MEXICO CITY: Facing sagging popularity, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto used his second state of the nation speech Tuesday to tout a drop in drug-related violence and defend his economic reforms.
Pena Nieto has garnered international praise for passing 11 reforms in under two years, including historic openings of the energy and telecommunications sectors and sweeping changes to the education system.
"This is not the same country as before. This is the Mexico that dared to change," Pena Nieto told lawmakers, governors, top officials and diplomats at the capital's historic National Palace.
But his popularity has fallen at home. His approval rating fell from 47 percent in April to 43 percent in August in a survey published last week by BGC polling firm and Excelsior newspaper.
Much of the criticism appears focused on the country's disappointing economic performance, with the government reducing its 2014 growth forecast from 3.9 percent to 2.7 percent.
"The economy is not growing and there is no significant progress regarding security. That's what matters to people, not the fact that Congress passes reforms," said Jose Antonio Crespo, a political analyst at the CIDE think tank.
A poll released last week by the US-based Pew research center found that one in six Mexicans disapprove of his economic policies, while 57 percent reject the energy law that broke a state monopoly and invited foreign investors back into the country.
But Pena Nieto insisted that the country needed an "energy revolution" to reverse declining oil production.
He also defended a fiscal reform that imposed new taxes on popular consumer goods ranging from soft drinks to chocolate, which he said was needed to increase the government's lackluster revenue.
While Pena Nieto said the economy was more dynamic in the first half of the year, he acknowledged that Mexico had "not achieved the (growth) rate that its people need."
He announced an overhaul of an anti-poverty program, admitting that Mexico has struggled for three decades to improve a situation affecting nearly half the population.
Pena Nieto also unveiled plans to open a new Mexico City international airport to accommodate 120 million passengers per year, a fourfold increase.
Upheaval in two states:
Turning to the country's relentless violence, which he promised to tame when he took office in December 2012, Pena Nieto said the homicide rate had dropped from 22 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in his first year to 19 per 100,000 in 2013.
In a report issued to Congress, the government said killings linked to organized crime dropped by 36 percent between September 2013 and July this year.
Pena Nieto said 84 of the most 122 most dangerous criminals had been taken down. The authorities captured the world's most wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, in February.
More than 80,000 people are estimated to have been killed in a drug war that began in 2006 under his predecessor, Felipe Calderon.
But the figure could be higher, with the government saying last month that 22,000 people remain missing in the country.
Analysts have also questioned the accuracy of the government's homicide figures and note that the northeastern state of Tamaulipas and Michoacan in the west remain mired in cartel violence.
"They have made many arrests," said security expert Raul Benitez Manaut of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "But two states, Tamaulipas and Michoacan, are out of control."
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