MEXICO CITY: He has just been elected commander-in-chief of a nation mired in an intractable drug conflict that has claimed more than 200,000 lives in little more than a decade, reports The Guardian.

But on Tuesday, Mexico’s incoming president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, claimed he would waive the right to close protection in a bid to stay close to the people.

“I don’t want bodyguards, which means the citizens will take care of me and protect me,” López Obrador, or Amlo, as he is best known, told reporters as he called on Mexico’s incumbent president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to discuss the transition.

Amlo, a 64-year-old leftist who trounced opponents in Sunday’s vote, was repeating an undertaking made on several occasions during his historic campaign – one of several promises designed to bolster his image as a man of the people who will rule for Mexico’s 53 million poor.  “I don’t want to go around surrounded by bodyguards. I want you to take care of me, I want the people to look after me,” Amlo told a rally in Hidalgo state in May.  José Antonio Crespo, a political analyst at Mexico’s Center for Economic Research and Teaching, called Amlo’s decision “an act of absolute irresponsibility”.