Latino Lawmakers Rip Mexico’s President for Refusing to Say Biden is the President-Elect

“I can’t congratulate one candidate or the other. I want to wait until the electoral process is over,” Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said.

While some world leaders have publicly congratulated President-elect Joe Biden, several have not. On the list of those refusing to acknowledge Biden as the new US president-elect is Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. 

On Saturday, López Obrador (also referred to as AMLO) said during a news conference that he would hold off on speaking about the election winner until the matter between Biden and President Donald Trump is determined.

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“With regard to the US election, we are going to wait until all the legal matters have been resolved,” López Obrador said, according to Reuters. “I can’t congratulate one candidate or the other. I want to wait until the electoral process is over.”

In response to AMLO’s failure to accept Biden as the election winner, some Latino lawmakers commented, saying AMLO should face reality. 

“This represents a stunning diplomatic failure by Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a time when the incoming Biden Administration is looking to usher in a new era of friendship and cooperation with Mexico,” said Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-Texas) and chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) on Twitter.

Rep. Jesús García (D-Ill.) echoed those statements bilingually, tweeting, “American voters have spoken, and Joe Biden is our President-Elect. He won fair and square. No deje que se le vaya el tren.” 

In an interview with The Hill, García said that AMLO is aligning with world leaders such as President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who are also waiting to congratulate Biden. 

“It’s disappointing to me that he would be in the ranks of Bolsonaro and Putin, claiming that legal issues have to be resolved and that they’re holding back on congratulations,” Rep. García, an immigrant from Mexico, said. “[It’s] making us wonder if their reluctance is more of a matter of affinity toward Trump than ‘respect for US sovereignty.” 

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Rep. Filemón Vela (D-Texas) said that AMLO’s choice not to accept Biden as the new president-elect “just proves what a sham of a president AMLO is, just as much of a sham as the Trump presidency.”

“Trump’s response to the election is totally undemocratic, and AMLO by choosing this path just proves that he does not believe in democracy either. AMLO needs to right the course by acknowledging Biden’s victory and the legitimacy of our election,” Vela told The Hill.