A company belonging to one of Mexico’s richest men on Friday denied taking sides in the presidential race amid growing evidence of unease among prominent businesses about a possible victory by leftist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Luxury department store El Palacio de Hierro, a part of billionaire Alberto Bailleres’ business empire, issued a statement in newspapers saying that it was not trying to influence the election, despite reports to the contrary.
El Palacio de Hierro said it was part of a movement called CONCIENCIA MX that aimed to help its employees see how to achieve “the model of country we want.”
“At no point does this initiative influence the vote or present proposals in favor of or against any party or candidate,” El Palacio de Hierro said, adding that it “completely denied” undertaking “any proselytizing activity.”
Still, two people at Bailleres’ conglomerate Grupo Bal told reporters that companies in the group had held meetings to encourage them to inform themselves about the upcoming vote.
That involved a presentation for staff of El Palacio de Hierro setting out Mexico’s advances and explaining how anger over corruption and lawlessness was stopping people from seeing them, a source said.
Staff were never urged to vote a certain way, nor was Lopez Obrador named directly, but to people with a certain knowledge of Mexico, it was obvious to whom it referred, the source said.
Other companies have also dropped hints about the risk of a Lopez Obrador victory.
This week, a letter from mining tycoon German Larrea was published in which he warned his staff of the risk of a “populist” winning the July 1 presidential election, making indirect references to Lopez Obrador and his campaign.
Lopez Obrador has accused Larrea and Bailleres — who were the second and third richest men in Mexico on this year’s Forbes rich list — of belonging to a group of tycoons seeking to thwart democracy and keep him from power.
Lopez Obrador has a history of clashing with business leaders, and his adversaries time and again painted him as a threat to Mexico’s economic stability during his previous two runs for the presidency.
Most polls make him a strong favorite to win this time.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.