He’s growing more irritated with the bad press as his administration draws to a close.
Being under the spotlight is no walk in the park. Just ask Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto.
With less than a year left in office, Peña Nieto is spending more and more time calling out critics while performing his official duties. “To disavow our progress would be an attack on truth, the misinforming of our people, the degradation of our politics,” Peña Nieto warned during a commemoration for the 101st birthday of the constitution Monday.
Yuri Cortez / AFP / Getty Images
When Peña Nieto began his administration in 2012, there was a sense of hopefulness in the country, which allowed him to pass sweeping oil, education, and communication reforms.
But a series of massacres and corruption scandals quickly put a stain on Peña Nieto’s carefully crafted image. The discovery of his wife’s mansion, bought from a favored government contractor, marked a point of no return. Last year, after an unpopular hike in gas prices, his approval rating plummeted to 12% — lower than Donald Trump’s at the time.
Aristegui Noticias / Via youtube.com
Critical calls have grown in tandem with the skyrocketing homicide rate — last year registered more murders than any other since 1997, when the government first began recording homicides.
Still, Peña Nieto insists that the problem is that the news media lingers too long on the bad news. “They forget and put aside the good news,” he said during a speech in 2016.
STR / AFP / Getty Images
Peña Nieto even began using the slogan, “The good things are barely talked about but they count for a lot,” that year.
“It seems like bad news is good news for many people,” he said during an interview two years ago, after tripping up over his original phrase.
Peña Nieto insists that people are too quick to say there is corruption behind everything bad that happens, including the sinkholes that opened up across the country last year, killing at least two people.
“Behind every [negative] event, they want to find someone to blame,” Peña Nieto said last year, visibly frustrated.
Eduardo Verdugo / AP
The president has accused critics of being bullies.
Civil society “condemns, criticizes, and bullies the work that the Mexican government does,” Peña Nieto said during a public safety forum in Mexico City in November.
Pedro Pardo / AFP / Getty Images
But at the end of the day, it’s clear that Peña Nieto has gotten used to the lukewarm reception his words often draw.
“I know they don’t clap,” he muttered under his breath after giving a speech in 2015.
John Moore / Getty Images
Peña Nieto’s office did not respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News, but he wants you to know that he’s never had bad intentions.
“I don’t think a president wakes up, or has woken up, thinking, and sorry about saying it, ‘How to fuck Mexico over,’” Peña Nieto said during a business forum in 2016.
Mark Wilson / Getty Images