The interior of the Mexican presidential plane, photographed on July 27, 2020 in a hangar at Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City (AFP/Archives/Alfredo Estrella)
Mexico will sell its presidential plane to Tajikistan for 92 million dollars, announced President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who prides himself on keeping an old electoral promise in favor of budgetary austerity.
“We never used it but I would have been ashamed, I say it sincerely, to use this plane” whose cost of maintenance “is contrary to Republican austerity”, declared AMLO – his initials, his nickname- in a video shared Thursday night.
After disbursing the funds, the government of Tajikistan has ten days to deliver the Boeing Dreamliner 787-8 to Dushanbe, the capital.
The device had been bought for a total sum of 218 million dollars by ex-president Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) and his successor Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) had used it, recalled AMLO, arrived in power in December 2018.
The left-wing nationalist president felt that his predecessors had behaved like “little pharaohs”.
He himself has only made five trips abroad in almost four and a half years in office, four to the United States and a tour of Central America and Cuba in early 2022.
In January, the head of state explained that he could not go to the Latin American summit in Buenos Aires because he had to supervise the progress of work for the commissioning of the Maya train, his mega -project in the Yucatan peninsula that he wants to inaugurate in December.
The summit marked the great return of Brazilian President Lula, who did not miss the meeting in Buenos Aires.
In the absence of AMLO, Mexico, one of the world’s 20 leading economies, is represented abroad by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, his possible successor.
The money from the sale will be used to build two hospitals in the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca (southwest), two of the poorest areas in Mexico, added the president.
© 2023 AFP
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