Obrador Takes Oath as Presidential Candidate The News
go to original March 19, 2012

MEXICO CITY– Leftist presidential hopeful Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took his oath as candidate for the Labor Party (PT) on Sunday. PT President Alberto Anaya swore in AMLO before an audience of Labor Party members in the Progressive Movement candidate’s third swearing-in ceremony.

In his speech, AMLO promised to lower energy prices, and said that he wanted to use oil and electric energy to leverage national development.

He said that Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) needs to be well-managed, adding that the state-owned company has to be “cleansed,” and that Mexican companies must come first in government contracts for goods and services.

He called for a change in Pemex’s policies, and for the processing of raw materials in Mexico to produce gasoline instead of selling them to foreign countries.

Lowering energy prices, he said, will benefit consumers, small- and medium-sized companies, and trade; “which is why I’m talking about using oil to leverage national development.”

Currently, he said, 40 cents of every peso in the national budget derives from oil income. If Pemex is privatized, he continued, the foreign oil companies taking over the industry would not pay the same taxes as the state-owned company does now, “and we wouldn’t have a budget.”

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