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 Editorials | Opinions | July 2006 
Populism and Tourism Investments
 Carlos Veranda
| | A supporter of Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (left) and a man wearing a mask of presidential candidate Felipe Calderon celebrate in the streets in Mexico City on July 6, 2006. (Reuters/Daniel Aguilar and AP/Gregory Bull) |
The presidential campaign could hardly have ended with more conflicting positions as those of the PAN'S Felipe Calderon and the PRD'S Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, with the latter's threat to take the economy hostage.
In this game of contradictory remarks, investors could not help but distrust AMLO who one day called them "white collar delinquents" and the next day said he would respect the Bank of Mexico's autonomy and would not pressure inflation.
It turns out that "trust" is the most important word in business, so if he wins he will have to make an effort to calm down businessmen and, the truth is, it's not clear if he's interested.
Throughout the campaigns, I have tried to follow up on the positions of Calderon, Lopez Obrador and Roberto Madrazo regarding tourism, understood as one of Mexico's options for economic development.
Calderon presented a well-structured project for tourism that later included a few more details.
On the other hand, the impression from comments by Lopez Obrador and Madrazo is that they addressed the topic during their campaigns in places where this activity is important.
In other words, tourism was taken up by them to create empathy with voters although their proposals lacked substance. Lopez Obrador even emphasized that he would curb "political tourism" as he described junkets by government officials. He is, of course, against this practice, does not speak English and has never really traveled abroad.
During his tenure as head of the Mexico City government, his collaborators, such as Carlos McKinley, director of the Promotion Institute, suffered from Obrador's obsession with political tourism and could never travel to international trade shows where he could have brought business to the city.
Much more serious are the macroeconomic problems that a populist president can cause who suddenly becomes enthusiastic about tourism.
Just to mention an example, Luis Echeverria, after founding Cancun whose origin dates back to studies made by the Bank of Mexico years before, became an enthusiast and had some very expensive ideas.
For instance, the construction of a chain of La Pinta hotels in Baja California that still belong to FONATUR and had its own airplane although nobody ever stays at Cataviña or San Ignacio. The project was an economic fiasco and even today FONATUR is trying to sell them.
We can multiply this problem several times over if the PRD candidate insists on turning the Maria Islands into a tourist center, or on building the famous "bullet train", without mentioning his proposal to make developers channel money into the towns surrounding their destinations to reduce contrasts.
In this case as in many others, Lopez Obrador commitment with the poor could lead to a disaster shared by all. |
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