher.”

“It works just like it works for Trump,” said Federico Estévez, political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. “It doesn’t matter what the quality of the communication is, it dominates the [news] cycle. That’s all it’s about. That’s all it’s supposed to be about.”