Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is featured on Time Magazine’s latest cover, and is heralded as “saving Mexico” by implementing sweeping reforms to drug policy enforcement.
Those reforms “have changed the narrative in his narco-stained nation,” the cover says.
However, some are not pleased with Nieto’s being on the cover. Photoshops of the cover shared on Twitter include changing the word “saving” to “selling,” while another replaced him with Adolf Hitler.
Another says: “Who is saving Mexico from this [expletive]?”
The actual story hasn’t been published yet but Time has wrote favorably about Nieto before, including him on the 2013 TIME 100, a list of the purported 100 most influential people in the world.
“During a 2012 joint appearance in Mexico City with then presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, I saw that the Mexican media was attacking him savagely. His critics argued that he was inexperienced and untested, a pretty boy with a TV-star wife; they were skeptical that his party, the ancient PRI, would reform the country and take on the drug cartels. Yet it was obvious to me that he had boatloads of charisma, a quick grasp of the issues and a self-deprecating humorous side,” wrote Bill Richardson, former governor of New Mexico.
“The U.S. shouldn’t treat Peña Nieto like a patsy. He combines Reagan’s charisma with Obama’s intellect and Clinton’s political skills. This is a leader to watch.”
Another piece acknowledges that the brutal drug war hasn’t gone as well as it could have, with a record number of kidnappings reported in the first 11 months of 2013. The number, 1583, was more than the whole of 2012 and a quadrupling of the number since 2007. And many others go unreported.
“This record number of kidnappings leaves a stain on what has been touted as a generally successful first year for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took power in December 2012,” according to TIME.
