Remember Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the defeated candidate for the Mexican presidency and self-proclaimed “legitimate president”? Well he’s still around and while he isn’t the actual president, he’s getting involved in policy as if he were one. AMLO’s telling Spanish president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to butt out of Mexican issues, after the prez showed interest in talks of energy reform in Mexico, particularly the privatization of the oil industry.

AMLO says that recent proposals by the PAN ruling party to privatize petroleum will be met with great public resistance because

“…we don’t want foreign masters! The only master here is the Mexican people!”

To the Spanish president — who is visiting Mexico for a meeting with Mexican president Felipe Calderon — AMLO had a curt message:

“They [the Spaniards] shouldn’t get involved. I would tell Rodríguez Zapatero to stop sticking his nose in Mexico…”

AMLO, on a tour of 70 Mexican cities, rounded off his speeches with an ominous message about the dangers of privatization of oil, saying that if it happens “it will be very difficult to get it back. We don’t want to be a colony.”

It’s a bit strange to hear a leftist would-be leader complaining about the Latin American left’s BFF in Europe, Zapatero, but the fact is that the bad blood goes back at least a year. Back in July of last year, AMLO’s camp expressed “repudiation” for a visit from Zapatero because they still hadn’t forgiven him for congratulating Calderon on his victory before all the votes were counted.

Via / La Jornada