Report. Obviously a little rainy out there. Thank you for joining us for those here in the room. We have one of our speakers who is dealing with the challenge thats getting here and uber. She needs an uber boat instead of a regular uber to get here. Well go ahead and get started. We have webcast audience as well as cspan covering us today. Well go ahead and get going. Thank you all for braving the weather and joining us today. We appreciate that and our final panels is actually here right now. Welcome blanca and thank you for joining us. A year ago on july 1st, 53 of the vote and that was 30 points higher than the second place candidate. It was a landslide victory. Moreno, concept the Congressional Election and winning majority of the lower house and the senate in mexico. It was historic for him winning both. Together they have ruled mexico for the past 90 years. This was a significant change. I was in mexico city last year on the day of the elections going around and talking to people and watching the elections unfold. It was really remarkable to witness the level of optimism that existed on that day, july 1st, a year ago in mexico. You know the sense they were electing someone who could be trusted, who was different in many ways than those who had been in power of the previous several administration. Someone that represented them rather than the elites in mexico. Someone would fight for the common person. It was actually inspiring to see that level of optimism and be apart of that day. It was clear to me as a result of that also just how d disenfranchised many in mexico have felt. This was the first person who came from the left since the democratic election in mexico. There is a significant portion of the electorate that felt disenfranchise. That changed as a result of these Ground Breaking elections in mexico. There is also as many of us know stubbornly high poverty in mexico. And so this was a lot a president elected on a promise to reduce inequality and again leading people to feel apart of the system that they have rep presentation where people feel excluded. It is one year later, it is six mop mo months into the presidency itself. He took office in september of last year. People have High Expectations for this administration. The question now are those expectations being met. Are we on a path towards the meeting of those high ex pe expectatio expectations. We have great analysts here help us analyze how it is going so far and thats the general question of today. There are many ways to reflect on that. In terms of Public Opinion, the general sense is he continues to have a honeymoon period and high overall levels of popularity. We are glad to have jorge whos an expert in mexico and a pollster and a global fella here to have him join us today looking at the issues surrounding and looking at in more depth of the numbers in terms of Public Opinion. There may be some cracks on specific policy issues and specific things that the administration Und Administration had been under taken. The center piece of hamblos campaign, he was somebody that can be trusted more than other candidates and someone who would tackle the high level of corruption thats a challenge for mexico in terms of general public and security. We are glad to have with us, marianne, to reflect on progress made thus far. Thank you for coming. More than a change of the party in power. He promised a fourth transformation of mexico. A transformation of mexico on par with independence of spain and on par with the liberalizing reform of the 1860s and the mexican revolution that ran from 1910 onto maybe 1920. Those are huge levels of change that hes promising. He talked about regime change rather than a change of the party thats in power. The change in the structure of the way which mexico is governed, a representation of those who have been disenfranchise and fighting party and inequality and corruption and fighting on the strangle hold on power of what he describes as the mafia power and those elites that he describes as ruling mexico rather than people. He promises to make it a true democracy in that sense. We are delighted to have with us, blanca. That was a big issue area for me to lay in front of you to tackle. I am going to ask you how is that fourth transformation going. Thats a massive one obviously. Finally last but not least, well look at the mexican economy as a piece of this as well. Antonio works at stone bridge. But, it he is in charge of economics affair there. If we look at the longterm, it has been a mix story. It integrated into a Global Economy and becoming a global manufacture of power house but still have global poverty as i mention and remaining quite high. To have someone apart of the victory over the last 20 years, mexico achieving through fiscal speedomet responsibilities, we have a president who maintains fiscal responsibilities and change things dramatically in other ways. So i think it is a lot to dig into in terms of how investors are seeing mexico on the outside to slow down the mexican economy thats underway and how does it impact the ability to implement some of the social spending that it hopes to do and the infrastructure that it hopes to accomplish and mx, the state oil company has faced serious challenges these days. How does that fit into the economic picture and plans for the administration, we are looking forward to that. All of our panels have an interesting connection. At some point they are affiliated with cday, the Great Research of institutions in mexico city. We have a panel thats diverse in many ways but a Common Thread running throughout. We are delighted to have all of you. I am going to ask jorge if you can start. We have a presentation with a few slides. Jorge is going to do some slides because hes doing Public Opinion and it makes sense and well move into some Opening Statements by other panel lisis and have some time for questions among us and all of you. Jor jorge, the floor is yours. Thank you for the invitation, it is a pleasure to be here. I think interesting question is how popular is our president. Everyone is saying hes charismatic and popular. Sometimes we forget that he competed in 2006 and 2012. We have to put it into context what has happened with him. Hes certainly charismatic but he was not as popular as he is. I am going to try to put into context of his office and popularity and that seems to generate a discussion about his strength on the mexican republic. This is a bullet board. Many of the numbers here are available at the podium. Many of the figures i am going to be showing are this is a poll of polls. Right now the average is 70 of approval and 25 of disapproval. There are differences among polling firms, and this is the most recent number that we have, but we can expect that certainly he right now should be between 60 and 70 approval level, especially if you compare it with pena nietos very weak numbers, i mean this figure looks impressive. But if we put approval numbers in context, the picture is quite differe different. He at this stage phillipe calderon have more or less the same approval levels as Lopez Obrador right now. So certainly the exception to this is obviously pena nieto at the start of his governing with a severe economic crisis. Seem comparative perspective. I mean, they are high. They are astonishing numbers, but we must not forget that in the past president s have the same level. So the key question is what is different about Lopez Obrador, and i think that one main difference between the popularity of Lopez Obrador and calderon is intensity of approval. There are really a lot of strong Lopez Obrador supporters, and in the past with calderon folks, we didnt have the curtail effect of their popularity reflected in the numbers. In the midterm elections of calderon they had pretty good numbers between 55 and 60 , but wasnt able to win the majority in the midterm elections, and i think that the difference with Lopez Obrador is that the popularity of Lopez Obrador at this stage really reflects in the strength of electorate support for morena i think this is a key difference going into the future. We are very far from the midterm elections, but i show you later some numbers, but we can say more or less that 40 of the mexican public is really a strong Lopez Obrador supporter. This is not his highest number. Its been declining, but i think thats a key difference with the past so that approval for Lopez Obrador really has a very support that really bodes for morena, that if you take into account that and the greatness of the position that explains a lot of what is going on right now because unlike the past where the pri had the majority either in one of the legislative chambers or a majority of the governorships, right now what we have is a president that has a majority even though it is a plurality in the senate, has a majority in the senate, and the house of deputies. So what explains Lopez Obradors numbers, i could say that we sometimes commit the mistake of thinking that his approval levels are a reflection of what hes been doing, that his policies are either popular or those who are unpopular do not reflect in his approval levels, but if we go back a little bit further back, we can see that expectations are driving the approval levels of Lopez Obrador. This is an index of retrospective revelations of the economy. As you can see, it hasnt changed that much. It improved a little bit, expectations of the economy, but retrospective evolutions of the economy right now, and this is based in index of Consumer Confidence. I mean people do not think that the Current Situation of the economy, its much better. Actually, they are thinking that 41 the economys worse than one year ago. And 40 think that its better than one year ago, and these numbers are more or less similar to the ones that we had last november. But look what happens with expectations about the economy either personal economy or the countrys economy. They increase a lot after Lopez Obradors victory. So in that regard, what we are witnessing right now is that behind Lopez Obrador approval is our expectations but not reality or not its not something that he has delivered to the public, but people are expecting that he will deliver. And this is not something new for the Lopez Obrador administration. You can look in the case of calderon, for instance. Every time there is a change in government, expectations about the future of the country improve a lot. So i mean, in comparison terms, you can see that the expectations are more or less similar to the ones that we have regarding calderon, in that sense is the same pattern. Just take a look at what happened with expectations once this develops. All expectations begin to decline. Its very clear for all governments, so we should expect that the same thing is going to happen, and we should expect also that Lopez Obrador approval level will go down. This is a relation between approval levels and Consumer Confidence. Its an astonishing correlation because they are measuring more or less the same thing. Except with the case of phillipe calderon, in general Consumer Confidence index moves more or less than the proven levels and i think because they are more or less measuring the same stuff. We do not know what they are measuring, but its good to have an alternative measure to approval levels. These are approval levels for some policies. Sometimes they are his heesa lot of support or a lot of approval involving the war on the stealing of gasoline. Also, migration, show that people are supporting his heart, his tougher measures on migrants, so this is an issue thats probably it has not been politicized at the moment or become partisan, but people are really thinking that it is good to have a tougher stance on migrants. Its quite contradictory but the mexican public is not very tolerant of migrants. The thing is we havent had that many in the past in mexico or has not become an issue. But im going to i just want to stress this point. When we try to explain the approval levels of Lopez Obrador. I mean, to try to understand what has changed, i could say to that some extent his honeymoon is a consequence of the Electoral Campaign just being over. If you look at the his approval numbers or the evaluation of the people, it increase a lot after the election on the side of independen independence. So before the election everybody was looking at Lopez Obrador through a partisan lens. Once he wins election, partisan bias is deactivated so that explains why his approval levels jump a lot. But the key question here is that once we get closer to another election its probably that they will begin to look at him in a more critical way, and we should expect that as we get closer to the midterm elections that will also influence his approval levels, and just to finish, this is a segmentation of the mexican public in terms of level of support for Lopez Obrador. This is the latest one we have about one month, one month and a half, and as you can see there is about 40 of the mexican public the one that its in blue, that is a really strong supporters. There are some weak supporters and there is 26 of the mexican public that is really against Lopez Obrador. If you look at in comparison with the beginning of his term, numbers have shifted a lot and especially after february or february after the war on there was an increase in support for him, but this has declined so currently we have 39 of strong amlo supporters, 35 are weak amlo supporters. That makes above 70 , its a pretty good number, but its not the same to be a strong amlo, supporter or weak amlo supporter, especially with support for morena at the polling booth. Also we can see right now the numbers are similar to what we had before. So at some extent one part of the honeymoon is over at least it seems. Approval levels are more or less similar to what we had in november and probably what we are going to see that until the end of the year, we will be looking at numbers that were more or less similar to the ones that we had before he won the election. So we should expect and this has happened in other terms, that Lopez Obrador approval levels will still cut down and probably stabilize around october, november and i will stop. Thank you so much. That was excellent. Great way to get us started. Blanca can i turn to you next to talk about the transformation . Then we can dive more into some specific issue areas after that. Well, thank you for the invitation to be here. It is a pleasure to be with the city of the 90s also and very close and dear colleagues. On june 1st, 2018, Andres Manuel lop lop Lopez Obrador was elected president. What started the following day is still bereft of a common name. This matters because it makes straightforward analysis and assessment more complex. What political phenomenon has been playing itself out in mexico since july 1st, 2018. Is it five months of transition, plus seven months of no president ial administration . Is it a peaceful revolution . Is it regime change, or as the president never tires of reminds us, its the fourth transformation. When the meaning of words and the name of things is widely shared, concerning oneself with them might be fascinating, but it is dispensable. In context where the links among words meanings and empirical reference are thrown into disarray, however, the semantic becomes openly political and the conditions for recent debate rapidly erode. An eloquent example of the unsettled semantic times we live in is the nonconversation between amlo and his liberal critics about corruption. Both use the same term. Both see the thing as an an lloyd evil that needs to be extracted from the countrys body politic as fast fast as possible. But coincidence stops right there. For the liberal opposition, corruption is conjugated in essentially legal terms. Lopez obrador in contrast understands corruption not as a legal problem, i repeat, not as a legal problem but as a strictly moral one. Given that were living in this peculiarly unsettled and unsettled semantical context, by the way, not only in mexico, here and in many other parts of the world very much so, too, i want to use this space to call your attention to the value of minding words, premises and frames of reference and of making them explicit. What name we decide to give the political thing unfolded in mexico one year ago matters a lot, because it ends up defining what other instances of thing we deem it comparable to. And also, it defines what criteria and metrics we employ to assess it, and ultimately what decisions we take in relation to it, not to speak of which emotional buttons it press us with. Treating the year running from july 2018 to june 2019 in mexico, five months transition, and seven months no president ial administration is useful for assessing very important matters and im sure my colleagues will do this today. Ill take a different lens. But first let me illustrate the analytical value shifting frames of reference assumed to be obvious on the only possible ones to appropriately apprehend a given social object. In its brilliant analysis of the chinese economic miracle, juan hui as you know chinas most contemporary public intellectual starts out by arguing that the most relevant and fertile frame of reference and comparison to answer this question is to place chinas embrace of the market in context of the disintegration of the soviet union and its satellite countries. Such frame is not the first one to come to mind, not to mine anyway. The obvious ones are say the fast growing northeast asian economies or india or some abstract model of Economic Growth, but the collapse of communist countries, how could that possibly be r