MEXICO CITY: Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador announced the resignation of his environment minister Wednesday, nearly a month after a leaked recording showed that cabinet member criticizing the presidents administration.
Lpez Obrador said Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Victor Manuel Toledo had been considering quitting even before the leaked recording, which clearly showed he was unhappy with the administrations direction on environmental issues.
Public service produces stress and not all of us are made to support the pressure, Lpez Obrador said.
In the audio recording that circulated on social media last month, a person who appears to be Toledo complained that other Cabinet secretaries have blocked efforts to protect the environment and were promoting the interests of farming and mining industries.
Were trying at Semarnat (the environmental agency), but we are not in a government that is totally on our side, he said, adding that the administration is a government of brutal contradictions.
Lpez Obrador has begun more aggressively attacking environmental groups that oppose some of his signature projects, including a new oil refinery and a tourist train that would circle the Yucatan Peninsula. He has shown little appreciation for environmental protection and has been criticized for speaking out against renewable energy projects while trying to prop up Mexicos heavily indebted state-run oil company.
This week he attacked environmental groups as being funded by foreign interests and in his state-of-the-nation address Tuesday dismissed environmentalists as pseudoecologists.
He was more kind with Toledo, who he said was Mexicos most important ecologist.
Mara Luisa Albores, currently the welfare minister, will take Toledos place.
Toledos exit follows that of Transportation Secretary Javier Jimnez Espri, who resigned after Lpez Obrador gave control of the nations ports to the navy.
Toledo himself was Lpez Obradors second environment minister. He replaced Josefa Gonzlez-Blanco Ortiz Mena, who resigned in a scandal after she tried to hold a commercial flight so she could make it.
In 2019, Lpez Obradors first treasury secretary, Carlos Urza, resigned over disagreements with others in the administration.
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