MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s president on Tuesday ramped up pressure on opposition lawmakers to support a constitutional energy reform a day after they said they would reject the bill, suggesting those who did not would be “traitors” to the country.
The bill, which congressional leaders have said they want to vote on next week, is a central plank of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s drive to give greater control of the electricity market to the state over private companies.
He argues that past governments rigged the market in favor of private capital, but his attempts to renegotiate contracts and give state-run energy companies priority have upset business groups and many of Mexico’s traditional diplomatic allies.
The day after an alliance of opposition parties said it would not support his constitutional reform, Lopez Obrador cast the debate as a matter of patriotic urgency that pitted the interests of the state against foreign companies.
Speaking at a news conference, he forecast that some opposition lawmakers would support his bill, and said it was time for them to show which side they were on.
“Let them reveal themselves, so they’re real representatives of the people, not employees of entrenched interests, traitors to the country,” Lopez Obrador said.
His remarks came as the Supreme Court prepared to debate the constitutionality of an electricity bill aimed at bolstering the state’s power that passed in March 2021 which lower courts suspended on the grounds that it breached antitrust rules.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Alistair Bell)
