Written in NATIONAL on October 11, 2023 · 10:06 a.m
The French-Spanish intellectual Ignacio Ramonet, one of the great icons of the global anti-globalization left, highlighted this Wednesday the “intellectual honesty” of the Mexican president. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO).
Ramonet, who was present at the Mexican president’s morning press conference, recognized the importance of the “morning” conference that López Obrador used to address the population and the media.
“And then in that continuity, let it be every day, five days a week, and that you answer all kinds of questions and that too with great clarity, great simplicity, an extraordinary intellectual honesty that goes beyond the way you express yourself,” emphasized the journalist during his participation.
Ramonet, who was director of Le Monde Diplomatique from 1990 to 2008, claimed that the Mexican president gave “basic information” at press conferences and even denied some news.
Spanish journalist Ramonet “shows flowers to AMLO.”
This, he assured, is important in a time of constant misinformation like today and when the truth is in a “crisis”.
“You personally, as a key player in a leader, give your truth and not just yours, but a truth based on facts. This dialogue, in this context in which we are today in a major information crisis, seems to me that it is both courageous and an opportunity to understand the information system in which we find ourselves,” he said.
This exercise “is definitely an example for other managers and also for journalists, for us as observers of the functioning of the relationship between managers, the press and society,” emphasized the intellectual.
Since coming to power in December 2018, López Obrador has maintained an unprecedented style of governance through his “morning” press conferences, to which he devotes more than two hours a day.
Such is the importance of morning meetings that López Obrador has no other agenda for public meetings on most days. All their activity is concentrated in the mornings, which begin at 7:00 a.m. following a meeting of their safety committee at 6:00 a.m.
The conferences have been criticized by organizations that defend press freedom over López Obrador’s attacks on journalists critical of the government, while the opposition has accused him of using press conferences to spread propaganda and disinformation.