Earlier this week, Mexico's president confirmed that the administration would cut the national budget, abolish departments, suspend work with pay, and reduce government salaries by 25 percent.

As of Saturday, Mexico's registered cases are now at 12,872, with 1,221 deaths. Health officials admit this was inaccurate because of the lack of testing in the country.

Back in 2019, during the unveiling of his National Development Plan, Lopez Obrador said his post-neoliberal policies would be based on honesty, wealth distribution, gender equality, and "dignity for all."

Political analysts like Fernando Dworak believe that for López Obrador, "honest public figures are those living frugally."

Mr. Scrooge as the Head of the State

Other critics suspect that Lopez Obrador's economic recovery plan was short-sighted, and for a lot of reasons. The budget that was supposed to be allotted for bolstering healthcare was instead reduced in response to the pandemic.

"He's Mr. Scrooge," Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico political science professor Federico Estevez said. He added that this likeness was not the president counting his coins, "but [it's] because his first instinct in a tight spot seems to be slash-spending."

Lopez Obrador refused to take measures like business tax relief or rescue packages in the firm belief that the crisis was temporary. Had he considered the move, it may have mitigated the impact of the pandemic on Mexico's economy.

He also seemed to be at a significant disconnect with the reality of the surging cases of patients with COVID-19 and how healthcare institutions in the country are scrambling for money.

Despite his frugality, he aimed to finish old infrastructure projects that included the expansion of PEMEX and the construction of a new railway system. This move might contract Mexico's economy, which stagnated in 2019, by the end of the year.

According to the document, the first austerity measure that Lopez Obrador proposed in the report was not to reduce employees, but employment itself. Also, he would cut off the salary of senior public officials by up to 25 percent.

The rest involved major layoffs in bonuses, frugal reservation of a large chunk of the national budget, suspension of work with pay, the extension of establishment closing, and postponement of government spending. 

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The post-Neo-Liberal Model

During the announcement of the National Development Plan in 2019, Lopez Obrador said that "We formally declare, from the National Palace, the end of the neoliberal policy."

Weeks before, he called out the previous reforms of the administration as "complete failures," and that he promised he would do better by prioritizing the poor, purging corruption, and ending classist privileges.

Earlier this month, Lopez Obrador remarked that the economic recovery plan was not neoliberal in nature. He added that Mexico has already "broken the mold" used in countercyclical measures, referring to the attempts of the previous administration. "[These] only deepen inequality and encourage corruption that benefits a few."

Oxfam Mexico posted on Twitter their skepticism of Lopez Obrador's decisions on the implementation of the economic recovery plan. They believed that, contrary to Lopez Obrador's vision for the program, "[These] are not designed to support that many people in poverty at this time."