Worldwide, there is no other President of the Republic who offers daily conferences and even less so many hours long.
“It continues to be an unprecedented exercise; We had never seen a President of the Republic do this type of exercise. It is working for him in three ways: not leaving spaces for the opposition, to prop up his political project in the long term and to wipe the opposition off the map”, underlines the UNAM political scientist, Édgar Ortiz Arellano.
At the beginning of the six-year term, the morning sessions were the space to announce projects of your government and to denounce the “inheritances” of neoliberal governments, but today the conferences have been modified: they have sections according to the day and a space for questions for journalists. and ‘youtubers’ who come and win (in a raffle) the first rows.
Faced with the inevitable decline of his six-year term, the president has extended the duration of his press conferences. The one held on December 3, 2018 barely lasted 52 minutes; in recent weeks, this “circular dialogue” has exceeded three hours each day of the week.
For Ortiz Arellano, the extension in the morning hours, which he has offered to extend to weekends, is a sign that the president is reluctant to give up space in public opinion.
“The president wants to be the axis of national politics until the last moment, the morning sessions have worked quite well for him because at 10 in the morning the national political agenda is already set, the issues that interest him,” he says.
Political scientist Germán Pérez, professor at the Center for Political Studies of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), considers that several of the actions of the López Obrador government are to satisfy his ego. One of them is the mornings, where the president is the main speaker, the one who usually quotes himself, in which he presumes his presidential approval, and in which he has attention for hours.
“Everyone has the right to have their ego. The revocation of the mandate was to strengthen his ego, the demonstration on Sunday the 27th, in the morning, everything is a need to have presence, to have applause ”, he affirms.
For the analyst, Luis Estrada, CEO of SPIN Communication Workshopwho has followed the almost 1,000 mornings of the president, the conference has changed in structure, but not in essence: to be an instrument of propaganda for the president of the Republic.
“From SPIN we thought that the president was going to do them every day, until the last day of his government, regardless of the impact they had; the president does not seek to inform, make transparent or render accounts, but to make propaganda”, he affirms in an interview with Political Expansion.
