By David Agren

Special to USA Today

MEXICO CITY – In his final state-of-the-nation speech this month, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto highlighted his attempts at curbing corruption, but among the attendees at the annual address: a government contractor, whose company sold the first lady a $7 million mansion.

It was a fitting finale for an outgoing president who came into in 2012 promising to transform Mexico with an ambitious agenda of structural reforms that he promised would raise living standards and modernize the economy.

His remarks, however, unfolded more as a funeral – even though the annual “informe” (as the state-of-the-nation address is known) is traditionally an annual spectacle of pomp, political theater and presidential reverence.

The speech only served to offer Mexicans a rude reminder of six years of scandals and controversies, which plunged his approval rating into the teens and left his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) so unpopular that some of its leaders are proposing a name change.

It also followed three-time presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) winning the July 1 presidential election with 53 percent of the vote and taking both houses of Congress on an agenda of austerity, getting rid of graft and undoing Peña Nieto’s reforms.

Peña Nieto, who leaves office Nov. 30, was reflective and acknowledged some shortcomings, but was unrepentant. He boasted of record job creation, record tourist visits and robust infrastructure investment. “Mexico is a better country today than six years ago when I arrived,” he told an audience of political and business elites.

Past informes often were opportunities for the president to project power. But people took pot shots at the president on social media and point to problems such as Mexico’s homicide rate hitting a record high in 2017, perceptions of corruption climbing and public finances deteriorating. Some even wondered aloud what country their president was speaking about.

“It’s Peñalandia,” said Julio Astillero on Imagen Televisión. “It’s the territory where everything blooms, everything moves, everything is a success, everything works.”

Attempts at defending the Peña Nieto administration have proved clumsy. A partisan told journalist Carmen Aristegui that he saw record numbers of Mexico’s traveling to Russia during the World Cup, but were unappreciative of improvements achieved at home.

“I see on photos on Instagram of friends in Europe. They can go. There's a sector that can easily travel to Europe that couldn't before, but they're also unhappy,” PRI lawmaker Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín told journalist Carmen Aristegui. “They complain they can’t travel in first class.”

Some pundits saw a mixed record marked by scandals.

“This current administration did some very good things, the reforms, which have not been valued enough (and) will change the face of the country in some years,” said Valeria Moy, director of Mexico ¿Cómo Vamos? a think tank.

“I see restaurants full, shopping centers are full, every flight I take is fully booked,” Moy added. “But the corruption that comes together with (the reforms) has been devastating. This same administration has thrown overboard the accomplishments that they achieved.”

Peña Nieto spent massively on publicity during his six years in office and received positive press from publications receiving government advertising. But a barrage of ads ahead of the informe only stoked controversy.

In one ad, he spoke positively inviting then-candidate Donald Trump to Mexico City mid-campaign in August 2016, when the New York billionaire spoke of Mexico paying for his border wall idea, during a joint press appearance at the presidential palace – only to have Peña Nieto not respond until afterward.

Trump presses Mexico's Peña Nieto to stop publicly opposing border wall

“It was a hasty meeting that left something positive: it left the door open to having an open dialogue with the (U.S.) Government,” he said in a video Aug. 28 as Mexico and the U.S. agreed on a trade deal. “Today we see the results.”

Another ad spoke of the 2014 attack by police, acting in cahoots with a drug cartel, on students in Guerrero state. Peña Nieto reiterated what his government calls “the historic truth” that the bodies of the 43 missing students were burned into a garbage dump – even though outside investigators found no physical evidence of an inferno.

Peña Nieto also partially apologized for the way he handled the 2014 Casa Blanca scandal, in which First Lady Angelica Rivera bought a mansion from a contractor.

“You have to want to rub salt in the wound and, even more, want to insult people’s intelligence to share a message like Enrique Peña Nieto did in recent days with the Casa Blanca,” wrote Ricardo Raphael, in the newspaper El Universal.

Ironically, Peña Nieto’s presidency started off strongly. He forged an alliance across party lines to approve a suite of structural reforms in areas such as energy, taxation and telecommunications – all of which the PRI had steadfastly refused to approve while in opposition from 2000-2012.

In his informe, the president boasted of improving education through teacher evaluations and imposing order on powerful unions. He spoke of driving down telephone rates (previously controlled by Carlos Slim, who turned the Telmex monopoly into the world’s biggest personal fortune.) Peña Nieto also said the energy industry – previously government-controlled – was in stronger shape thanks to a reform allowing increased foreign investment.

Yet López Obrador campaigned against the reforms – and appears set to roll some of them back. Analysts say expectations over reforms were raised too high.

“They said that we would be growing at 5 percent (with the reforms) and we ended up growing by half that amount,” said Jonathan Heath, an independent economist in Mexico City. “If you look at this public finances, how [Former President Felipe] Calderón delivered them to Peña Nieto and how Peña Nieto is going to deliver them to López Obrador, there’s been a deterioration.”

Peña Nieto promoted his administration with the slogan, “Moving Mexico.” Yet some analysts attribute his administration’s unpopularity to perceptions he pulled the country into the past, when the authority of presidents belonging to the PRI – which ruled for 71-straight years until 2000 – went unchallenged and excesses were common.

“Some things were bad luck, but some of them were [associated] with the PRI’s return to power – mostly the corruption, certainly the abuse of power and that includes human rights violations,” said Federico Estévez, political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

With Peña Nieto’s approval rating running at just 18 percent, according to Consulta Mitofsky, López Obrador has dominated the news cycle. The president-elect often holds press conferences (something rare for Peña Nieto,) frequently floats policy ideas and sends social media into a frenzy with shows of austerity – such as holding a meeting with a state governor last week in a food court at the Monterrey airport.

“He’s taking all the oxygen, but no one else is breathing in the room,” Estévez said. “The opposition is in a catatonic state and the Peña government has been lashed by the popular will into silence. Of course, (López Obrador) is also ready to go.”