When current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly known as AMLO) won the election in December 2018, his landslide victory rested squarely on his promise to root out systemic corruption in the country. But two years later, progress in long-term institutional anti-corruption reforms remains stagnant.
If anything, anti-corruption efforts are weakening. “The main problem we are facing in Mexico right now … is the independence of anti-corruption institutions,” says Pablo Montes Mendoza, anti-corruption coordinator at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness. Some say this weakening of independent institutions is AMLO’s attempt to centralize power in his own control.
