Thousands Rally Against Mexico Oil Reforms

Tens of thousands of people have rallied against President Enrique Pena Nieto’s economic reforms in Mexico’s capital, with leftist leader calling for peaceful resistance.

Mexico City police said more than 40,000 people gathered in a park on Sunday’s demonstration to reject plans to overhaul the tax system and open the country’s state-controlled oil industry to foreign investors.

“We can prevent the privatisation of the energy sector and the tax increases through peaceful citizen mobilization,” said opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who never recognised his defeat to Pena Nieto in the 2012 presidential election after claiming fraud.

“These energy and tax reforms were prepared abroad for the benefit of foreign companies, a commitment that Pena Nieto made with foreign companies in the United States and Britain,” he said.

He called the oil reform a “vile and shameful robbery”.

Lopez Obrador made his plea as Pena Nieto prepared to present a revamp of the tax system to increase the government’s revenue stream amid reports that he may propose a controversial sales tax for food and medicine.

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