What is it about new-broom political leaders and government jets?

The question came to mind while I was sitting with my wife and two Mexican friends at a table in the Bar El Sella, a 60-year-old cantina in Mexico City, which specialises in Spanish food with Mexican influences.

We were tucking into the house speciality, Chamorro, a pig’s knee cooked to the point of shredding and served with tacos and coriander and salsas, when the lottery ticket man came by.

Did we want to buy tickets in the raffle for the government jet?

What?

Our friends explained.  When Mexico’s new leftist and populist president Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO as he is universally known,  came to office in December 2018, he promised to get rid of the Government’s US$130 million Boeing 787 Dreamliner, fitted out with marble bathrooms, a wall of flat-screen TVs, a big bed and seating for 80.

It was all too rich for man-of-the people AMLO, who travels economy. But try as it might, the Mexican Government couldn’t find a buyer and in any event, it didn’t really own the plane. It was leased.

And so, AMLO  came up with another plan. He’s keeping the jet but is running a state-sponsored lottery to pay for it.

Six million tickets went on sale at the beginning of March for 500 pesos each (about $AU36.)

Two-thirds of the pot will go to 100 winners and the rest to offset the plane’s maintenance costs and to pay for free public health.

I’d heard a version of this story before. When Queensland premier Wayne Goss won office 30 years ago, high on his agenda was a promise to get rid of the “Joh Jet”, a symbol in the eyes of the Labor faithful of unjustified self-indulgence. It had gold taps no less and leather seats.

But in office, the picture became more complicated. Queensland is a big state and Joh’s Jet — a Bae-125-800B — was just the aircraft for covering it. It was big and had the distance not only for flying politicians but also human organs and medical emergencies around the place. It was actually a very practical piece of equipment.

But still, a pre-election promise was a pre-election promise and so for a year or so we had the silly situation of Goss government ministers pretending the Joh Jet didn’t exist, until a more modest replacement could be found. Another jet yes, but not the Joh Jet with the gold taps.

Goss and AMLO  had both fallen into the same trap of making grand gestures before elections without thinking through the consequences.

I think the Mexican solution is far more entertaining and clever. AMLO is a populist and what could be more popular and theatrical than a raffle involving a jet equipped to the standards of a James Bond villain?

The Goss government was far too focussed on being seen to be businesslike and sober than to indulge in such frivolities.

AMLO  has also come up with a clever — and theatrical — way to defang critical media.

The standard approach in Queensland — for decades now — has been for ministers’ offices to run tightly scripted media stunts bolstered by self-serving, spin-filled press releases.

All spontaneity and risk has been hammered out of these carefully managed engagements with the media.

By contrast, Every weekday morning at 7:00am, AMLO  holds his  “mananera”, or morning press conference, which, in the words of one AFP reporter who has attended, is “an exercise in political communication unlike anything else in the world,” which falls “somewhere between religious sermon and stump speech”.

AMLO stands at his lectern and talks — and talks, and talks — directly to  “the people” as the journalists covering his performance “battle to stay awake”.

The genius of AMLO’s early morning media call, which can last two-and-a-half hours, is that journalists have to start gathering outside Mexico’s National Palace each morning at 5:30am for pre-conference protocols and security checks, a system guaranteed to make sure no one is at the top of their game when the show finally starts.

Who can complain? AMLO makes himself available to the media every morning. If they can’t pin him down because of his bluster, or because they’re sleep-deprived, who’s fault is that?

It probably wouldn’t work in Queensland. Could you imagine play-it-safe Premier Annasastacia Palaszczuk holding forth for an hour or two off the cuff and taking on all comers —as sleepy as they might be?

AMLO’s got one thing we don’t see a lot of in Queensland, whatever his politics — a passionate belief in himself and his view of the future of his country.

We didn’t buy a ticket in the government jet. Another round of tequilas seemed better value.