MEXICO CITY, April 20 (Portal) – Mexico’s presidential jet has been sold to Tajikistan, the government said on Thursday, seemingly closing the final chapter in a political saga President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador repeatedly used to attack the excesses of his predecessors.
Lopez Obrador announced in a post on Twitter that the agreed retail price for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, used by its predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto — but never by him — was about 1.66 billion pesos, or about $92 million .
In a video that accompanied the post, the president said the sale showed how Mexican politics had changed under his leadership.
“It’s important that everyone knows how people used to think, how the authorities acted, like little pharaohs,” he said while sitting on a high leather seat and flanked by officials.
“No longer.”
More details about the plane’s sale to the Central Asian country would be announced next week, including what he described as the plane’s exorbitant maintenance costs.
One of the president’s officials, Jorge Mendoza, head of the national development bank Banobras, said the Tajik State Council, which bought the plane, has about 10 days to take possession of it.
The populist left, which has railed against corruption among political elites for decades, has previously said it hopes to sell the plane for at least $150 million, down from the original purchase price of $218 million in 2012.
Shortly after taking office in late 2018, Lopez Obrador announced plans to sell the jet, which was emblazoned on the walls with several flat-screen TVs with marble details and official government seals.
But years went by without a sale, and at one point the frugal Mexican leader, who has championed austerity during his more than four-year tenure, suggested the plane be raffled off.
Lopez Obrador, who flies commercial flights when he travels, said the proceeds from the sale will go towards building two 80-bed public hospitals in the southern states of Guerrero and Oaxaca, which are among the poorest regions in the country.
“They will be built by military engineers and will be inaugurated before my term is up,” he added.
($1 = 17.9941 Mexican pesos)
Reporting by Isabel Woodford and David Alire Garcia; Adaptation by Stephen Coates
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