AMLO's Daily Conference An Endurance Test For President, Press Alike

Mexico City, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Nov, 2019 ) :Every weekday at 7:00 am, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stands before a microphone and talks -- and talks, and talks -- directly to "the people" as the journalists covering his daily news conference battle to stay awake.

This is the "mananera," or morning press conference, an exercise in political communication unlike anything else in the world.

Falling somewhere between religious sermon and stump speech, the press conference has become a fixture in Mexico since the anti-establishment leftist known as AMLO took office a year ago, on December 1, 2018.

"Donald Trump has Twitter. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro prefers Facebook.

In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, have the radio. For AMLO, it's the 'mananera,'" said political scientist Luis Estrada.

"Yet even though this peculiar form of press conference is unique in the world, it has so far been imitated nowhere," he added sarcastically.

Journalists begin lining up for Lopez Obrador's press conference at 5:30 am outside the National Palace, on Mexico City's central square.

Their eyes barely open, bracing against the cold, the gaggle of political reporters, foreign correspondents, bloggers, photographers and camera operators obediently line up, then file into the stone palace's courtyard.