Top Mexican Legal Scholar Slams Colombia’s 'Desperate Attack' On President AMLO

Sputnik News caught up with Dr. John Ackerman, the Director of the Mexican Law Review, after a massive rally in Puebla aiming to rejuvenate the grassroots base of President Lopez Obrador's party, Morena. As well as a widely-published journalist and TV host, Ackerman is also an adviser for Morena’s Institute of Political Formation.

Leading Mexican legal scholar Dr. John M. Ackerman lambasted accusations by the Colombian Foreign Ministry that Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ‘interfered’ in the country’s upcoming presidential election as a “desperate attack to silence international public opinion” following a huge rally of Morena Party supporters in Puebla Saturday.

In an exclusive interview with Sputnik News, the widely-acclaimed journalist denounced Colombian authorities for “attacking the Mexican government,” and heralded President Lopez Obrador's “180-degree shift” in foreign policy away from the policies of the “neoliberal governments” that preceded him, which Ackerman dismissed as “servants of Washington.”

“The fact the Colombians are so preoccupied" with the Mexican president's comments, "says more about them than about Lopez Obrador—that they are feeling insecure and fearful about what might happen in the upcoming elections,” Ackerman said.

Colombia accusing AMLO of interfering in their election is simply "a desperate attack to silence international public opinion," @JohnMAckerman tells me

He says AMLO skipping the Summit of the Americas marks the end of Mexico's role as "the representative of the US in the region" pic.twitter.com/Hw0Mxesg27

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) June 5, 2022

On Friday, Colombia’s foreign ministry issued a statement accusing President Lopez Obrador of an “offensive” act of “interference in the internal affairs” of the country after Mexico’s head of state said he was sending "a hug” to progressive Colombian candidate Gustavo Petro “because he is facing a most cowardly and undignified dirty war” from oligarch-owned media outlets.

The tactics are akin to “everything we have already seen and suffered in Mexico,” Lopez Obrador explained, before summarizing Colombian media coverage of the candidate: “'Petro [is] a danger to Colombia, communist, guerrillero; Colombia is going to be like Venezuela, etc.'"

But as Dr. Ackerman told Sputnik News, “Lopez Obrador has not done anything to actually get involved in the Colombian elections.”

“He hasn't funded anybody, hasn't done anything. There's been no act of government to intervene in the elections. That would be absolutely against our principles on foreign policy in Mexico. All they've done is express some opinions about, you know, politics in Colombia, in the world.”

Dr. Ackerman broke down the situation following a gathering of over 2,000 Morena members in the city of Puebla–the first stop in what he called “a very necessary” response towards a “tendency towards bureaucratization and a tendency towards opportunism” in the party. The well-known TV host and political commentator spoke at length about the need for internal reforms to bring the party’s priorities in line with the desires of its membership, and said attendees are “following in the example of Lopez Obrador, who has always said democracy needs to be exercised from the base up.”

On issues of foreign policy, there’s little daylight between Morena’s base and leadership, Ackerman pointed out. He lauded Lopez Obrador’s pledge to skip the Summit of the Americas in light of the US refusal to include Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba as “a very symbolic gesture” on the part of Mexico’s President because it “returns Mexico to being a part of Latin American unity instead of sort of the representative of the United States in the region.”

“The shift in Mexican foreign policy has been 180 degrees since the arrival of Lopez Obrador. Before Lopez Obrador, neoliberal governments were basically servants of Washington,” Dr. Ackerman explained.

Mexico’s president has “recuperated the close relationships with Cuba, with other governments throughout Latin America on a very basic, sound policy of working together in Latin America in union, respecting sovereignty of foreign countries, not conditioning diplomatic relations on ideological issues–which is exactly the opposite of what the United States do, they always run their diplomacy based on ideological issues. And so this has been the principle that Lopez Obrador has been defending in terms of the Summit of the Americas. And that’s why he has insisted that everybody attend.”

On Wednesday, senior White House Latin America adviser Juan Gonzalez said US President Joe Biden “personally wants the president of Mexico” to attend the upcoming Summit. However, there’s little indication Lopez Obrador plans to break his promise, and while fifteen US Congress Members called on Biden to “reconsider the omission of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to this year’s Summit of the Americas” last week, his administration doesn’t seem to be budging either.

As a CNN headline noted on Thursday, the “potential for a high-profile flop looms.” Regardless of what transpires between now and the scheduled start of the summit on Monday, it won’t be Mexico’s Lopez Obrador who’s left picking up the pieces.