EPN is "Mexico's Savior" says Time Magazine

Borderland Beat an extraction from Time Magazine

The genuine hero in this  photo shopped cover-is a 82 year old autodefensa member
who took up arms when the EPN administration shirked their duty, now EPN is taking  credit

This new time article, and its cover has, in general, been slammed by Mexican social websites and media.  Revised photo shopped covers and mocking statements have flooded websites and social media pages.  Below is an extract from the article....



Add captionLeft to right: Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, Interior Minister;
 Enrique Peña Nieto, President; Luis Videgaray Caso, Finance Minister (Time fotos)

At 9 o'clock on a February night, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto was still working inside Los Pinos, his official Mexico City residence, where camouflaged soldiers with assault rifles stood guard outside. For the 47-year-old President, it was a reminder that the presidency is a deadly serious business--especially at this pivotal moment in Mexican history.

Five years ago, drug violence was exploding, the Mexican economy was reeling, and a Pentagon report likened the Aztec nation to the terrorist-infested basket case Pakistan, saying both were at risk of "rapid and sudden collapse." As Barack Obama prepared to take office in 2008, one of his senior foreign policy advisers privately nominated Mexico the most underappreciated problem facing the new U.S. Administration.

Now the alarms are being replaced with applause. After one year in office, Peña Nieto has passed the most

ambitious package of social, political and economic reforms in memory. Global economic forces, too, have shifted in his country's direction.

Throw in the opening of Mexico's oil reserves to foreign investment for the first time in 75 years, and smart money has begun to bet on peso power. "In the Wall Street investment community, I'd say that Mexico is by far the favorite nation just now," says Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley. "It's gone from a country people had sort of given up on to becoming the favorite."

Want proof? On Feb. 5, Mexico's government bonds earned an A-- rating for the first time in history when Moody's revised its assessment of the country's prospects, ranking it higher than Brazil, the onetime

darling of international investors, and making it only the second Latin American nation after Chile to get an A.

"I believe the conditions are very favorable for Mexico to grow," Peña Nieto told TIME in an interview at the Los Pinos compound. "I'm very optimistic."

He'll share that optimism with Obama when the U.S. President arrives in Mexico for a North American leaders summit on Feb. 19.

Obama will likely nod in approval: a booming Mexico--integrated with the U.S. economy in myriad ways--would put wind in the sails of U.S. economic growth and further reduce an already declining flow of immigrants illegally crossing the shared 1,933-mile (3,110 km) border.

But "Mexico's moment," as many are calling it, could still disappoint. Corruption and mismanagement are endemic to Mexican politics. Some of Peña Nieto's reforms are engendering fierce resistance. And drug trafficking, with its related crime and violence, remains a defining fact.

After his interview with TIME, Peña Nieto went straight into a meeting to plan his trip the next day to Michoacán, a nearby state where vigilante groups have formed to fight drug bosses who have seized control of their towns.

Officials and experts in both Mexico and the U.S. describe a country at a pivot point. "This is dramatically different from what we've seen before," says Gordon Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center. "I reserve judgment for the time being on whether this is all going to work out."

A New Generation

Eventually, in a three-way race in the summer of 2012, Peña Nieto won just 38% of the vote--hardly a mandate for generational change. The secret to his recent success lies in the way he then built a powerful legislative coalition.

 

After meeting secretly with the two leading opposition parties, he struck the kind of legislative grand bargain that has eluded his counterpart across the northern border. The resulting Pacto por México gave liberals higher taxes on the wealthy and conservatives an end to Mexico's ban on the re-election of politicians, while Peña Nieto won support for a raft of other reforms, including opening up the country's oil monopoly.

Even after the deal was announced, jaded observers doubted that Mexico's political system could deliver. But whatever he may lack in literary erudition, Peña Nieto compensates for in political prowess. He is assisted by a group of young technocrats, many with advanced degrees from outside Mexico, who together put a decidedly more modern face on a very old and very distrusted PRI machine.

 Among them are the President's longtime top adviser and now Finance Minister, Luis Videgaray Caso, a 45-year-old economist with an MIT doctorate, and Emilio Lozoya Austin, the new 39-year-old chief of the state oil company, Pemex, who holds a Harvard master's degree. Running the powerful Interior Ministry is 49-year-old Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, Mexico's new point man on the drug war. All of them met with TIME in Mexico City recently.

Sitting in a personal office near a bright red phone that connects him directly to the President, Videgaray says talk that he is the true mastermind behind Peña Nieto's reforms is "not at all the reality." Instead, he says, "the time was right. Mexico needed fundamental changes."

EPN Takes credit for crime declining in Michoacán  

"What's happening in Michoacán is really worrisome," says Shannon O'Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"If you can't fix rule of law, I don't see how the economic side can thrive."

Peña Nieto doesn't deny that Michoacán is a serious problem.

"We need to re-establish the rule of law" in the state, he says. (The next day, he announced a $3.4 billion social and infrastructure investment package.) But, he adds, "we are regaining territorial control."

 

He grabs a chart from his chief of staff that shows violence dropping in several troubled cities.

This is a common complaint from Mexican officials: that broad security advances are overshadowed by shocking but localized acts of violence. "Sometimes people see the events but not the statistics," says Chong.

A senior Obama Administration official expresses sympathy. "It's a big country," he says, recounting a nervous call from a U.S. auto-industry executive headed to a large Mexican city for a convention. The official's advice? Relax. "It's the equivalent of, you're going to L.A. for a convention and you hear about a big shoot-out or hostage taking in Alabama. Would you feel unsafe?"

Not that security is the only obstacle to an economic boom. For one thing, last year's reforms still require a wave of so-called secondary legislation to spell out their details. Passing it will take hard work, although the good news is that, unlike last year's template-setting constitutional reforms, which required two-thirds majorities in Congress, these laws require only a simple majority.

Peña Nieto takes a long view. "We are not [working] only with a short-term goal," he says. "We have a broader horizon, without thinking about what the polls are saying."

Even if some reforms fall short, it has been a long time since Mexico experienced grand political bargains, a growing economy and optimism about the future. The idea might have been laughable until recently. But is it possible that America's leaders could learn a thing or two from its resurgent southern neighbor?

 Time Magazine
Mr. Bean mock cover is from al Giordano Narco News FB Page
others posted of forum  by Siskiyou kid and aguiniga12!