SIX years ago, Mexicans chose a young, clean-cut former state governor as their new president. Enrique Peña Nieto promised them a clampdown on corruption, the destruction of the country’s notoriously violent drugs cartels and radical economic reform.

High hopes accompanied Pena Nieto’s inauguration. At last Mexico seemed to have a president who was going to bring real change to this vibrant but chaotic state. But he leaves office with one of the lowest approval ratings of any modern Mexican president. In the final analysis, with the exception of privatization and deregulating the oil and gas industry, all the outgoing president’s targets were missed. The drugs cartels are stronger than ever and corruption is still widespread. Indeed, it is argued that payola actually disfigured the sale of state assets.

Politically, Pena Nieto’s successor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was elected at the weekend, is his diametric opposite. A socialist who was formerly mayor of the capital Mexico City, López Obrador, popularly known by his initials as “AMLO” was trying for the presidency for the third time. Where Pena Nieto was suave and polished, very much a Davos man, AMLO is a populist, delivering fiery speeches denouncing social injustice and wealth inequality. But both men share the solemn promises they made their electors. Pena Nieto told his fellow Davos elite he called his planned reforms the “Agenda of Changes”.

AMLO is unlikely to become a Davos darling. But his agenda includes a vow to end the corruption that now infuriates ordinary Mexican as well as ending largely drug-related violence which last year saw over 25,000 people murdered, a 2017 death toll seven times higher than in the war in Afghanistan. He has also promised to attack poverty with widespread social reforms which will include the doubling of pensions on his very first day in office. Predictions by his opponents that he is setting Mexico on an inflationary spiral to rival Venezuela are probably wide of the mark. But he will assume power with few friends in an establishment which has profited mightily from corruption, including generous payoffs from the drugs lords. It is in the interests of the country’s entrenched elite to ensure the economy runs into trouble. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez thought he could prevent economic sabotage by state takeovers but his policies only produced economic chaos.

On the face of it, the Trump administration in Washington looks set to be the socialist AMLO’s worst enemy. During his campaign, AMLO spared few criticisms of the US president and his trade and migrant clampdown. But both leaders are anti-establishment iconoclasts. It should not be ruled out that they could strike a mutually advantageous and very surprising deal.

AMLO’s record running Mexico City was good. It was not just that he introduced a social safety net, particularly for the elderly, but he teamed up with the country’s leading capitalist, Carlos Slim to embark on a much admired rehabilitation on the capital’s rundown central district. He has promised to focus on education equip young people for work - youth joblessness is double the national average for all workers.

But no one should underestimate the immense challenges he faces. Every six years presidential candidates promise big changes and each incumbency ends in relative failure, perhaps because Mexico’s problems are so deep-rooted, they are not amenable to change.