It’s a snub for the Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as “AMLO”. The deputies rejected, on Sunday April 17, his draft constitutional reform strengthening public electricity production to the detriment of the private sector. The flagship initiative of “AMLO” provoked opposition from the business community and from Washington. In the process, the center-left nationalist president replied, managing to get the deputies to vote on Monday, April 18, a bill that nationalizes Mexico’s attractive lithium reserves.
The day before, the opposition deputies united against the elected members of the “AMLO” party (Morena), after more than twelve hours of bitter debates, punctuated by mutual accusations of “treachery to the fatherland”. Morena and his allies did not reach, on Sunday, the qualified majority (two thirds of the seats) necessary to modify the Constitution to correct the opening of the electricity market.
The reform project set the share of production reserved for the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) at 54%, against 38% currently, by providing for the revision of private contracts. The text also conferred on the State the exclusive exploitation of lithium reserves, a popular mineral in the development of electric batteries.
” Regression “
A text carried at arm’s length by “AMLO”, which denounces the end of the public monopoly of the CFE, decreed in 2013 by its predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, center). Since then, the CFE has remained the sole distributor of electricity to individuals. But its production has melted to the benefit of foreign companies, American for the most part, but also Spanish (Iberdrola) or French (Engie), which have invested more than 40 billion dollars (37.1 billion euros) for nine years.
“We must recover the control of the national electricity industry against the perverse decisions imposed by the neoliberals and the corrupt subjugated to the interests of the big firms”, argues Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. But Morena and his allies gathered, on Sunday, only 275 votes of deputies, against the 334 required to modify the Constitution. “This reform is a regression”castigated Alejandro Moreno, deputy of the PRI, denouncing a “violation of free competition” who “destroys the environment”. For nine years, private companies have favored renewable energies and natural gas, while the CFE mainly has polluting thermal power stations.
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